Zac turned and looked at him blankly. “I don’t like the game she’s playing.”

“Well, why don’t you ask her to play another game?” Jake suggested.

“Like what?”

“What games do you like to play?” Jake asked. Zac looked confused. I knew why. The truth is that Zac doesn’t actually play games, not in the sense that other kids do. He’s never played games imaginatively; instead, he prefers practical activities like building machines or taking them apart, creating experiments, or constructing forts and obstacle courses for the snake.

“Here.” I swung around and pulled his binoculars out of my bag. “Why don’t you and Lisa go and see what you can find lurking in the bushes.”

At that, he perked up, grabbed the binoculars from my hands, and walked off happily. When it looked like they’d found something to do together, I felt Jake turn to me.

“What did you mean when you said, ‘they are white’?” Jake asked.

“Oh, Zac only eats white food. We are still working on that in therapy,” I said. “You know, sooo autistic.”

Jake smiled back at me. “Sooo autistic,” he echoed with a tone in his voice that told me he wasn’t mocking Zac at all. In fact, it sounded affectionate, just like mine had. This made me smile, probably more than I should have.

“Can I ask you another question?” he asked.

“Sure.”

“Have you been avoiding me at school?”

“What? I mean . . . no. It’s just been busy and confusing what with the new schedule and . . . I don’t think so . . .” My words fell out of my mouth like randomly dropped marbles, and in that moment, I wished I was one of these people who was more confident and chilled, and less me. “You’ve been avoiding me too!” I said quickly.

“So you have been avoiding me, then?”

“So have you.”

“When did I avoid you?” Jake asked.

“In isiZulu.” I shrugged to make it look like although I’d said this, it really didn’t bother me. So what! I didn’t care . . . but I did care.

“You were avoiding me in Zulu,” Jake said.

“No. I wasn’t.”

“Um . . .” Jake leaned forward. “I tried to catch your eye to say hello but you looked away and then didn’t look at me again.”

“No. You looked away and didn’t look at me again.”

Jake chuckled, low and soft under his breath.

“What?” I asked.

“Clearly, we got our wires crossed. I thought you were avoiding me because you didn’t want anyone asking how we knew each other, because you didn’t want anyone to know about Zac and—”

“No!” I cut him off quickly. “It’s not that. I don’t care who knows about Zac. I’m not ashamed of him, at all. It’s not that. Trust me!”