The Quirky Tale of April Hale (Quirky Series #1)

25: The Height of Rudeness

Dad only let out a reluctant smile. Ever since he found out that Ryder had slept in my room for a whole month, he never really warmed up to him. But at least he wasn't chasing him down with a shotgun, which was the standard procedure of most fathers with a teenage daughter.

"Okay, so how should we do this," Ryder bit on his nails on the way from my house to his. 

"What constitutes as dinner? Food, table talk, dessert? In my family, occasional arguments are compulsory, by the way."

"Don't worry about the argument part, because it's the integral part of my familial assembly."

"What kind of argument do you usually have?" I asked. "You know, so that I can... uh, prepare my answer."

"April. Are you actually dealing this the way you deal with Corrine and Marcy's scientific debates?"

"Yes...?"

There was a deafening silence that lasted far longer than I'd like it to last. 

"Then we're going to need more time," Ryder announced, before he quickly phoned his house. When his mother picked it up, he told her, "Mom, April and I need to go to a cafe to buy dessert for later. Can you stall Dad for another thirty minutes?" Ryder stopped talking as I heard his mother gave him her answer. "Sweet. I'll see you later. Remember to keep every food starts with a C."

"So, which cafe are we going?" I asked him.

He looked at me like I was growing a second head. "No, we're just going to the park and rehearse dinner."

When we arrived, Ryder didn't waste time for anything else and immediately started. "Most likely, my father would ask something about you." He put a hand under his chin. "Maybe he'd ask about your grades at school. Or what activities that you do in your freetime."

"Oh, that's easy! I mostly get A, but sometimes I got Bs on my english papers because I kept misspelling things. And I like to watch TVs and read fanfictions about said TVs and I recently developed a strong addiction towards My Little Pony because it's actually a social satire-"

Ryder's hand touched my shoulder. "Now," he began. "We need to work on that intense, one-sided conversations."

I literally had to bit my lip to stop myself from talking. After making sure that no word about My Little Pony would come out, I trusted myself to speak. "How do I do it?"

"Just keep all sort of information limited to three sentences," Ryder advised. "And maybe not talk about fantasy horses."

"But why?"

"My father thinks that having autism is like a free ticket for high-intelligence, sort of like being a computer who absorbs all information because computers don't need to socialize."

My chest hurt so bad hearing this. "Your father needs to put a lot of money in the Mean Jar."

Ryder laughed, but then the laugh died fast as he moved on to the next subject. "He will probably ask about our relationship, too."

"And I should probably not ruin it by saying that I fainted the first time I saw you outside the house, right?"

"You should probably not mention that."

"This is so hard," I said. "Can I mention about his illness? I feel so bad about him. I read that people who are ill often act out because they feel like they're being treated unfairly by the world."

"That's not the case with my father, though. He's always insufferable, even before he was sick. The numbered days only revealed more of his inner ugly."