Something More

by Jackie Khalilieh

Genres: YA Contemporary Romance; YA Social Themes

Synopsis

Scaredy Squirrel is exactly the character kids need today — a little bit anxious, a lot adorable and totally lovable. Join Scaredy on a hilarious adventure as he learns to brave the doctor for a check-up!

Scaredy Squirrel keeps himself in peak physical condition. He exercises, eats a balanced diet, sings opera (to keep his lungs in shape, of course) and brushes his teeth. You might think it's to stay fit, but no — he'd rather keep a healthy distance from the doctor's office! After all, who'd want to expose themselves to the the aches and pains of pricking, poking and squeezing? It's a prescription for disaster!

Scaredy can't avoid the doctor forever though, and when he realizes that he needs to make a quick visit to Dr. Vet to get his health certificate, he does whatever it takes to keep safe while he waits at the clinic . . . including covering himself in bubble wrap. Things don't go according to plan, and Scaredy ends up discovering that his doctor’s visit leaves him feeling better than ever!

Release date: June 6, 2023

Publisher: Tundra Books

Print pages: 336

Sample

ONE

 

Two parts crème, one part powder, mix and apply with spatula. Or was it the other way around: two parts powder, one part crème? I reach for the folded-up instruction manual on the cluttered bathroom counter and squint at the tiny green font. No, I got it right. Warning: do not use in vaginal area. Well…yeah. Who’d want to bleach that?

Okay, this should take care of my upper-lip ’stache—now what to do about this eyebrow situation? There are no tweezers in Annie’s drawer and nothing more than a hairbrush in mine. I zero in on a pink razor next to the crusty bar of soap. Screw it. I remove the protective plastic shield and bring the razor up to the space in between my thick, black eyebrows. Just one pass should do it. Here goes nothing.

Tiny little hairs fall to the bridge of my nose. I lay my hands, palms down, on the counter and lean into the mirror to assess my first, half-assed attempt. Hmm. Not exactly subtle. Kind of looks like someone took a rusty hacksaw to my brows. How does everyone else do it? Maybe if I had a mother who didn’t treat me like I was perpetually eight, I could ask her. And Annie would kill me if she knew I was in here, rifling through her plethora of beauty products. I need tweezers, and someone who knows what the hell they’re doing.

Car engines roar outside the window. I peek through the blinds to see Ramsey out front with his friends. His wavy brown hair hangs over his face as he passes around a joint. Sometimes I can’t tell if my older brother’s very brave or very foolish. With Dad due home any minute, I’m going with very foolish. And likely high. I crank open the window to air out the bleach below my nose, and the heavy beats coming from Ramsey’s car stereo cause the panes of the bathroom window to vibrate.

What is that itch above my lip? The bleach! I turn on the faucet and grab a handful of toilet paper to wipe it off. Cold water helps soothe the burn, but it’s temporary. With my eyes half open, I face the mirror. Well, the bleach did its job; the hair is no longer black. But my skin is as red as Mars, and, unfortunately, way more visible from Earth.

“Jessie! Annie! Dinner is ready. Wash your hands and come to the table. Yalla! Daddy will be home in two minutes,” Mom calls from downstairs.

I pull some strands of hair from my ponytail in hopes they’ll help mask my botched attempt at a makeover. With one last look in the mirror, I shrug at my pathetic reflection and head to the kitchen.

Mom places a casserole dish on the table and removes her oven mitts. The front door opens, then closes.

“I’m home,” Ramsey mumbles before disappearing into the basement.

“Jessie, get some drinks,” Mom says in Arabic. She whizzes around the kitchen getting everything ready for dinner. I stall in front of the open refrigerator, pulling a few more strands out of my ponytail. Annie comes in a minute later and plops herself down on a chair. I barely make it to the table before the pop cans spill out of my arms. They roll around in front of Annie, who’s too busy scrolling through her phone to notice or help.

The door to the garage slams shut. Dad pops his head into the kitchen to say he’s going to take a quick shower. Mom sighs and brings the casserole dish back to the oven to keep warm. “He said he’s hungry and to have dinner ready. I make it ready, and now he’s taking a shower.” She mutters something under her breath in Arabic before instructing me to get Ramsey.

Once again, Annie escapes having to do any menial tasks. Everyone walks on eggshells around my sister, who suffers from a severe case of middle-child syndrome.

I open the door to the basement and make my way down the carpeted steps. Mom and Dad had the basement finished a few years ago—at Ramsey’s request. He wanted to move his bedroom down here for more privacy. It’s a walkout basement, which means his dopey friends

can come and go at all hours. There’s also a large sitting area with a big-screen TV. It’s like his own, rent-free bachelor pad. And it always smells like dude.

“Hey,” I say, shaking my brother’s shoulder. He’s facedown on the couch, already passed out. “Hey!” I repeat.

“Go away.”

“It’s dinner.”

He groans and tries to shoo me off but I persist. I can’t return upstairs without him. Family dinners mean too much to my parents, and Ramsey has been missing more and more of them lately. He opens an eye to see me still standing above him. “When did you get so tall?” His words come out slow and stretched.

“I’ve always been tall.”

“Not too tall for the tickle monster!” Ramsey reaches out and tickles the back of my knees. I slap his hand away and he giggles as he sits up.

“Ramsey, I’m fifteen. Khalas with the tickle monster.” Even though I act annoyed at being treated like a little kid, it doesn’t really bother me, at least coming from my brother. Growing up, we bonded over our shared enemy—and sister—Annie Kassis. We’d team up and find different ways to torture her, like switching out her glass of water for vinegar. He’s still a great partner in crime, but in the last few years Ramsey has prioritized friendships over family.

“What kind of mood are Mom and Dad in?” Ramsey asks, rubbing his eyes open.

I plop down next to him. “I don’t know. Mom’s been in the kitchen all day, cooking and on the phone. Dad headed straight for the shower when he got home.”

He turns to look at me, then jerks his head back. “Whoa! What happened to your face?”

“Is it obvious?” I ask, running a finger over my raw skin.

“Kinda.” Ramsey holds back a smile. “Don’t worry. I’m sure they’ll be too busy lecturing me to notice what you did. Why did you do that?”

I scratch at my neck and study the black-and-white floor tiles. “High school starts next week, and I just thought if I fixed a few things I’d blend in enough to be left alone.”

“You’ll never blend in, Jessie. That’s what makes you your own brand of cool. And is that what you really want? To be left alone?”

“No. But I’d rather that than be made fun of for being the weird girl with a mustache and unibrow. Have you seen eyebrows these days? People take them very seriously.”

Ramsey shifts to face me. “Think of Holy Trinity as a fresh start. Put all that elementary BS behind you and open yourself up to new experiences.” He

pauses, trying to force me into eye contact. “But that means you’ll have to let your guard down. Maybe let some people in and give them a chance to get to know the real you.”

“Easy for you to say. You never had a problem making friends. You have athleticism on your side. And charm.” Not to mention, Ramsey’s normal.

“We all have our challenges. Oh!” He snaps his fingers in the air, then studies them for a second before bringing his eyes back to me. “Went downtown today. Stopped by that store. You know, the one that sells records and vintage stuff? Picked something up for you.” He reaches for a large manila envelope on the floor and passes it to me.

I smile widely and tear it open to find a stack of magazines from the nineties.

“You like them?” he asks, running a hand over his prickly stubble. “I picked up a mix of music and teen magazines. I didn’t know what you’d like best.”

“I love them,” I say, staring at the loud, vibrant covers. “Thank you.”

“Ramsey. Jessie. Yalla! Dinnertime,” Mom shouts from above just as I’m about to flip through my new treasures.

“Tell the wardens I’ll be up in a minute.” We rise from the couch and Ramsey leans in. “How do my eyes look?”

“Pupils seem to be returning to their normal size.” I nod.

“Perfect.” He looks away, then turns back. “And Jessie, don’t worry so much. Everything is going to be okay.”

I force a smile and make my way upstairs with my magazines, repositioning the locks of hair. In this household people either notice everything, or nothing. My father is a workaholic. We only see him between the hours of six and ten at night and on select weekends. Mom stays home and holds down the fort, but she’s so busy cooking elaborate Palestinian meals, keeping things tidy, and talking to her family back in Palestine that she sometimes misses things. Like my autism.

I guess on some level I always knew I was different. I thought growing up in a predominantly white area was what made me stand out, but Annie and Ramsey never seemed to have trouble fitting in. My parents made excuses for me—“she’s shy,” “she’s taller than everyone else,” “her head is in the clouds”—and I guess no one cared enough to push. Until Mrs. Bauer. She was my seventh- and eighth-grade teacher. She raised some red flags when I was in her class the first time, but my parents waved them off. Last year, she tried again, and finally wore them down.

She told my parents I “struggle to maintain meaningful friendships” and highlighted how she’d tried to “set me up” with girls she thought would

 make good friends by repeatedly grouping us together for projects. Instead, I withdrew even more. First of all, group projects are the worst. Second, it was a lost cause. By seventh grade, I’d been in school with most of these people for over eight years. It would have been impossible for them to change their ideas of who they thought I was. In their eyes, I was the loner who lacked a filter and said things that weren’t always nice. (I’m working on it.) I’d also developed a reputation as a crybaby. Regulating my emotions in the early years of school was difficult. It felt like no one understood me, or even saw me. But I guess it’s harder to ignore someone when they’re having a full-on tantrum.

I didn’t start doing well in school until fifth grade, and that’s only because I finally figured out what teachers expected of me. That’s when I took on the role of diligent student. But it’s not easy. I get lost in my head, often zoning out, and as a result I end up having to work twice as hard. Even now, people assume I’m rude or ignoring them when I don’t make eye contact, or when I respond in what they call a “deadpan” kind of way. I don’t get people. I try, I really do, but it doesn’t help when they say one thing and do something else.

So I took some tests. Three, two-hour-long sessions, over the course of a month, in a stuffy heritage home turned psychology assessment center in downtown Toronto. They ran the full gamut: psychological, behavioral, and educational. I was given ridiculously simple puzzles to solve, and surveys with odd questions like, “When you look in the mirror, do you hate what you see?” I had to choose from “always,” “sometimes,” and “never.” Who never hates what they see when they look in the mirror?

“Some of the most brilliant people are autistic,” my family doctor said when he revealed the results to me and Mom a few weeks ago—on my fifteenth birthday, of all days. “People on the spectrum are passionate and are often the ones who…save the world.”

While my whole life came crashing down around me, my mother’s biggest concern was whether or not I’d be able to have children.

“Annie, put your phone down,” Mom says, returning the casserole dish to the table. I sit and place my magazines on the empty chair to my left. Dad and Ramsey enter the kitchen, bending their heads under the arch of the doorway. Dad takes his seat at one end of the table, “the head,” while Ramsey sits at the other. Dad’s thick black hair is slicked back and his face is freshly shaved. Irish Spring wafts from his skin, and his bright, white polo fits snuggly over his

large belly.

“Mansef again?” Annie asks, narrowing her eyes at the lamb cooked in a sauce of fermented dried yogurt and served on a bed of rice.

“What would you rather have? Garbage Canadian food like hamburgers and hotdogs?” Dad says.

“There is food that exists on the spectrum between ‘garbage’ and ‘Arabic,’ ” Ramsey replies, with a wink in my direction.

Mom smiles at my father before serving him a heaping portion. We pass her our plates, and she fills them up, saving an extra marrow bone for me.

“So, Ramsey, what did you do today?” Dad asks. “Obviously you didn’t get a haircut or shave. You’re starting to look like those dirty, long-haired boys Jessie hangs posters of in her room.”

Ramsey smirks. He’s the one who introduced me to the “dirty, long-haired boys.” He dated a girl in high school who only listened to nineties music, and in a bid to impress her, it’s all he listened to. Until she dumped him for another guy. At the time, I was going through a phase where I basically worshipped my six-years-older brother and liked whatever he liked. But my love for everything nineties has since taken on a life of its own. Music, movies, fashion, and heartthrobs from that decade have become an obsession—one of my longer-lasting ones. I rarely listen to anything but early- to mid-nineties alternative rock. Nirvana. Radiohead. Counting Crows. The more depressing the better.

“I tried. I went to the barber shop but Niall didn’t have any appointments,” Ramsey says with a mouth full of rice.

Mom furrows her overplucked brows at my brother. “You can’t just walk in. You have to call ahead.”

“Jessie, are you all ready for high school next week?” Dad asks. “Annie, you’re going to show your sister around, right? Jessie told me she’s worried she’ll get lost.” Serves me right for confiding in my father. He has the biggest mouth of all of us.

“She’ll figure it out. I had to.” Annie rolls her eyes while she continues to move food around her plate. She’s still bitter at Ramsey for refusing to drive her to school when he got a car senior year, leaving her to take the bus instead. Clearly, the number-one rule for being part of the middle-child club is to never forget anything anyone has ever done or said in your family. Ever!

“No,” Dad responds sternly. “She is your responsibility. You will help her on the first day. Understand?”

“Fine.” Annie drops her fork and crosses her arms over her chest. Her perfect 32C chest. Unlike my own, practically negative A cups. Annie lucked out genetically and didn’t inherit our father’s build. She’s your

typical, run-of-the-mill girl. The kind who blends in effortlessly. When people aren’t raving over her straight and shiny black hair, they’re feeding her compliments about her #nofilter olive complexion.

We haven’t told Ramsey and Annie about my diagnosis yet. I don’t want them to know, and since I’m pretty sure Mom and Dad are in denial about it, they didn’t fight me when I made the request to keep it between us.

“What about you, Ramsey?” Dad asks.

Ramsey sighs. “Here we go.”

“We let you take last year off, and all you did was dick around. It’s not enough that you quit university less than one year in, wasting thousands of dollars. Now you goof off all day and night, with no direction. No goals.”

“Nick.” Mom cocks her head to me. “Language.”

Ramsey slams his hands on the table before I can give my mother an eyeroll. “I have goals.”

Dad puts his fork down, almost a little too calmly, and clears his throat. “I would love to hear these goals you speak of.”

“I’m figuring things out.”

“Ramsey, habibi, why don’t you just work with Daddy for now?” Mom’s tone is so gentle and soft, her accent barely registers.

“Because if I work with Dad, it’ll start off as part-time and then the next thing you know he’ll be grooming me to take over the business. And I don’t know if that’s what I want.”

“Why? My business isn’t good enough for you? Being a machinist isn’t cool?”

“I didn’t say that.”

I make eye contact with Annie across the table, searching for some solidarity in this uncomfortable moment. Instead, she zeroes in on my eyebrows before her gaze lands on my upper lip. I quickly bring my face down toward my plate.

“You can’t keep wasting your life, doing nothing. I expect you to have a plan for this year. Or else.”

“Or else what?” Annie asks Dad, reveling in the tension. Ramsey gets away with so much—way more than she and I could ever dream of—and it’s all because “he’s a boy.”

“Or else Ramsey will have to find a way to pay for the things he wants, without our help.” Dad picks his fork back up and continues eating.

“Fine,” Ramsey says.

Two “fine”s in one dinner. One more and we might break a record.

The table is silent except for the hum of the TV left on in the family room. We finish

our meals, while Dad works on a second helping. Mom comes around to collect our plates and pauses when she gets to me.

“What’s wrong with your face?” she asks, practically shrieking.

I sink into my seat, wishing I could disappear.

Mom puts the stack of plates down and continues to inspect me. She stops again at my eyebrows. “Jessie. What have
you done?”

“Did you use my bleach without asking?” Annie chimes in.

Heat creeps into my cheeks. At least now the rest of my face probably matches my mustache rash. “I wanted to fix a few things before school starts.”

“You put chemicals on your skin without asking Mommy?” Dad’s stern tone matches his disappointed face. My heart starts to race and my lungs battle to keep up. I bolt up from my chair, feeling the rush of tears fighting to escape.

“What did you want me to do? Start ninth grade just as ugly as I was all through elementary school? So I could spend the next four years without any friends again?” My long, lanky arms wave around the table like one of those tall, inflatable tube men in front of used car dealerships. “Mom wants to keep treating me like a baby, and Dad’s busy burying his head in the sand, pretending.”

“Pretending what?” Ramsey asks.

“Pretending I’m normal. But I’ve never been normal.”

Annie stifles a laugh. “News flash.”

“Annie’s right,” I say, plastering on a fake smile. “Turns out she’s been right about me all along. We may as well tell them.” I glance at my parents, then immediately pull my eyes away. “All those times Mom and Dad brought me downtown to ‘order my uniform’ and then ‘try on my uniform’ and ‘get alterations on my uniform,’ we were actually visiting a psychologist who was running tests.”

“What kind of tests?” Ramsey asks, his eyes clear and glossy now.

“I’m not the way I am just because I reached five feet nine by the age of twelve. There were other tall girls in my class. And I’m not an outcast because I’m an Arab. You and Annie have friends, always have. It’s not the braces I had from fifth to eighth grade, my selective mutism in kindergarten, my outbursts at school. It’s none of those things and all of those things. I’m a freak with a brain that doesn’t work like everyone else’s,” I say, glaring at Annie.

She looks back at me in bewilderment. “What’re you talking about?”

What am I talking about? This was supposed to be my secret. My burden to carry. My

plague. With my siblings’ confused eyes on me and Mom and Dad seemingly seconds away from crying, I do everything to keep the words from coming up. I swallow, trying to choke them down. Ramsey tilts his head, looking at me like I’m the last toy on the shelf at the store, collecting dust. It’s what I feel like. My lips open and, in a quiet, childlike voice, I say the words out loud for the first time.

“I’m autistic.”

 

TWO

 

The next morning, I’m at my desk using the magazines Ramsey bought me to make collages for my school notebooks.

“Can I come in?” Annie asks from behind my bedroom door.

“Sure.”

My sister walks in, still dressed in pajamas. She tosses a folded-up piece of paper on my desk. I unfold Annie’s paper to find a drawing with labels and arrows.

“What’s this?” I ask, looking up at her.

“It’s a map of the school. You said you were worried you’d get lost, so I drew the layout for you.”

“Oh. Thanks.”

She sits on the edge of my bed. “Mom told me you have an appointment with the psychologist today. Is this the same one who ran the tests?”

“Yeah.” Annie looks at me as if she’s expecting more words to come out of my mouth. “She wants to go over the results and give me some tips to help me cope with my ‘changing world.’ ”

Annie nods. After my outburst at dinner last night, I ran upstairs and basically cried myself to sleep. Ramsey tried to calm me down but I refused to see or speak to anyone.

“You really messed up your brows.” She laughs. “At least your rash is healing.”

“I used a razor.”

“Oh my god, Jessie. You’re not supposed to style your eyebrows with a Lady BIC.”

“I couldn’t find tweezers.”

Annie sighs. “Wait here.” She gets up and leaves my room, only to return a minute later with tweezers and a tiny brush. “Roll your chair to me,” she says, perched on the edge of my bed. “This is going to hurt. Suck it up or I’ll stop.”

I do as she says. Annie studies my handiwork and uses the tiny brush to comb my brows. She brings the tweezers to my face and says I’m going to need “professional help” to shape the arches. My eyes well up with tears and I have to fight off multiple sneezes as Annie yanks each hair out, one at a time, but I remain as still as possible. I want this, and it isn’t often my sister performs an act of kindness.

“There,” she says, leaning back. “Done.”

I roll my chair to the mirror and smile. “That’s so much better.”

“Do us both a favor and save the razors for your legs.” Annie rises from my bed and walks out of my room.

I can’t stop staring at my improved reflection. Maybe if I learn how to tame my frizzy hair and wear a little makeup, I could look halfway decent.

“Jessie, yalla,” Mom calls from the foyer. It’s time for us to head out to my appointment with Dr. Cassidy. Mom isn’t comfortable driving on highways so Dad took the day off to play chauffeur. We rarely ever leave the safety of our suburban bubble. My parents hate going to the city, complaining it’s too loud and crowded. And I’m the one who supposedly has sensory issues.

I spend the entire drive in the back seat with my headphones on, listening to the Cranberries playlist I curated. Some of their love songs are so wistfully romantic, I can’t help but close my eyes and daydream up my own swoony scenarios. I imagine I’m in a school hallway, alone, with a River Phoenix look-alike. The River clone spots me from across the hall. ...