Cassandra in Reverse

by Holly Smale

And it’s saying that kind of shit that gets me thrown out of the Fentiman Road Book Club.

I rarely understand what another human is thinking, but I frequently feel it: a wave of emotion that pours out of them into me, like a teapot into a cup. While it fills me up, I have to work out what the hell it is, where it came from and what I’m supposed to do to stop it spilling everywhere.

Rage that doesn’t feel like mine pulses through me: dark purple and red. His colors are an invasion and I do not like it.

I always wait with my whole body. It’s a three-dimensional physical experience: me, suspended in time as if hanging from space by my knicker elastic. Everything warps—gets stretched out and transparent like cling film pulled tight—until I start to feel time filling every organ.

There are infinite things you can do with time. You can save it, spend it, stitch it, kill it. You can beat it, steal it and watch it fly. You can do time and set it; you can waste it and keep it; it can be good or bad, on your side or against you. You can have a whale of it; be in the nick of it or behind it; you can have it on your hands.

Memories are time travel, and so are regrets, hopes and daydreams. When we die, the people we love carry us forward into

And the complete truth of this statement shocks me, because I am mostly on my own. I am so permanently alone that I can feel it in my bones, in my eyeballs, in the roots of my hair. I feel loneliness like a physical presence, as if someone heavy is sitting on my chest. I feel it when I wake up and I feel it when I walk down the street. I feel it when I eat and when I dance; I feel it when I’m with people, and I feel it when I’m not. I feel loneliness inside me, all of the time, but I also like to be alone and I don’t really like other humans much either, so where the hell does that leave me?

“I love being underestimated,” she whispers. “It’s my superpower. Nobody ever sees me coming.”

Is this why everyone keeps asking if I’m on the spectrum? I thought maybe they just meant I was inordinately colorful.