A Kind of Spark

“I walk through the corridors, practicing my breathing and keeping my eyes straight ahead. People talk so loudly to their friends, who are right next to them. They get too close, they push and clamor, and it makes my neck hot and my heart too quick. But when I finally get to the library it’s all quiet. A good kind of quiet. There is so much space, and an open window lets in a little fresh air. There is no loud talking allowed. The books are all categorized and labeled in their proper places.”

This scene demonstrates Addie’s sensory differences, as she is sensitive to physical and aural stimuli. While Addie and her family are adamant about her attendance in a traditional school, she is exposed to an environment that isn’t always suitable to her. Luckily, the library offers a reprieve, and the relieved tone of her description demonstrates that people with autism often struggle in many subtle, silent ways that a neurotypical person might not consider. The quiet, cool refuge of the library suits Addie’s need for consistency and sensory balance.

“Mr. Allison is at his desk. […] If I were to use my thesaurus to describe Mr. Allison, I would say he is kindly. But I like to just say that he is nice. Because he is. My brain is very visual. I see everything in specific pictures, and when people use the word ‘nice,’ I think of Mr. Allison, the librarian.”

Mr. Allison acts as a foil for Ms. Murphy because he is an authority figure who recognizes and accommodates Addie’s needs. He understands that the library is a place of solace for Addie, and he praises and supports her special interests. His presence in the novel emphasizes The Importance of External Support Systems, as his care and compassion show that people with autism can thrive when they are fully supported. This section also demonstrates another trait of Addie’s autism—her visual thinking.

“Reading is the most calming thing after an overly loud and unkind classroom. I can take my time. There is no one rushing me or barking at me. The words all follow rules. The pictures are bright and alive. But they do not overpower me. When I am trying to sleep at night, I like to imagine diving beneath the cold waves of the ocean and swimming with a shark. We explore abandoned shipwrecks, underwater caves, and coral reefs. All that color, but in a wide-open space. No crowds, no pushing, and no talking. I would not grab its dorsal fin. We would swim alongside one another. And we would not have to speak a word. We could just be.”

This passage shows Addie’s ideal experience in life: unrestricted yet organized, visually stimulating but not overwhelming, calm, and quiet. She enjoys the “rules” of grammar, but she also enjoys the opportunity to imagine the breadth of the actions described in books. While she enjoys diversity of thought and experience, she wants this in a controlled environment that does not subject her to unwanted touch or sound. When she tells the imaginary shark that she would never grab it, the tone of the scene makes it clear that she is projecting her own issues with touch onto the sharks. Because she perceives other similarities between herself and sharks, she assumes that they would also dislike unwanted touch.

“I don’t understand Nina. She wants things out of our conversations that I don’t know how to give. She talks to the people who watch her videos like she loves them. I watch her sometimes. When I was doing my Saturday therapy, the man would place photographs in front of me, photographs of different people wearing different faces. Expressions, he would correct me. But they were different faces. He would ask me to tell him what they were feeling, but I never knew how. How to tell, how to know what was really going on.”

Addie’s parents and Keedie are very supportive of Addie, but Nina often falls short, much to Addie’s confusion. Nina is a beauty influencer and can perform on camera and appeal to mass audiences. Her skill with performance is utterly antithetical to Addie and Keedie’s skill sets. When Addie describes her struggles to comprehend expressions, it is clear that this same level of confusion manifests in her interactions with Nina. Nina’s unwillingness to be more understanding of her neurodivergent sisters causes Addie to feel alienated and vulnerable.

“‘Won’t it be harder, masking full-time?’ I ask her. Masking is when I have to pass as a neurotypical person, as someone who is not like me. I have to ignore the need to stim, to self-soothe, and I have to make firm eye contact. Keedie told me it’s like when superheroes have to pretend that they’re regular people.”

Keedie’s arc demonstrates the challenges involved in Combating Prejudice Against Neurodiversity. She preaches positivity and pride to Addie, whom she hopes will be more successful in accepting her identity, but she struggles to live up to this standard herself. She knows that being more open about her autism will also leave her more vulnerable to ostracization, so she masks constantly to avoid this outcome. As a result, she experiences autistic burnout—a state in which a neurodivergent person becomes psychologically and physically exhausted and can no longer function. McNicoll uses Keedie’s experiences to illustrate the tough choices that neurodivergent people must make every day when choosing how and when to be their authentic selves.

“I don’t understand people in this village. We live a good way out of Edinburgh, and yet they all insist on pretending that we don’t. Nina does it too. She tells her followers about how she lives in an Edinburgh town house. […] Juniper is a pretty village, though. Small, with a few houses, a church, our school, one supermarket, one dentist, one doctor, one funeral parlor, and the bank. Why everyone is desperate to be from Edinburgh is beyond me.”

Another example of Addie’s literal, either/or thinking arises when she reflects on how she feels about her hometown. She doesn’t ascribe to common societal conventions such as national pride or classism; instead, she simply admires Juniper as it is. While she often struggles to understand others, this passage suggests that her autism allows her to gain a more balanced perspective on a diverse range of topics.

“‘It is said that witches were dunked in the Nor Loch. Their thumbs and toes were tied together, and they were tossed into the water! If they floated, they were guilty of witchcraft. If they drowned, they were innocent. Guilty witches were removed from the loch and taken to Castlehill to be burned or hanged.’ […] I feel…angry. The unfairness of it sits in my stomach like a stone. I imagine women being frightened and alone as they are thrown into the cold water.”

Addie’s visceral reaction during the class about the Scottish witch trials shows her strong sense of justice, a trait that is common to people with autism. She is deeply affected by the unwinnable circumstances that the accused people experienced and is incensed that the trial ensured that they would die either way. Her sense of the trials’ unfairness is so intense that it triggers a physical reaction in her, as does her empathy toward the supposed witches. This is where she begins identifying with the victims of the trials, as she also feels unfairly boxed in by others’ prejudices.

“‘Do you think Keedie is okay?’

Nina sighs heavily. ‘I’ll have to cut all this out, Addie. Just try to talk about what we’re doing.’

‘But do you?’

‘University is a big change,’ she acknowledges, sorting through brushes. ‘She’s just going to be a bit more tired, a bit more worn out.’

‘Is that why you decided not to go to uni?’

She hesitates over her many little bottles of concealer. ‘Well, I do this for work, Addie.’

Nina gets really upset when people say her vlogging isn’t really a job, so I don’t say anything else. She takes a deep breath and then her face transforms once more into a bright and happy smile.”

Addie’s questions show that she is beginning to notice the depth of Keedie’s burnout, as Keedie masks constantly at university. Although Addie’s goal in this scene is to express her worries, Nina dismisses the impact of Keedie’s autism and takes a firmly self-centered stance, even taking offense and reacting sensitively to Addie’s comment about her decision to skip university and pursuing vlogging full-time. Although Nina can recognize her own needs, she struggles to honor the needs of her sisters. When Nina shifts from her heavier conversation with Addie to the “bright and happy” veneer that is needed for her work, this quick and effortless change in demeanor illustrates a key difference between her neurotypical outlook and the social differences that Addie experiences due to her autism.

“One of my earliest memories is from when I was four and we had a horrible babysitter. […] When Keedie reached a stage of no longer being able to stomach [a dinner she made], Mrs. Craig lost it. She threw a plate and dived at Keedie. And then something broke inside my sister. She howled. I still remember the sound. Screaming, crying, and beating her own head. It was like she was trying to knock all the horrible names she had been called out of her mind. Mrs. Craig sprang into action, cursing Keedie all the while, and using her considerable weight to restrain my sister. She pinned Keedie’s wrists to the floor and got right in her face. […] ‘Stop this right now, you little animal,’ hissed Mrs. Craig. She didn’t look angry, though. She looked like she was enjoying it. Then I remember the red feeling. The hot rush, the painful hammering of my heart. I flew at her. My whole body hit her back with the force of a train and I sank my teeth into her fleshy shoulder.”

This graphic depiction of ableism and abuse highlights an extreme example of circumstances in which both Keedie and Addie were pushed to the point of melting down. Keedie’s meltdown caused her to strike herself, something that can happen when a person with autism is trying to regulate their emotions, but Addie reacted by externalizing her overwhelm and attacking the abusive babysitter. If their parents weren’t so understanding of their disability, the children might have looked like the guilty parties. The brutal scene is designed to show that needs and behaviors can be disastrously misconstrued, as ableism can thrive behind closed doors. McNicoll uses the details of the scene to condemn the now-outdated method of pinning people down during autistic meltdowns, a harmful practice that mental health professionals eventually labeled as dangerous.

“‘Some people are like trees. The wind can blow and blow, they’ll never move. They’ll always be there.’ I look up at [Keedie]. She smiles and nods at the leaf in my hand. ‘Now open up your hand.’ I do. ‘Hold it up.’ I hold my hand up, the leaf resting on my palm. In seconds, the wind rushes and blows the entire thing away. I gasp. ‘Jenna was a leaf, Addie,’ Keedie says gently. ‘You’re a tree.’”

Keedie uses a metaphor to assuage the abandonment that Addie feels after her former best friend, Jenna, cuts ties with her and becomes friends with her bully, Emily. Addie has already been struggling with the shifting social dynamics of preadolescence, and this huge change to her routine is hard to accept. However, Keedie draws attention to the importance of external support systems by describing the kind of people Addie should surround herself with—people who can and will support her in any circumstance. Accordingly, Addie soon befriends Audrey, who is a “tree” and defends Addie despite the bullying of Ms. Murphy and Emily.

“‘Thought you’d show off your troubled little sister.’ Keedie is spitting out her words. ‘Thought you would get internet brownie points for daring to be nice to a disabled child.’

‘That disabled child is my sister too,’ Nina yells. ‘Not just yours!’

‘It’s not a competition! She’s a person, not a prop. She’s vulnerable, and you put her on the internet for all the dregs of humanity to point and stare at.’

‘She’s functioning—don’t make that face; it’s a perfectly appropriate medical term. She’s functioning, and I thought people might like to see that. She has it mild, Keedie. Like you.’

‘It’s mild to you!’ Keedie shouts, and I flinch, not used to hearing her raise her voice. ‘It’s mild to you and every other heartless soul in this village, Nina; it’s not mild to me. It’s not mild to Addie! It’s mild to you because we make it so, at great personal cost!’”

Keedie is furious when she realizes that Nina has included Addie in one of her influencer videos, drawing in ableist comments that Nina had to delete, as well as a vicious response video that Addie later sees. While Nina hints at how left out she feels due to Keedie and Addie’s mutual bond, this scene highlights her self-absorption. She uses the skewed perception of “low-” and “high-functioning” autism to claim that her sisters are not strongly affected by their disability, and McNicoll uses Keedie’s resulting outrage to express a frequent sentiment of those who are compelled to mask their autism in order to make neurotypical people more comfortable. The scene shows that neurotypical people often misinterpret autism’s impact, gauging the struggle of a person with autism by how well or how poorly they are able to conform to neurotypical standards.

“‘No need to be so upset,’ Mr. Patterson says in a jolly tone as I desperately try to control my breathing. ‘It was very sad, but like I said…a very long time ago.’

‘They killed them because they were different.’

‘Well, yes. Mary was an imbecile […] Nowadays we would say she had special needs—’

‘Like me. She was like me.’ His face drains of color. It’s almost funny. He starts to stammer in embarrassment while I try to put my invisible mask back on. I force myself to make eye contact with him, something I hate, something that feels unnatural and painful sometimes. ‘I am not an imbecile.’

‘No, of course not,’ he bleats.”

On a tour describing some of the victims of the Scottish witch trials, Addie empathizes with a woman who clearly had a disability and was persecuted because of it. A mixture of her connection to Mary and her strong sense of justice leaves Addie feeling overwhelmed, and the instructor’s callous dismissal and use of ableist slurs show the depths of his ignorance. Most notably, he ignores the potential that Addie, or any of the other students, could have a disability; they do not fit his preconceived notions of what a person with autism should look like. In order to call him out on his behavior, however, Addie is forced to mask and make eye contact, essentially hiding her autism in the very process of trying to make the instructor truly see her condition for what it is. The entire situation reflects the author’s focus on Witches as Representations of Marginalized Individuals, as Addie, like the “witches,” has been placed in an unwinnable scenario.

“‘She’s a vicious cow.’

‘Keedie!’

[…] I try to imagine what a vicious cow would look like. It’s difficult. Cows are not vicious—at least the Juniper ones aren’t. They’re very nosy, actually. But quite easy to talk to. But it doesn’t seem a good time to point that out.”

In this scene, Keedie is insulting the abusive and ableist Ms. Murphy. While the tense moment is briefly used for comic relief, it also displays Addie’s literal thinking, a common aspect of autism. She struggles to imagine the visual that Keedie just created, and it is clear that Addie’s autism affects even very small, typically unnoticeable aspects of her life.

“‘When you’re sectioned’—I try to remember exactly how Mum explained it to me—‘the state sort of owns you. They decide what to do with you. Not your family. And not you. […] It’s like the witches,’ I say, pushing the flyer back toward Audrey. ‘They’ve made up their minds about Bonnie. And, in a way, people have made up their minds about me and Keedie. What we are.’

Audrey glances down at her drawing, looking slightly withdrawn. ‘That’s why you got so upset on the trip.’

‘I know if I get too overstimulated in public, if no one is there to explain it, people might think I’m dangerous. That I’m trying to hurt people.’”

Addie is trying to explain what happened to Keedie’s high school friend Bonnie, who was placed in a mental health facility after her autism caused her to have an extreme meltdown in public. Addie understands that what happened to Bonnie is a result of her lacking a support system—more family, friends, or authority figures who could have provided context about her behavior. For Addie, the possibility of finding herself in a similar situation is terrifying, and this fear motivates her to keep campaigning to have the memorial built.

“The bus driver doesn’t seem overly impressed with my many coins, but he finally gives me a round-trip ticket. I sit by the window and watch Juniper disappear as we head into Edinburgh […] Once I’ve been to a place, I can always picture it in my mind and retrace my steps. I can remember how to get to the university because we all went there with Keedie. […] They perhaps don’t understand that my brain can turn into a map.”

This scene displays another aspect of Addie’s autism: her strong memory and pattern-based thinking. McNicoll portrays this trait as a unique strength in order to show that Addie’s atypical abilities can be positive, not just neutral or negative. However, Addie has snuck out of the house to return Keedie’s student ID to her at university, showing how she can sometimes misjudge the importance of certain tasks due to her literal thinking. She heard on a campus tour that IDs are very important, so she believes that Keedie will have a great deal of trouble after leaving her ID at home. Venturing alone into a busy city at Addie’s age is extremely dangerous, but she is compelled to take care of her sister.

“‘I think [sharks are] horrible.’ The light in me dims. I retreat to my book, embarrassed and saddened. Audrey notices and says, ‘I mean, I think it’s cool how much you know about them.’

I feel defensive. ‘They’re amazing fish. Really smart.’

‘I like dolphins […] They just seem friendlier,’ she points out. ‘Less scary.’

I nod absently and go back to my book. I feel a little empty. Flat. I feel that maybe we weren’t talking about sharks and dolphins at all.”

This moment of disconnect shows that even when both parties are trying to understand one another, miscommunications can still arise. Because Addie identifies with sharks, she sees Audrey’s dislike of sharks as a symbolic admission that she also dislikes Addie—even though this is not the case. Audrey is merely reacting with the information that she has, but Addie projects herself so strongly onto sharks that she assumes that Audrey must be criticizing her as well.

“I search through my mind, wondering which neurotypical performance I need to try to get right. What do I need to do to communicate to them how important this is? I’ve given everyone eye contact; I’ve made sure that my voice goes up and down with lots of expression. I’ve done everything that they always want from me—what more can I do?

‘Please.’ I look around the whole room. ‘The last thing these women knew in this world, the last thing they felt, was fear. Fear and pain. Looking out at people who didn’t understand them, who had accused them of something they weren’t!’ I feel all the unfairness of it building up inside me. ‘You have’—my voice trembles—‘no idea what it is like to be punished for something you cannot control. You can’t, or you wouldn’t ignore the importance of this.’”

Addie’s request for a memorial is once again denied by Mr. Macintosh, and her reaction shows how literally she interprets information about social cues and emotions—she sees them as a performance that should elicit a specific reaction. She can’t understand why she can do everything “right” and still get an unexpected or negative answer. To try and make her point, she references witches as representations of marginalized individuals and grows visibly overwhelmed as she explains her personal connection to the women’s suffering. She often feels that others condemn her to “fear and pain” and accuse her of being something she’s not. Even in the town hall, she feels surrounded by people who dismiss, condemn, or misunderstand her, further cementing her connection to the accused witches.

“Audrey seems very rattled. ‘[Keedie]…You don’t look autistic.’

‘I know, we look just like regular people,’ Keedie says teasingly, causing Audrey to let out a slightly embarrassed laugh.

‘Keedie? Keedie Darrow, is that you?’ We all glance over to see one of the mums at the gate staring at Keedie. She comes striding over, smiling with her lips and not her eyes. ‘Goodness, how are you these days, Keedie?’

‘Fine,’ says Keedie stiffly. ‘How are you, Mrs. Boyle?’

[…]

‘My, but you look so much better these days.’ Keedie glances around in discomfort. […] ‘You seem cured!’

I sigh. Keedie gets told this a lot. Whenever she’s masked very well and passed some invisible test, she gets asked if she’s been cured.

‘There is no cure,’ I tell this woman. ‘We don’t want a cure.’”

Keedie faces two examples in a row of people misunderstanding how autism manifests, but her reactions to them are very different because Audrey is a child still learning about autism, while Mrs. Boyle is someone who made Keedie uncomfortable in school and carries the toxic opinion that autism can or should be “cured.” This misguided position posits that autism is something bad—an illness that should be avoided at all costs. Thus, Keedie does not forgive Mrs. Boyle as she does Audrey.

“‘She’s struggling with reading,’ Emily’s father says bluntly. ‘She’s not dyslexic. But she can’t keep up with other children her age; she needs younger books.’

I hold my breath. Emily looks miserable, unable to meet Cleo’s gaze. ‘Audiobooks might help with that,’ Cleo says, ignoring Emily’s dad and talking to Emily. ‘You can listen to them in the car and before bed. Maybe read along at the same time?’

‘Just those books on the list, please,’ Emily’s dad says curtly.

‘Well, you can have a look in the shop while I put these through the system,’ says Cleo brightly. ‘Addie, maybe you can show her some good choices?’

I wince. Emily’s eyes shoot up and lock onto me. I expect her to look angry, to sneer, to explode with rage. Instead she looks scared. Not just scared—petrified. Before I can say anything, she turns and flees from the shop, the door slamming firmly closed behind her.”

In this scene, Emily’s father takes no interest in the alternative learning methods that the shopkeeper, Cleo, suggests to help Emily with reading, and it is clear that he is not invested in supporting her and helping her overcome her challenges. The moment also suggests that Emily struggles to accept herself because of her environment at home and that she therefore projects her negative feelings onto Addie in order to distract herself from her own difficulties.

“Emily is revealed, smiling in a frightening way. Malevolent. The word from my thesaurus springs into my mind. She throws something at me. It hits my shoulder and seems to break into pieces. I look down. It’s my thesaurus. They’ve taken scissors to it. I sink to my knees, trembling hands brushing against the ripped pages. The spine is broken completely.

‘My…my…’

My voice doesn’t sound like it belongs to me. It sounds far away. I open the front of the tiny little book. Someone has taken a dark and ugly black pen and written a word over the drawing Keedie did for me. The sight of it causes something in me to snap. Water splashes against the page and the horrendous word, and I realize that I am crying. R****d.”

In this scene, McNicoll displays a cruel but realistic example of severe prejudice. This conflict emphasizes Addie’s struggles with combating prejudice against neurodiversity. Emily is so afraid of accepting her own developmental differences that she ostracizes Addie rather than making peace with herself. In this context, the extreme social isolation and mistreatment that people with disabilities face act as a cautionary tale, warning readers of how deeply their words and actions can cut.

“But then I hear Emily say something about Keedie. I don’t even know what. All I know is I’m flying. I’m flying through the air and I land squarely on top of Emily, as I did on Mrs. Craig all those years ago. I hear shouting, screaming, and people rushing around. I’m dimly aware of Emily shrieking beneath me as my fists flail and come raining down upon her. I hear doors slamming and then someone is gripping my arms tightly and hauling me away. […] An epaulette shark can shut down all its organs to survive. I feel like that is what is happening to me. My body is in the room, overstimulated and overused, but my mind is gone. It’s flying away.”

In response to Emily’s harassment, Addie has a meltdown. In the aftermath, since she is left highly disoriented, she falls back on her special interest, sharks. This scene therefore demonstrates the calming, grounding effect that such interests can serve, as they offer an emotional touchpoint that can be used to diminish overwhelm. Here, Addie uses facts about the epaulette shark to process what is happening to her, even if she can’t control it.

“‘They think slapping a label on you will excuse all of your bad behavior. Well, guess what, my girl? It won’t. It didn’t with your sister.’ I feel a prickle of rage, but I squash it down. ‘She gave me hell,’ Ms. Murphy says quietly. ‘Good as gold with some, a demon with me. And you’re no different.’

I feel myself flush. I was never trying to be a demon. But doubt floods me. Maybe I was? Maybe I was giving Ms. Murphy a really hard time without realizing it. I shake the thought out of my head. I feel like Maggie. Being told over and over that I am one thing, when I know it can’t be true. But if Ms. Murphy keeps saying it, I might start to really believe it.”

When Ms. Murphy drags Addie away from her fight with Emily, she uses the excuse to berate Addie for her behavior, invalidating her diagnosis and vilifying her for traits that she cannot control. Importantly, Addie struggles to decide how best to react to her comments, and her uncertainty demonstrates the difficulties involved in combating prejudice against neurodiversity. She cannot base her opinion of herself solely on her own perspective; she recognizes that other people may interpret events differently than she does and that she struggles to understand social cues and emotions. This vulnerability makes her vulnerable to Ms. Murphy’s abuse, and she damages Addie’s ability to accept her autism.

“‘And…’ Nina is crying softly now, staring into the distance with a faraway look. ‘I never said a word. Never stopped my so-called friends from [mocking Keedie and Bonnie]. And where are they all now? They all went to university, and I haven’t heard from a single one. Not one phone call, nothing.’”

Nina finally explains a major source of the distance and animosity that exists between herself and Keedie. In school, Nina rarely defended Keedie or Bonnie from other students’ abuse, and this dynamic peaked on the twins’ joint 14th birthday, wherein Keedie and Bonnie were mocked and humiliated. Keedie has often felt abandoned by Nina, and Nina has often felt alienated because Keedie and Addie have more in common.