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‘I’m Alfie and I have superpowers. No, really, I do. Not magical, not like Harry Potter or anything but go on, ask me a date.’
‘A date?’ Levi asks with a frown.
‘Yeah, like November 3rd is a Thursday. June 5th is a Sunday, that kind of thing.’
‘Ooh,’ Levi says. ‘OK, what about December 12th? That’s my birthday.’
‘It’s a Monday.’
‘A Monday? I wonder if Mum will let me have the day off. I’ll ask her. OK, November 2nd?’
‘Wednesday.’
Levi checks the days on his phone and smiles with admiration. ‘How do you do that?’
Alfie shrugs. ‘It’s the way my exceptional brain works. It’s called calendar counting and I find it easy. My mum says I’mone in a millionand that she’s lucky that I chose her out of all the mothers in this world. She reckons even though I alwaysthrow her under the bus– for the record I’ve never thrown her anywhere, and I especially wouldn’t throw her under a bus because she’d probably die or have life-altering injuries – she still says she wouldn’t change me for the world.I wouldn’t change her either. Except maybe her job, whichsucks the life out of her. Jobs are hard, so she says I have to study a lot so I can have a proper career where I don’t need tostand on my feet all damned day. So, I study as hard as I can because I’m home-schooled.
‘Well, it’s called home-schooled, but I come to the library most days. I have my own cubicle here. Really, it should be called library-schooled. It’s like it’s my job, coming here every day, getting cleverer. Sometimes I wonder if my brain will explode, with all the facts I’m learning. But Mum says it won’t explode, and she’s usually trustworthy. My dad wasn’t.He couldn’t keep it in his pants.I don’t know specifically what that means but it doesn’t sound good.
‘My favourite thing is learning about apex predators, sharks mainly. I’m scared of the sea because I don’t want to be eaten by one but it’s their home, so you take that risk if you swim there. I really don’t like the feeling of the sand under my feet. It reminds me of sandpaper and I panic that it’s scraping my skin off. It’s not, Mum says, but I’m very sensory. I don’t like loud noises; my clothes have to smell right and be made from a certain fabric. I don’t know what that fabric is. I just know it when I feel it. My mum says itdrives her nutsbecause I always have to choose my own clothes and sometimes it takes hours and hours. I tend to wear my favourite things until they’re covered in holes and Mum says I look like a castaway, like I’ve been stuck on a desert island for a decade. Maybe she’s being sarcastic but it’s hard to tell. I really don’t understand sarcasm. It seems so pointless. My castaway clothes always end up going missing,like I don’t know she’s ditching them. Now when I find the right clothes she buys me seven of the same, one for every day of the week. It’s a better plan, I guess.
‘At school, they said mean things, like we were so poor I only had one set of clothes. I tried to explain, I had seven sets of thesameclothes but they didn’t want to listen. And I think wearepoor. We aren’t rich – I know that for sure. But what’s wrong with being poor? It would be worse to be mean, like they are. Mum cried when I told her what they said. I hate to see her cry. I’m always surprised by it and get confused about what to do. I find feelings hard to translate but when there are tears I know she’s definitely sad. But tears can also mean she’s laughing – one day she was laughing so hard she said she wasgoing to pee her pants!She’s a good mum. She’s always laughing, crying or both.
‘The things the kids say don’t bother me as much as Mum thinks, probably because half the time I don’t understand what they’re implying. I want friends, that’s all. But Mum thinks I’m going to be friends with the first person who comes along and what if that person isn’t nice? I probably will be friendsjust like thatbut if they’re mean to me, then I will end that friendship. I will ghost them. Have you heard of that? I really didn’t understand how you could ghost someone, like does that mean you have to die to get away from them? But I googled it and ghosting just means you ignore them and pretend they’re not there. It seems like a simple way to end things. I like that idea.
‘I’d really like a friend I can talk to about sharks. I know a friendship has to work for both sides. My psychologist has explained all about social interactions and taking turns listening and talking. That’s why the People Library is so fun, because those rules don’t apply. Sometimes, I forget to listen to what people are saying because I’m waiting for my turn to speak and I have to hold on to the thought or else it evaporates and then it’s gone forever.It makes it hard to talk because then I freeze up. So, if I dotalk over the topof you, it’s because of that. Anyway, so that’s my story.’
‘Cool. I like sharks and I’m scared of the sea too. My dad says it’s the sharks’ home so we have to be respectful of that. Hey, do you like pizza?’
‘Ilovepizza.’
I’m debating about stepping in to arrange a catch-up for these little dudes but Alfie gives me the signal that all is well, so I leave it be. We can debrief later and I’ll take my cues from him.
‘Me too.’
Alfie grins. ‘If you want you can come to my house and we can watch a shark documentary and eat pizza? It will have to be on a Sunday because that’s Mum’s day off. She doesn’t let me eat frozen pizza because the preservatives willeat my insides out, but she makes a decent home-made pizza. She does hide a bunch of vegetables under the cheese, which is sort of annoying, but she chops them up so small so after a few bites you don’t taste them as much. I have a highly developed palate, which she always forgets. But she doesn’t want me to end up like my dad –a heart attack waiting to happen. So I let it go.’
‘Cool, I’ll ask my mum and I can bring my Lego.’
‘Cool. I have a Lego shark.’
Oh to make friendships the way children do. Bonding so quickly and easily over sharks, pizza and Lego.
‘Elodie is organising a Minecraft coding club, so we can also meet there if you want?’
‘Yeah, sure. Want to build a world together?’
‘An underwater world?’
Levi grins. ‘Totally.’
If I leave here tomorrow, I will forever be grateful for meeting Alfie. ‘You’ll have to let me know how it goes,’ I whisper to Jo.
‘I didn’t know he knew about the vegetables on the pizza.’
‘He’s like baby Yoda.’ I love that she focuses on that and not the hilarious things he said about her. ‘Are you happy for him to continue with this today?’
‘For sure – he handled that like a pro.’ Her eyes are glassy with tears and it’s hard to look at her and remain composed myself. Little man Alfie has the world at his feet, if only the world would give him a chance to show just how special he is.
