Free The Encyclopedia of Me by Karen Rivers

woods, lifting logs, spraying water out of their trunks, and the taste of preschoolers.
    I saw an elephant at a circus when I was four. Do you know how big an elephant is when you are four? Really big, I can tell you. And smelly. Also hairier than I would have expected. The eyes of this particular elephant were terrifying. I would have said elephants had kind and gentle eyes until I saw one. This one’s eyes said, “I would like to eat you for lunch in spite of the fact that elephants don’t eat meat.”
    I was forced to ride the kid-eating elephant, squashed between Seb and Lex, and sobbing my little four-year-old head off. We still have the photo on the fridge. Boy, that’s a magic moment you really want to remember forever.
    The thing about it that I do remember most is the way that Seb and Lex each held one of my hands and sang to me so that I’d stop crying. They were pretty OK when they were little. I don’t know what went wrong.
Ellery, Charlotte
    Charlotte Ellery is Seb’s counselor. She comes to our house once a week to talk about how we all
feel
. She continually looks at me with an expression that I think she believes says, “I
care
about your feelings, Tink Aaron-Martin.”
    Mom loves Charlotte because Charlotte makes Seb “open up.” Frankly, I feel like Seb could stand to be more closed. Seb is very, very good at talking about how he is feeling. His feelings, however, are the only ones that he is familiar with. For example, Charlotte asked him how he thought I felt when he called me Freckle Peckle, and he just stared at her. Like, “What? Tink has a
thought
? Actual
feelings
? Well, I never.” He couldn’t come up with anything. Go figure.
    One thing that Charlotte said early on, when we first met her last year, was that Seb was probably never going to change that much, so it was actually going to be us who would have to change. This is just one more example of how Seb really has it made. No chores, no expectations, no changing, no compromising.
    No
fair
, is what I say.
    See also
Aaron-Martin, Sebastian (Seb); Autism.
Everybody
Magazine
    A half-celebrity, half-“normal person” magazine that both Dad and Freddie Blue are completely obsessed with, copies of which flop listlessly on every surface of this house.
    I was, in fact, lying on the Itchy Couch watching the sweat run in little rivulets down my maimed forearm, engrossed in an article about a certain royal celeb’s bedroom furnishings, when Mom burst in through the kitchen door like her hair was on fire and the fire extinguisher was somewhere under my seat.
    â€œTink!” she shouted. “What are you
reading
?” she said, emphasizing the word “reading” so hard, she practically spat.
    â€œNuh. Thing,” I enunciated. The nothingness of what I was reading was practically visible, like an aura that is as blank as Lex’s sentences.
Everybody
magazine wasn’t READING material. It was SKIMMING material! Everyone knew that. I tossed the magazine on the floor, and she picked it up and cradled it for a minute in her arms before putting it down on the table.
    I squinted. Something was definitely up.
    â€œWhere are the boys?” she said, hopping back and forth from foot to foot as though she desperately had to pee.
    â€œDon’t know,” I singsonged.
    â€œTink,” she said impatiently. “Tink, where is your dad?”
    I pointed at the stairs to the basement. I can’t believe she’d had to ask. If he was home and not on the couch, he was in the basement, whirring, clunking, and singing.
    â€œI have the most exciting news!” she shouted, like she couldn’t contain it. 58 “I want to tell everyone at once. Where did you say your brothers are?”
    â€œMOM,” I said. “I don’t
know
. I
like
not knowing. Then I can pretend I’m an only child! A dream come true!”
    Mom kept talking as though I