“Cool,” he said, and then went quiet for a while. “No one knows about Lisa, or that I volunteer at Lighthouse.”

“Why?” I asked.

“I guess I don’t want people to judge.”

There was a heavy full stop to that sentence that lingered in the air around him. And I didn’t know if he meant he didn’t want people to judge Lisa or didn’t want people to judge him.

“People can be judgy,” I replied quietly.

“Like my gran. She doesn’t believe in ADHD. She thinks Lisa is just badly behaved and my parents need to be stricter with her.”

“That’s such crap!” I sat up on my knees. “You know this friend of my mom’s told us that you can cure autism by cutting out all gluten when she saw Zac eating a sandwich for lunch.”

“That’s insane! You can’t cure it.”

“I know! I bloody told her where the hell to get off! Much to my mother’s horror, of course.”

Jake smiled. “We needed you last year, then.”

“For what?”

“There were protestors outside the school holding up signs protesting psychiatric diagnoses of children so young.”

“Screw them! They just don’t know what it’s like. Getting the diagnosis is the good part; you have something to work with after that. Before the diagnosis, you have no idea what’s going on; afterward you at least have a way of moving forward with therapies and things. If I’d been here, I would have ripped their stupid signs up, bloody hell!”

Jake smiled at me, slowly again.

“What?” I asked.

“You speak your mind. I like that.”

“I do?”

“Yeah. And you’re not afraid to stand up for Zac and advocate for him.”

“Well, yes! If I don’t, who will?”

Jake’s smile wavered. “I don’t think I do that for Lisa as much as you do for Zac. If I did, all my friends at school would know about her and Lighthouse.” He looked down at the grass and pulled some blades out.

“You volunteer at her school! You’re here with her now!” I said emphatically, and this seemed to make his face soften again.

“So, I have a bit of a confession to make,” Jake said.

“What?”

“You know that fire alarm in assembly?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, that was me,” he said.

“What? Why?”

“It looked like you needed saving from Amber, especially after the crappy Monday morning you had last week.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I saw you at the Lighthouse on Zac’s first day when he tried to climb over the fence . . .” He tapered off.

“You saw that?”

“Sorry. It looked hectic.”

And then a thought hit me and I quickly looked down. “So you saw me . . . I mean . . . ?”

“Yes.” His voice was filled with compassion.

“Oh.” I pulled at a thread in the picnic blanket feeling vulnerable, exposed, and embarrassed.