Ready!

* * *

Mark shut the book and punched its cover. He wished he could nail it shut forever. Reading was okay when nobody told you what to read. You could read about whatever you wanted. Reading assigned stuff was hard. Doing it knowing you had to write a report and do a presentation? "Impossible." He must have said it out loud.

His mom had just come in from her yoga classes. "Reading is not impossible, Mark. You know better than that."

"Not real reading, school reading. Why do they make you do presentations and tell what people are thinking and feeling? How do I know what people are thinking and feeling? I don't even know that in real life."

Mark's mom hugged him from behind and kissed the top of his head. "Nobody else knows, either."

"Why do they have words for it? All I have is 'good' or 'bad'."

His mom sat down next to him at the table. "They pick up on clues and hints easier. They're able to see the rules so they make good guesses. That's all. It takes a lot of experience to really understand other people, whether you have Asperger's or not. Some people never understand. You have an advantage, in a weird sort of way. At least you know that you don't know."

"I hate rules."

"You hate other people's rules. Not the same thing." She got up to make dinner. Mark sighed and opened the book to try again.

* * *

The next day his mother walked in after work just in time to see his book sailing across the room. She caught it without even putting down her mat bag. "Aren't you going to tell me I know better than to throw books?"

"Nope. Get your shoes on, we're going out."

In the car, she explained that a new place had opened in the same strip mall as the yoga studio where she worked. "I wondered if you'd like to see it. Then I saw the magic flying book and decided yes, you would."

"Like a restaurant, you mean?"

"Again–nope."

The car stopped in front of a storefront with a sign that said, "Taekwondo." Mark tried not to look excited, but he was.