A Kind of Spark

Keedie, who also has autism, is Addie’s older sister and Nina’s twin. She is attending the University of Edinburgh at the start of the story and still lives at home. Addie eagerly anticipates Keedie’s return each day, and Keedie always climbs in through the window. She is deeply supportive and protective of her little sister and knows that it is important to validate Addie’s experiences with people and the world. The two spend a great deal of time together because they are both able to unmask and be their authentic selves in each other’s company.

Keedie once had the same schoolteacher that Addie does now (Ms. Murphy), and she also had a very difficult experience in her class. Much of Keedie’s life as a child with autism was very traumatic and is still difficult for her to process. She was isolated and forced to mask, which caused to her become defensive and aggressive with some people. Her only friend at the time was Bonnie, another girl with autism. Keedie was fiercely protective of Bonnie and staunchly protected her from bullies. However, Bonnie was ultimately sent to a mental health facility where she was restricted from building an independent life that affirmed and supported her needs. By contrast, Keedie is making her way in the world, but because she keeps her autism a secret in her academic life and masks intensely in order to present herself as neurotypical, she is now struggling in college. The many changes to her routine combine with the overwhelming sensory stimuli that she must navigate, and her constant masking takes a heavy toll on her. However, she hides this struggle from Addie and only reveals it when Addie turns up at her college unannounced. Keedie repeatedly states that the hardest part of college is “the people.” When she confronts Ms. Murphy in the novel’s climax, this incident causes such intense overwhelm that she experiences autistic burnout, shutting down completely for several days. This issue occurred once before in her life, although this information was kept from Addie at the time.

Because Keedie’s struggles are very similar to Addie’s, she stands as a major catalyst for the theme of Combating Prejudice Against Neurodiversity. She is hugely supportive of Addie and encourages her to accept her disability, but despite her positive mentorship, Keedie continues to struggle with the wider world’s lack of acceptance or understanding of people who have autism. Her character arc demonstrates that personal resolve and acceptance can only do so much in the face of rampant ableism. Her own inner growth becomes apparent when she opens up to Addie about her struggles and seeks support. Likewise, when she decides to visit Bonnie, she openly faces the alternative lifestyle that she may have been relegated to as a person with a disability, had she received less support in her life.

Nina is Addie’s older sister and Keedie’s twin. She is neurotypical and looks quite different from Keedie. Rather than attending university classes, she works as a social media influencer and mainly covers topics such as makeup and fashion. She used to do haul videos, wherein she showed large quantities of consumed or gifted items, but her mother told her to stop, and this shift led to a drop in Nina’s online engagement. She is very sensitive when people suggest that her influencing work is not a real job. She over-focuses on it, sometimes isolating herself from the rest of the family.

She has a somewhat strained relationship with the rest of the family, often criticizing Addie, bickering with Keedie, and being scolded by her parents. She is deeply self-conscious about her social status and lies to her online audience about where she lives, falsely claiming that she has a studio in Edinburgh. She cruelly criticizes her father’s job at the supermarket and fights with her mother over it. Ironically, the false persona that Nina presents to the world shares similarities with her sisters’ masking of their autistic traits. Just as they hide the outward manifestations of their autism in order to avoid mistreatment, Nina hides the reality of her status and living situation in order to cope with her feelings of inadequacy. The fact that she makes staged online content and discusses makeup—a product designed to hide one’s true face—also symbolizes her inner struggle.

Overall, Nina is initially depicted as being self-absorbed and thoughtless. For a while, Addie doesn’t understand Nina’s behavior, and she is therefore much closer to Keedie, whose own autism allows her to better understand Addie’s lived experiences. Nina eventually explains that she feels left out of the bond between Keedie and Addie, seeing them as having their own private language. She also feels left out because her former friends attended university and never contacted her again. In school, Nina was quite popular and had many friends. She allowed these friends to mock Keedie and Bonnie for their autism. Later in the book, however, Nina becomes extremely apologetic when she realizes how badly Addie has been mistreated at school. She apologizes for posting the video of Addie and explains her own feelings of isolation, and she asks permission to give Addie a hug, knowing that touch can be very difficult for Addie.