Her Name is Mia (eBook)

Connor Hamilton (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2023 | 1. Auflage
292 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
978-1-6678-9191-0 (ISBN)

Infos

Riley, he's a preteen who was diagnosed with ADHD and high-functioning Autism. He struggles growing up, trying to live up to everyone's expectations of him being 'normal'. But when he meets Mia, a 17-year-old who dreams of being a hairdresser and does unspeakable things for money, his world gets turned upside down. He finds it hard to live with a mother who wants the best for him, and a father who couldn't care less about him. Will Riley and Mia's unique unexpected bond help them resolve their issues, or will it create more as forces beyond their control threaten to pull them apart?

Textauszug

1

"The clock is wrong" I whispered to my teacher. She looked at the clock, and then at her watch. "So it is." and then went back to looking at her cards. We're playing go fish, I should be playing outside, but I don't get along with the other kids. They all call me names like 'Insect face' and 'Bug lord' but I don't understand why they call me these things, I've only ever had my stick insects on my face, but that was in my bedroom. It's not like they were spying on me, although that would be cool, like in those movies. I like movies. And I especially don't rule over any bugs, which are different from insects, not a lot of people know that. One of the main differences is that insects have three body parts and six legs. They're also not a part of the 'Hemiptera', the order of bugs. Some people call them 'true bugs', which I think is better than a word that sounds weird like that. I learn a lot of my fancy words in my bug books, I like to call them my 'BB's' because it's a lot shorter and it sounds like 'babies' which my mum finds funny. My mum is nice, she finds a lot of things funny, she also cooks really good food. The food is nice, my favorite food is macaroni and cheese, but not the store-bought one, me and my mum make it at home sometimes. There's this special cheese sauce we use that's really good. Sometimes I eat just the sauce, but then Mum gets mad because I stick my fingers in the jar.

We have lots of things in jars! Curry, pudding, sauce, jam, and jellies. I don't know what the difference is between jam and jellies. "Do you have any threes?" I just remembered we were playing go fish. "No" I responded, "Go fish.". I know a lot about bugs and insects. "Do you have any kings?" I asked. People make fun of me for it, like Gavin, I don't understand why. 'It's my superpower, and I should feel powerful because of it.' is what my mum says. If I could have a superpower, it would be the power to freeze time, that way I can always make it to the candy shops before they close, that's one of the things my mum finds funny. My teacher handed her king, which meant I had three pairs, while she only had 2, she was terrible at this game. Her name was Mary, but she wants me to call her Ms. Cole. I wanted to play other games like Othello or Monopoly, but she says she isn't in the mood to play those kinds of games. But it's weird, there never seems to be a 'mood', even when she's happy, I think she just doesn't like those games. Monopoly is a nice game, but it makes my mum very angry, she doesn't like it when I don't want to trade with her. None of the school kids wanna play games with me either, they always cheat and make up their own rules. They say that's what I do, and then I get mad, I don't like it when people lie. 'I love listening to lies when I know the truth', in the principal’s office there's a framed poster with that written on there, there's also a picture of a weird man pointing at me, I don't like it.

"Do you have any nines?" Ms. Cole asked. She had a nameplate on her desk, it read 'Mary Cole' it was black words in some kind of grey silver box with a bunch of weird lines going all around the corners. It looked very sharp though, if someone threw that at someone's face it could poke an eye out. It had to be one of the fanciest name tags I had ever seen. There was a bunch of different kind of name tags, there were those desk ones, but then there were the rectangle ones you would see someone who works at a shop would wear. With those, they have only their first name, and sometimes what that person does for a job, like 'Manager'. Her desk was a mess, there was a bunch of paper scrunches everywhere and loose pens and pencils. It was nothing like my special desk at home, there it was nice and shiny, and everything has its own little special place.

I have a special place, it's under my bed, I have a lot of old boxes and toys to play with whenever I go there. My mum sometimes tells me to go there, but it's ok, when I'm under there I can still see my stick insects, so I know they're safe. Also, I did have a nine, but I didn't want her to have the same number of points as me because then she might win. I don't like it when other people win. "No, go fish" she made this weird noise and then picked up a card. When the game ended, I ended up winning with 19 points, while Ms. Cole only had 7. She told me to cover my ears, I knew what she meant so I did. The school bell went, it's really loud so I usually cover my ears. I don't like loud noises. "How did you know that?" I asked, "The bell rings at a very specific time every day, and unlike that clock, my watch is right." She points to her watch and then the clock on the wall. She's smart like that, she knows when things are going to happen.

That bell meant kids were going to come inside, so we packed up our card game and I went to sit on the floor at the front of the class. The floor was very hard, it was made of a very rough carpet, and it was old, there were a lot of pieces that you could take apart if you pulled hard enough. Whenever I'm bored, I pick up a few pieces and put them into my pocket, I have a little pile of carpet fluff at home on my desk. One by one I see other students come in, they look at me, and I look at them. When we are all sitting down, Ms. Cole starts drawing math equations on her whiteboard. 'Equations' isn't one of the big words I learned from my 'BB's', I learned that word while doing homework with my mum one night. Ms. Cole would point at equations and then we would say the answer. There were things like 'seven multiplied by six' and 'ninety divided by nine'. But I didn't say the answer out loud, I would just think it. Whenever we did this, I would block my ears because everyone talking was loud, so sometimes the teacher would ask only me questions.

"What's twenty minus nine, Riley?" When she does this, I would take my hands off my ears and think, I look down at my lap when I think, some people think I'm sleeping so they say my name, but I'm not sleeping. I look up again and I answer "eleven?" Ms. Cole gives me more, starting to use harder ones, such as 'Fifty-four divided by nine'. It isn't until I heard her ask for '54 multiplied by 9' do I start to get confused. I look down again and think hard, but when I look back up and tell her my answer. Ms. Cole smiles a little bit and says "Not quite", and then proceeds to write the correct answer on the board. I hear people laughing, and smiling, but it's not a good laugh or a good smile. I do not like being wrong, did you know stick insects can regrow their limbs? They grow them back after the next molt, they can even force their molt in order to regain a lost leg, I do not like being wrong. I don't know why they were laughing, my questions were a lot harder than theirs, I don't think any of the other students would have been able to guess the right answer, I do not like being wrong.

As the teacher would go to write more and ask other students their own questions, I would pat my laps to a rhythm I would think of in my head. I never played the drums, but I feel like I would be good at it, I get lots of practice on the different-sized couch cushions at my home. There are a lot of different colors too, like red, white, grey, and this other color that sounds weird. I think it's pronounced 'beige' which kind of looks like my skin. I used to take all of the cushions and me and my mum would make a pillow fort with them. We would pretend play, I would be the king and she would be the princess. We don't play pillow fortress anymore though, Mum says I've grown too big and old for that sort of thing. "Riley, you need to stop patting your lap, it's distracting other students." But I didn't hear Ms. Cole, I was too busy thinking about how if I was too big and old to play pillow fort, then Mum was too. Because my mum is a lot bigger and a lot older than I am.

But not as old as her mum, I call her Nan, and she doesn't like me calling her by her real name. Nan’s cooking is a lot better than Mum's, she can make really good cookies, but not the ones with chocolate in them, I like the cookies with raisins and oats, it's like breakfast in a cookie. But Mum doesn't know how to make them, so I can only eat them when I go to Nan's house. Her house is nice, she's got a really big house, bigger than ours. Her house has 2 floors and a really big garage, but there are no cars in there. She doesn't drive anymore I don't think, I don't know why.

"Riley, I've asked you to stop, this is your last warning!" I want to drive a car when I grow up, but Mum says I have to read this really long book about traffic signs and stuff before I do, it looks boring. I mean I like to read books, but not boring ones, I like to read my BB's, they're not boring. I also like to read books that have those world...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 9.3.2023
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Kinder- / Jugendbuch
• ISBN-10: 1-6678-9191-X / 166789191X
• ISBN-13: 978-1-6678-9191-0 / 9781667891910