Ellen Outside the Lines

“I breathe in. Abba’s words are clearer. Even though I was ahead of schedule and Laurel forgot about our call, things still worked out. The fan is still rattling and the tree branches still scritch, but they’re just background sounds now. I breathe out.”

This paragraph is framed by the short, visceral phrases “I breathe in/I breathe out,” as though everything that happens in between is happening within the span of a breath. Ellen feels overwhelmed by the stress of trying to plan the trip, and it is in these moments that sensory input, particularly noise, can add to that stress. The passage also uses onomatopoeia to convey the invasive sound of the tree branches against the window.

“Some people believe you have to look into a person’s eyes to know what they’re feeling, but I think you can tell more from what they do with their hands.”

Ellen sometimes has difficulty distinguishing jokes from serious statements, and she also sometimes has trouble discerning how people are feeling, but she finds that she can reliably gauge emotions by the way people move their hands. For example, she sees how Abba clenches his fists when he is stressed or how Laurel talks with her hands when she is excited. Her focus on hands rather than on facial expressions is also designed to be a subtle indicator of one way in which her autism informs her perception of the world.