"Strangers": a short story. My name is Dean and its everyone else thats crazy, not me.

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Strangers

Dean
My name is Dean and it’s everyone else that’s crazy, not me. I’ve never understood why no-one else seems to see the world like I do, but just recently I’ve given up expecting that someday soon they will. I have become accustomed to the fact that no-one seems to see the smoky fumes spiralling disgustingly into the sky, no-one is deafened by the constant buzzings and bleepings of the latest technologies, and no-one is blinded by the thousand flashing lights they pass by each day. Maybe they don’t want to notice, or maybe they’re just too busy listening to their iPods anyway.
It’s the kind of thing a trendy, young-adult, pretentious magazine might call ‘modern living’. And I hate it. Yesterday I made a resolution: if one more thing annoyed me that day then I’d get out of here, catch a train to some unknown village of cows and mud and peace, and leave this city forever. Eleven minutes later I saw a man on the street with a guitar and sad eyes and nobody paying him any attention, and that’s why I’ve gotta get out of here.

Michael
My name is Michael and I am autistic. And I hate how that fact is always so immediate, following straight on from my name, like it’s what defines me. It’s not what defines me.
I am aware that I see things differently to other people, of course I am. But this is how things have always been in my life, so it’s normal to me. It’s everyone else that’s crazy.
I am an avid reader and have a mild interest in water polo. I watch films and listen to music and spend time with the people I love, just like everyone else. But nobody knows or cares about these things because all they see when they look at me is a giant plaque above my head reading ‘SPECIAL NEEDS’. I even watch it happening: their eyes glaze over and I can practically see as the little cartoony thought bubble appears next to their heads.
Even my parents seem to put my condition before my personality these days, and it frustrates me so much that I want to scream and shout and run and punch and thrash and kick and cry and throw things and make them SEE and…
And that’s why I’ve got to get out of here.

Dean
I’m the kind of person that looks like they belong in a train station. The kind of guy that when you look at them words like ‘student, drop-out, dead-end jobs and dyed hair’ are always among the first to come to mind. But there’s one crucial difference between me and them: I don’t have The Itch.
I decide to pause my vague meandering through platforms and chain stores and countless heaving bodies with things to do and people to see. Because, let’s face it, I have the time. I step to one side and glance apologetically at the anxious-looking, bespectacled kid I manage to bump into as I do this. Then I watch The Itch magic in motion.
It doesn’t take long. I spot my candidate in a matter of seconds: a skinny-jeaned lad with a head full of angst (and half a can of hairspray). He’s slouching against a wall in that carefully calculated manner designed to look effortlessly cool. He’s alone: that’s why I pick him. I wait one, two, three, four seconds – and there it is. I watch as his hand slithers down to the pocket of those ridiculously tight jeans of his, and I watch as it emerges again with the addition of a stylishly tiny mobile phone. Passers-by that saw this would think he must just be bored – but passers-by wouldn’t see that revealing expression of relief flash across his face as he grasped his handset. He doesn’t just want that technology, he needs it, and that’s why I’ve gotta get out of here.

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Michael
Train stations are scary places. The sheer number of bodies pressing in from every direction (I’d say approximately three per square foot at any given time) is almost enough to make me turn back. Almost, but not quite. I start counting in thirty-twos in my head, because sometimes when I’m nervous or scared it helps to concentrate on something that is always a constant and always makes sense. And I choose thirty-two because I can remember being the only person in my class in 1996, which as when I was in Year One, that knew the answer to sixteen multiplied ...

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