Swim Buddies

I LEAN OVER the side of the catamaran and peer into the crystal blue water. This is my last chance, I think.

- Heather Klassen

“I hope you find one today, Alexa,” Dad says, as if reading my thoughts.

“Me, too,” my brother, Jonah, says. “I want to see one, too!”

I lift my head up, turn toward Jonah, and glare. Why, why, why does he always insist on following me everywhere, doing everything I do? Make your own friends, I want to scream at him. Find your own green sea turtle!

But I don’t say it. I don’t say anything. Ever since Jonah was a little kid and they discovered the reason he acts so different is because he has autism, I’ve been trained to make allowances for him. Trained to put up with a lot.

Like, for instance, having to go to the airport weeks before this vacation to “practice” taking a trip on an airplane. My family, and other families with kids like Jonah, had to go through the whole drill—carry luggage (empty, of course), stand in lines (waiting for what, exactly?)—all to board a plane that would never leave the ground.

“Alexa,” my mother had said while I sighed and groaned throughout the entire pointless exercise, “if we ever hope to take that six-hour flight to the Virgin Islands, we have to get Jonah used to the idea. Otherwise, the trip could go very badly.”

The practice must have worked because we all survived the real flight two weeks later, even though Jonah acted totally embarrassingly. He did a lot of hand flapping and looking over his seat to ask the man behind us a million weird questions over and over again, like had he ever ridden a camel. At least Jonah didn’t scream.