1
Michael didn’t like this.
He was watching out the car window and rocking gently. This was not like the streets of home. His city was small, and he knew most of the streets, and this was a big road that wasn’t like that.
His father was driving the car. His father looked very nervous, and very angry too. But this was not like the streets of home.
Michael tapped a few symbols on his communication board and pressed the play button. A mechanical voice said, “Me hungry. Eat now.”
He looked sternly at the dashboard in front of him and waited. His father ignored it so he hit the play button again. “Me hungry. Eat now.”
Ignored again, his rocking got more insistent. Something was very wrong. His father didn’t live with them anymore, so it was strange when he’d picked Michael up from the school today, and now they were on this very large street with no houses and just lots of grass and billboards, and they were going way too fast, and Michael did not like this. At all.
Pressing his eyes shut, trying to keep the panicky emotions in check, he pressed the replay button. “Me hungry. Eat now.”
At last, his father spoke: “We can’t right now. I’ll get you something to eat when we get where we’re going.”
Replay. Again. Michael needed the car to stop. He needed to figure out what was going on. None of this was right. And then a fifth time: “Me hungry. Eat now.”
The voice, the volume, the cadence of the electronic voice was the same each time. Michael found a small bit of comfort in that regularity. But he could tell from the way his father gripped the steering wheel tighter that it was having the intended effect of being that much more annoying.
“Fine, just stop that. We’ll get something at the next exit. But we can’t take long.”
Michael went back to looking out the window, watching the grass pass by far too quickly.
2
As the next exit approached, he didn’t let his father forget: He just started pressing “Here” until his father acknowledged it. It wasn’t hard to see the exits on this boring road. Normally Michael might have even enjoyed this ride, because even though the world was passing by way too quickly, the view had so very little to distract his brain.
But today, nothing felt right. And so he rocked and hummed the happy place song his mother had taught him and tried not to make any noises that might upset his father more.
3
When they got to the diner just off the exit, his father sat him in a booth. “Stay here and don’t cause trouble. Figure out what you want to eat.” He pushed the laminated menu over to Michael, but Michael could see the grease stains and fingerprints, and didn’t want to touch it. Instead, he looked at it from a distance.
He knew what he’d want, anyway. He always ate the same thing. Scrambled eggs. Pancakes. Milk. That was what he got when they went to a place like this. That was what he got from the diner that his mother took him to in the town where they lived, and this place didn’t look the same but it smelled the same: Grease, bacon, coffee, toast. A little bit of cleaning solution. The server’s cheap perfume.
This place had the same smells, so he would have the same food. His mother would have known that without asking.
But instead, his father pushed the menu a little closer to him and let out an impatient sigh, still standing over him. “Look, I really have to hit the head. Just… stay here.”
Michael wanted very much to rock and punch the bench next to him, but that Danger Voice inside of him told him to control it for a little bit longer. So he watched his father leave, sitting as still as he could.
The server came over. Her nametag said Mabel. He didn’t look at her face, but he could tell from her body movement that she was nice. Her energy reminded him of his mother.
“Whatcha got there?” she asked, pointing at his communication board.
He pressed some buttons, then hit play. “You help. Bad man.”
Mabel’s body stiffened, her gum chewing stopped. “What did that say?”
Michael closed his eyes. Something was very, very wrong, and this could be his only chance to fix it. He pressed play again. “You help. Bad man.”
She looked in the direction of the bathroom, then crouched down next to Michael. The smell of her perfume, this close, made his stomach turn, but he persiisted. A third time: “You help. Bad man.” And then, mustering all of this power, he looked over into Mabel’s eyes.
She put a cold hand on top of his, and he pulled it back, so she nodded and stood. “I gotcha,” she said sternly, and Michael now knew things would be better soon.