The Hero Next Door Read online

  * * *

  —

  “Will they kick me out of the dojo if I quit the teen and adult class?”

  That got Mom and Dad’s attention.

  “Whoa, hold on,” Mom said from across the dinner table.

  “Who’s kicking who out of what?” Dad said through a mouthful of duck. Roasted duck legs are his specialty—he’s ridiculously proud of them.

  “Don’t talk with your mouth full, Dad.”

  “Back up, Stevie,” Mom said. “You haven’t said anything about the class. What happened?”

  “It was…hard. Different.”

  “Makes sense,” Dad said, stabbing a piece of broccoli with his fork. “Big changes are hard.”

  “I’m sorry,” Mom said. “What parts were hard?”

  “All of them.”

  “Well. That narrows it down.”

  “What does Brandon Sensei do differently?” Dad said.

  “Everything.” I picked up my drumstick, looked at it, and put it down. I suddenly felt shaky, mad, exhausted, and frazzled, all at once.

  “Everything’s so fast!” I pulled my legs onto my chair, put my elbows on my knees, and grabbed my head. “The warm-ups are out of order, my friends aren’t there, everyone’s huge….”

  The chair felt too small, so I threw myself onto the couch instead. A pillow fell onto my head, and I clamped it over my mouth and screamed into it. Screaming into pillows helps when I’m feeling overwhelmed, so I did it again.

  Someone took a deep, loud breath and blew it out, but I couldn’t tell if it was Mom or Dad. Maybe it was both. The couch cushion changed shape under me as Dad sat down.

  “Foot massage?”

  I moved the pillow enough to look at Dad and shake my head. He nodded and leaned back. Dad’s good at foot massages and Mom’s good at brushing my arms with her fingertips, but I just wanted them to sit with me.

  “Honey, this is yours,” Mom said.

  “Ah, the SPLC Intelligence Report. Nothing says ‘relaxation’ like a bunch of articles about violent racists.”

  “Yes, more relaxation’s the last thing we need around here,” Mom said as she sat down on the other side of Dad.

  “We could use more irony, though. Really low on irony.”

  “Stop fighting,” I said.

  Mom chuckled. “We’re not fighting, honey.”

  “We’re not? Wow, I’m totally misreading the situation.”

  “Dad. Stop.”

  I lay there listening to my heartbeat, the buzz of the refrigerator, the pillow fabric moving against my face, the upstairs neighbor’s footsteps, and the occasional page being turned.

  Eventually I dropped the pillow onto the floor.

  “Better?” Mom reached over and squeezed my foot.

  I shrugged.

  “Interesting pitch on that first scream,” Dad said. “Like an angry soprano.”

  That wasn’t funny enough to make me smile, but it was better than Mom freaking out and Dad yelling at everyone, which is what used to happen when I had meltdowns. Dad would literally yell at everyone—me, Mom, the cat, people who put compostable items into the recycling bins—and Mom would bark about how acting like this wouldn’t get me what I wanted, then storm out of the room. Then I was diagnosed as autistic, and then Dad was diagnosed, and they both started reading books about autistic rights and finally calmed the heck down.

  “Can I stay in the kids’ class?” I said.

  “I think you’re supposed to,” Mom said.

  “I mean, only the kids’ class.”

  “Oh. I don’t see any problem with that. Do you, honey?”

  “Nope,” Dad said. “You could try once more—the second time might feel better—but kids’ class only is fine.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’m curious, though.” Dad bent over and kissed my forehead. “Was there anything you liked?”

  “Maybe Brandon Sensei.”

  “That’s great!” Mom said. “What about him?”

  “The way he moves.”

  “He is a sixth-degree black belt,” Dad said.

  “I also like that he’s autistic.”

  “Me too.” Dad got up, and my feet jostled a little as the couch cushion unsquished itself. “I’m listening, buddy. I just need some water.”

  “Did you like anything else?” Mom said.

  “No.”

  It would be terrible to go back to the teen and adult class, but it’d be humiliating to tell people that I couldn’t handle teen and adult class. And I actually wanted to keep going. How else would I get any better? But I didn’t know if I wanted to go because I thought I should go, instead of wanting to go because I wanted to go.

  Crying’s awful—I hate the runny nose and the tears going down my shirt, and it makes me remember all the times I’ve been called a crybaby—but I started crying anyway.

  “Hey, it’s all right, sweetie.” Mom scooted over and petted my head. “You don’t have to put so much pressure on yourself.”

  In the kids’ class I was awesome at aikido, but in the teen and adult class I was an out-of-place loser. It was like being in school. I didn’t want aikido to feel like school.

  * * *

  —

  It was a relief to go back to the kids’ class, partly because Arthur was there. He was doing forward rolls when I got there, so I waited until he rolled to his feet and saw me before running to hug him. He hugged me back hard.

  “You’re home!” I let go and stuffed my shoes and bag into a cubby. “Finally!”

  “I know, right?” Arthur giggled.

  “How was the trip?” I said as we started our usual warm-up exercise, which was jumping as high as we could over and over. I let my arms flop all around, and Arthur swung his arms from side to side in front of his body.

  “Remember my uncle who won’t stop calling me Artie?”

  “Yeah. So disrespectful.” It’s not Artie or Art—it’s Arthur.

  “Totally. My mom argued with him about it, and—”

  He was interrupted by a squeal. A second later Martha barreled across the mats, and if Arthur hadn’t stopped jumping, she’d have run him over like a freight train. They hugged instead.

  “You guys can’t start jumpy warm-ups without me!” Martha pretended to punch our shoulders.

  “Yes, ma’am!” I saluted. “Private Steven Chang reporting for duty!”

  “Private Arthur Levit reporting for duty, Admiral Bee!” Arthur started jumping again, and Martha immediately started, too. It took me a moment to figure out what was happening, so I waited for their second jump to join in. Martha likes to stretch her arms way over her head at the top of each jump. We laughed through seven or eight jumps, then threw ourselves on the mats to stretch. Anika Sensei came out of the women’s and girls’ changing room and smiled at us. I knew she was going to ask me about the teen and adult class, so I was relieved when Sofia and Malik started talking to her, even though I kind of hated that I was relieved.

  Arthur’s trip turned out to be incredibly boring. His favorite cousins got sick and stayed home, so he spent the whole week hanging around with grown-ups in restaurants or at his grandma’s house.

  “So? How was it?”

  A classic Martha question—nothing about which “it” she meant. It’s like she thinks I can read minds.

  “How was what?”

  “Sorry, how was the teen and adult class?”

  “Uh…not great.”

  “Oh no,” Arthur said. “Was it like when Kayleigh moved up?”

  “What happened with Kayleigh?” Martha put her hands on her hips, which always looks funny when she’s sitting down.

  “Yeah, we haven’t seen her since she stopped showing up.”

  Arthur sighed. “It’ll be so
nice when you two finally get phones. We texted after she stopped coming. She said she quit because teen and adult class wasn’t any fun.”

  “It isn’t,” I said.

  “You’re different from Kayleigh,” Martha said. “For her, ‘not fun’ probably just meant not being the best student in class anymore.”

  “How do you know?”

  “It’s obvious. Kayleigh was pretty stuck-up.”

  “Oh. Does that mean I’m stuck-up, too? Because seriously, it was like that for me, too.”

  “Stevie. That’s not what I meant.”

  “Maybe I’m, you know, Kayleigh 2.0.”

  “No, you’re not,” Martha and Arthur said together. I couldn’t help laughing.

  “Can I convince you with a tackle-hug? I’d never tackle-hug Kayleigh!” Martha jumped up and spread her arms so wide that she almost fell over backward.

  “Do you even know me?” I said, and we all laughed.

  “Hello!”

  Anika Sensei had made it across the dojo.

  “Arthur, it’s good to have you back!”

  Arthur smiled with his whole face—seriously, every part of his face moved—and bowed. “Hai, Sensei. It’s good to be back!”

  “I love seeing you three together. It does my heart good. Can I borrow Stevie?”

  “Hai, Sensei!”

  “How did it feel being in the teen and adult class?” Anika Sensei said after we’d sat in an empty corner of the dojo.

  I slumped over.

  “Hard.”

  She nodded. “I’m sure it did.”

  “Not just physically hard, either. It was mentally hard.”

  “Tell me more.”

  “Well…my friends weren’t there. Everything happens differently. Everyone’s bigger than me.”

  “True.”

  “Nobody really talks. I kind of like that part, actually, but…”

  “But it’s different.”

  “Yes. It’s harder to know what the other person’s doing. Sensei…”

  “Yes?”

  “Do I have to keep going to that class right now?”

  Anika Sensei firmly shook her head.

  “No. It’s entirely up to you.”

  “But I have to move up permanently next year.”

  Anika Sensei made an upside-down U with her mouth, tilted her head, and looked off into space.

  “Yes, but a lot will change before then. You did well in that class; next year you’ll do even better. There’s no rush.”

  “I did well? Really?”

  “Yes. I could tell it was challenging, but you kept going. The advanced students practically lined up to work with you.”

  “Really?”

  “Really!”

  “I couldn’t tell!”

  Anika Sensei smiled.

  “Sometimes that’s true for all of us. Excuse me, Stevie, I have to start class soon.”

  “Hai, Sensei. Thank you!”

  Martha and Arthur waved me over to sit with them, and I realized how weird and lonely it’d felt to hunt for a space by myself in the other class. Could I get used to that until Martha and Arthur moved up? If they moved up? Yes. No. Maybe. I didn’t know.

  Sometimes figuring out what you really want to do is super hard.

  * * *

  —

  One problem with so-called progressive parents (besides the fact that they call themselves “progressive” like my parents do) is they do terrible things like limit computer use to an hour per day. Martha’s dads do it, too, and Arthur’s parents have a zillion no-phone times, including meals, movie nights, and family meetings, which they always hold on Monday nights. That Monday Martha had to use her computer time to work on a school project, so instead of an hour-long chat with my best friends, I got emails. Short ones.

  Good ones, though.

  Remember Stella Jenkins? Forget Kayleigh, be like Stella.

  —Arthur

  I did remember Stella! When I was a white belt, she partnered with me a lot, she always said “hi,” and she never got weird about it if I didn’t make eye contact while talking. Stella moved up, but after she got her orange belt, she came back to be an attacker during my purple belt test. She only left Twin Rivers because her family moved to another state, where she was probably a blue belt by now.

  Be like Stella.

  Martha’s email was even shorter.

  Watch this. http://bit.ly/​2nziBEO

  —M

  The link went to a video on a public TV website with a screen cap of Brandon Sensei throwing Kristof, but with different hair and a blue belt! The video’s title was “Life on the Spectrum: Aikido.”

  Brandon Sensei had been on TV!

  I clicked play, and the image dissolved to a shot of Brandon Sensei walking away from the camera as students trained around him. He gently raised and lowered his arms like he was holding a bokken, and violins thrummed in the background as he talked.

  “Like many autistic people, I was bullied as a child. I started learning aikido because I decided to make it stop.”

  Next he got attacked by everyone in the dojo but calmly threw students in every direction, no matter how fast they came at him. There was Kristof again, and Miles, and Anika Sensei with a brown belt!

  “But that’s not why I stayed. I stayed because aikido is…beautiful.”

  Next he threw a black belt I didn’t know. His arms made flowing circles as he threw her, and her whole body spiraled in midair as she rolled. It looked like dancing, not fighting.

  “Being in the world is a high-intensity experience for me—there’s far too much stimulus to process at once.”

  For me, too.

  “I have auditory hypersensitivity, so I hear…everything.”

  Yes!

  “I’m very aware of the sensations within my body. Joints moving, connective tissues stretching, muscles flexing in exertion…I often feel like waves of vibration or electricity are moving through me.”

  Yes again!

  “I can channel those internal experiences into aikido, which blends active physicality with psychological awareness in a way that’s constantly challenging, but utterly natural.”

  The video ended with Brandon Sensei doing a perfect forward roll.

  He was right. Aikido was beautiful.

  I’d been so nervous at my first class, but Anika Sensei had said hello to me and Dad and hadn’t cared that neither of us really looked her in the eye. She showed us how to do forward rolls, and it looked so cool, with her arms in a big curve and her head tucked in as she rolled. Everything was really hard at first, but everything also made sense. At school I have to do math problems the teacher’s way even if there’s a much easier way that works just as well, which makes no sense at all, but at the dojo we’re always taught to do aikido in a way that works and feels good. It was pretty obvious that Anika Sensei and the other black belts really liked doing aikido together, even though they all did it kind of differently from each other.

  Maybe that was why aikido was great. Doing aikido felt awesome, partly because you have to do aikido with other people. Mom and Dad say stuff to me like “We love you, beautiful boy” at random moments, and saying “I love you, beautiful aikido” would be the weirdest, most awkward thing a person could say in life, but it was kind of how I felt anyway. I did love aikido, it was beautiful, and Brandon Sensei felt the same way about it as I did.

  I watched the video again, and again, and again, and again.

  * * *

  —

  “You’re sure about this?”

  “No.”

  “There’s no pressure, you know.”

  “I know.”

  “Nervous?”

  “Dad. Of course.”r />
  Dad laughed.

  “I admire your honesty.”

  “Mom says honesty is the best policy for ripping psychic Band-Aids off.”

  “I admire her honesty, too. Okay, big boy. I’ll be right down the street. Can I hug you?”

  “Yes.”

  We got out of the car and hugged.

  “I’m so proud of you.”

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  “I love you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  As Dad drove off, I walked slowly into the warehouse. The dojo’s regular door and big sliding door were both open, and I could see a slice of sunlight, white walls, and blue mats. There was a flash of movement as someone walked by, which was enough to trigger my overwhelmed thing where the whole world looks hazy and farther away than it really is.

  Breathe.

  I breathed deep into my belly, lowered my shoulders, and lifted my head. Brandon Sensei waved from the middle of the room as I entered. Nobody else was there yet.

  “Stevie! Hello!”

  “Hello, Sensei.”

  I bowed onto the mat and walked over to him.

  “Sensei, can I ask a question?”

  “Of course.”

  “Do you ever get mad at yourself for not being as good at aikido as you want to be?”

  He nodded.

  “I wouldn’t say mad, but I’ve often felt…frustrated in that way, yes.”

  I looked up at the skylights. There was a fan in the ceiling right below each skylight; watching the fans turn helped me feel calm.

  “I like your autism and aikido video.”

  “Thank you. Do you mean the ‘Life on the Spectrum’ video?”

  “Yes, and I agree.”

  “About?”

  “About aikido being beautiful.”

  “I’m so glad!”