A Growing Lad

You can’t be a wallflower when you’re bigger than the wall.

High School junior Alex Johnson thinks he finally has his life all arranged to deal with his Asperger’s Syndrome, with the help of a handful of close friends and relatives. Everything threatens to fall apart when he suddenly finds his condition is really due to a one-off genetic treatment he had as an infant. Yes, the treatment saved his life, but now he’s going through incredible changes that threaten to stand all his hard-won relationships on their head. Suddenly, he finds he’s big man on campus—literally!

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A Growing Lad

Copyright © 2012 U.M. Lassiter

ISBN: 978-1-77111-378-6

Cover art by Carmen Waters

All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.

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Smashwords Edition

A Growing Lad

Growing Pains 1

By

U.M. Lassiter

Chapter One

Alex Johnson, here. I’m glad you’re reading this, because there was a time when I never thought I’d ever have the ability to sit still long enough write down a phone number. I’ve been asked a lot how I ended up like this. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t want to be anyone else, and I wouldn’t trade the experience of how I got to where I am today for anything. But it hasn’t been easy.

Up until my junior year in high school, I guess I was fairly normal, at least by comparison to now. I had some problems that are not too unusual. I had mild autism—Asperger’s Syndrome, it’s called. It’s fairly moderate compared to a lot of other kids on what’s called the Autism Spectrum. Some scientists think it isn’t even a form of autism at all.

Being an Aspie isn’t easy, and this made me socially isolated, even though I went to public school and regular classes. My mom thought it was important that I not be coddled and learn to cope with everyday problems. Mainstreamed, they call it. The schoolwork wasn’t the problem—I was plenty smart and got good grades, but I didn’t relate well with anyone but a handful of people. The most common way I hear Aspies describe it is they feel like they’re on the wrong planet. We just don’t understand the social cues and emotions that everybody else takes for granted.

We also tend to be obsessive about weird things and go on and on about them. I could tell you all about the number of freight trains that rumble through Antioch every day, and even rattle off the numbers of the freight cars, but ask me to guess someone’s emotion by looking at their face, and it would be just that—a guess. When I was younger I used to carry a crib sheet of faces with different expressions and the emotions that went with them printed underneath. Eventually I got passable at faking it without the card.

English, geography, math—those are easy. They’re just lists or facts and figures. Math is especially easy because the rules never change. Once you know the rules, you can do any math problem. History and literature, now those are tough. There are no rules.

You’d think Gym Class would be easy for me, wouldn’t you? After all, it’s just playing sports, and all sports have rules. That’s true, if you’re talking about the official rules. The problem is, there’s tons more unwritten rules. Who you pick for teams. Who you talk to. What you do. It’s all bathed in testosterone wrapped in heavy-duty teenage angst. It’s that whole locker room thing. Because I couldn’t look people in the eye, they thought I was looking somewhere else. I learned fast to just to look at the floor.

On top of all that, I was conflicted about my sexuality. For a long time, I told myself that I was just shy around girls, and sooner or later I’d grow out of it. Being gay in a town like Antioch, Nebraska was pretty much an open invitation to have the shit beat out of you on a regular basis. This town is all pickup trucks, prayer meetings, cowboys and high school football, and if you don’t fit into that mold, life can be hard.

When I got old enough to have real privacy, I discovered internet porn. Naked women elicited curiosity, but men got my attention. Big men. Muscular men. Bodybuilders. I discovered sites where men were PhotoShopped to impossible proportions and bulletin boards where the muscle-obsessed posted pictures and stories. Little did I know…

I guess the defining moment between my old life and what I am today came about a month before the end of my junior year. The cast of characters included my two best friends, Frank and Patty. My only friends, really. They were the only ones I could relate to in anything like a normal manner. Others were just vague human-like shapes I passed every day in the halls. Just obstacles to swim past in the Sea of Life. Other characters included Jason, the school bully, who naturally happened to be the school football star. Why do things work out that way? Another in our cast was Sammy, my school’s only openly gay student. Looking back, I have to admit that Sammy is a pretty courageous person, insisting on being himself despite all the problems it caused. Girls, of course, didn’t have any problem hanging out with him, and he and they very much enjoyed each other’s company. Guys, on the other hand, treated him like he was radioactive. All of which is how Frank and I came to wind up enmeshed in the original incident.

It was early May and Frank and I had to stay a while after school to do some studying in the library. We were headed across the school grounds on our way home when we came around the corner of one of the classroom buildings.

How’s the driving lessons going? Frank asked.

Gram’s been taking me out. Her car is easy to drive.

And?

I still get really nervous. I’m not sure I’ll ever be ready.

But you’re almost eighteen. Everybody’s got their license.

You don’t.

Dude! We’ve been over this before. My old man says I have to pay for the insurance.

The DQ is hiring.

We’d had this conversation a hundred times. Frank didn’t really want to get a job, but his dad was standing his ground.

I have too many extracurricular activities—chess club, band—important stuff. It’s gotta look good on those college apps.

We both knew that this was BS. Frank just didn’t like the idea of working. Like he’d ever go anywhere but night school at the community college. As for me, I was counting it an accomplishment just to finish high school.

I don’t know where I’d be without Frank. We’d met on the playground in kindergarten. I wasn’t very pleasant to be around in those days. It was before Mom had married Phil, and I wasn’t getting much in the way of treatment. Even though I was supposed to be attending public school, back then I was such a handful that I was put in a special class with other special needs kids. If I related at all with other kids, it was usually a tantrum over toys or personal space or god knows what. I was labeled aggressive because I would fly into a rage when other kids would try to get their toys back. I’d see another kid in the sand with a toy dump truck or whatnot, and it was instantly clear to my Aspie mind that they were playing with it all wrong. Of course, I’d take the toy away to show the right way to do it, and that would lead to screams and shoves and general unpleasantness. I started school late—that’s why I’d be eighteen before I even started my senior year.

For some reason, I just clicked with Frank. Instead of the usual fracas, Frank would instead ask why I did that and then seemed content to play on my terms. Later, when I started getting treatment, a slow process of role reversal began where I started relying on Frank for cues to deal with the outside world, and he came to feel like my protector.

These days, we’d settled into a more equal relationship, where we each found companionship in each other, even if no one else did. I’ll have to admit, though, it was touch-and-go while Frank went through his goth period a couple of years ago. Now we’re almost like brothers. We even look kind of alike. Both skinny, although Frank was even skinnier than me at about one-twenty-five. We were both about five-nine, and I weighed about one-thirty. Same unruly hair, but mine is an unexceptional brown, while Frank’s is almost black. I remember it was lighter before he dyed it for the emo look, and somehow, it just stayed darker.

When we rounded the corner, I froze in my tracks. Across the quad, Jason was wearing an evil grin while the other hyenas laughed. He’d just tripped Sammy for no good reason other than his own entertainment, and Sammy had done a face plant on the hard, rough asphalt. Frank grabbed my arm and pulled me back.

Have a nice day, faggot, we heard Jason say as he gave Sammy a swift kick to the ribcage for good measure and then turned and strutted off among the guffaws of his Neanderthal sycophants. Frank held on to my arm until he was satisfied they were gone and then we hurried over.

Sammy was balled up on the ground, chin and cheek scraped and bleeding, his face contorted in a mixture of pain and rage.

This kind of scene played out way too often at my high school. Jason might be cruel, but he wasn’t stupid. He was very good at pulling these things off and getting away with them. After all, he had his band of thugs to cover for him. Like anyone would believe them. But that wasn’t his ace-in-the-hole. That little plum was the fact the town had a chance of going to the playoffs next year, and naturally, Jason was the star of the football team. He was the Wild Child that everyone was afraid to discipline. He covered his tracks just enough that it was easy for people to look the other way.

In this case, the quad was deserted. When Frank and I came around the corner of the cafeteria, we just caught the tail end of Jason’s performance. Frank stopped because he’s afraid of Jason, like any sensible person. I stopped because that’s just what I do. As I said, I’m an Aspie. While it’s on the autism spectrum, it’s what the school therapist calls high functioning. That means I can carry on a conversation. Sort of.

Because of my inability to pick up on the everyday social cues that everybody else takes for granted, it makes interaction with other people really hard, so I just don’t. Well, not if I don’t have to. I walk around all day avoiding eye contact with people. That’s why when I saw what was happening to Sammy, I did my usual deer-in-the-headlights thing.

As soon as Jason’s crew was out of earshot, we hurried over to Sammy. He’d sat up, but his face was a bloody mess, and he was holding his side where he’d been kicked.

Those motherfuckers! he spat under his breath. He had scrapes on his chin and his right cheek where he’d hit the pavement.

As I said, Sammy is openly gay, which is not always the most positive situation in small-town Nebraska, this being just the most recent example. There were rumors he had a boyfriend, but that he was afraid to come out. Sammy was actually popular in some circles, such as the drama geeks, where it’s generally a plus to be flamboyant.

We’d better take him to the nurse, Frank said, prodding me to take Sammy’s other arm. I hope she doesn’t ask too many questions.

Like I said, Frank is my best friend. Well, my only friend. He’s one of the gamer nerds that hang out in the library. Believe it or not, I’m even too remote for them. Except for Frank. For some reason, I’ve always felt I could talk to him. When it comes to keeping me from screwing up, he can be a lifesaver. I’ve never actually been the target of Jason’s cruelty, but that’s only because Frank has been there to keep me from blithely walking into danger. In truth, just about anyone who is not one of Jason’s troglodyte jock buddies could wind