Loving Clarke , livre ebook

Loving CLARKE
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
Translation from French :
Séverine Maj & Abby Kaufman
 
ISBN : 9781674386362
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Table of Contents
 
Author’s note        4
Prologue
Chapter 1: Lunatic
Chapter 2: First day of school
Chapter 3: Routine
Chapter 4: Secrets, lies, and truths
Chapter 5: The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree
Chapter 6: Crumpled paper
Chapter 7: What we are
Chapter 8: Morality
Chapter 9: Freedom
Chapter 10: Duty
Epilogue 1
Epilogue 2
Epilogue 3
Epilogue 4
Endnote
Bibliography
 
Author’s note  
 
For many years now I have wanted to write a novel about autism and more specifically about how Aspergers syndrome affects women. I hesitated between writing a nonfiction or a fiction. What was missing to write a fiction? The right topic, the right conflict, the psychological structure of the strong characters gravitating around my heroines, etc.
After years of reflection, it took me less than two years to get the story outlined in my imagination…After a raw and rough first draft I did a massive rewrite and reached the last word barely two weeks later. I dropped the idea of a non-fiction, documentary, autobiography, as there are already many fine ones, written by professionals or people who know how to talk about themselves, which I am not able to do unless I am writing a short prologue or some subtle references regarding concise facts.
This syndrome, still rather unknown and lacking in studies of how it affects women, has been the subject of numerous books; you will find a non-exhaustive list of these at the end of this latest novel. I hope this novel is both an opportunity for you to relax and to learn a little more about this particularity of mine. Sometimes it can make me appear cold, distant, emotionless, severe, rude. A particularity which I’m beginning to speak about more and more, broken down and explained to the people closest to me, other authors and sometimes even my readers. Science has yet to discover more about this syndrome so nicely called: autism spectrum disorder (ASD).
I take this opportunity to thank my better half, without her I would never have understood how what makes me different can also enrich my life. Of course, I want to thank my mom for her unfailing support since my tender years. Where some people would see an abnormal or retarded child, she looked further, so much further than those pseudo-educators and uninformed teachers (deprived of psychology). Thanks to her persistence, after numerous tests, specialists finally unraveled the truth: a child bored at school or who ends up failing can actually be anything but “mentally retarded”. My sweet mom, thank you for giving me the gifts of writing, creativity, and ease of learning. Thank you for your patience, your trust, your support and your whole-hearted devotion. Thank you for the fabulous books that you put in my hands. Thank you for your unlimited knowledge, thank you for teaching me about classical music, painting, nature… and most of all, thank you for the tons of Legos you bought me as a child!
What many have considered a failing is actually the most precious of treasures: my imagination…
I wish you a pleasant reading…
 
~ Kyrian Malone  

Dedication:
To the 1% just like us…
 
 
 
Prologue
 
~
 
The Riverdale cemetery in the small town of Providence was just like any other Clarke had already visited: dark, damp, scary for anyone who would venture alone onto these unwelcoming grounds. Yet she liked to go there and wander at night, she even used to sneak out to go there to fight her exasperating insomnia. In the daylight, Riverdale cemetery was quite different. One could come across people mourning and crying in front of the tombs, and most of all, there was no way of suspecting the noise of the Cortland Park forest that bordered both the North and the East sides of the cemetery. It was precisely this forest which made all the difference and provided this cemetery with its particularly terrifying atmosphere. At night, it would emit a light mist that floated down. Often, there were bats fleeing and twirling above the will-o-the-wisps, bright forms like small flames. They were long considered as some esoteric manifestation of ghosts, lost souls coming back from the dead to haunt the living.
Clarke would come to wander, sometimes she would sit on the crypts and draw. Drawing was what brought her to life, made her disconnect from reality. She had this rare ability to reproduce what she saw and also what she imagined. Her almost photographic memory enabled her to reproduce anything she wanted in her sketchbook, in particular her peculiar obsession with fantastic creatures straight out of fairy tales and the books she would read voraciously every evening. Clarke thought just because some things weren’t proven didn’t mean that they couldn’t be real or that because someone denied the existence of something didn’t mean it couldn’t be real. That was the reason why Clarke believed anything was possible. She liked walking, so she came to Riverdale cemetery to stroll. It helped her think, freed her imagination. It was perfectly possible that someday, the veil between dimensions could be torn apart and her gloomy planet would be invaded by monsters from another world. The very famous physician and theorist Stephen Hawking, who passed away in March 2018, spoke of his terrifying and fascinating theories about the possible coexistence of parallel worlds after the Big Bang. If just one of them collided with the earth, or if even the smallest door opened between our world and another, nothing would ever be the same…
Lost as she was in her reveries, Clarke didn’t notice the couple sitting in the shade of a crypt. Engraved in the stone above them was written: Lewis Family. The young man, his arms tensed along his body and leaning on both hands, was slowing swinging his feet, brushing them against the small bushes along the wall. He bent his head slightly as he looked at the young blond woman strolling past without noticing them. She seemed impassive as she walked further, lost in her thoughts.
- I don’t believe it. The nutcase walks right in front of us and doesn’t even see us! What is she doing here anyway?
- Do you seriously want to talk about her, now?
Scott knew why his girlfriend looked tense. She had been in a serious crash which was Clarke Nollan’s fault. She had run her over six month ago, something Alycia never spoke about.
- Sorry, he said.
Scott leaned forward and jumped off, crushing a small bush as he turned back to Alycia…
- You know what? I’ll teach her a lesson.
- Stop it Scott… Let it go. Her mother is even crazier than she is. If you touched her daughter she would have you arrested without a second thought.
He looked at his girlfriend:
- What, are you scared of her?
Alycia, staring at the disappearing silhouette, answered with a serious tone:
- Of course not, it has nothing to do with fear, but we seriously have other things to do and I have to go home. I have to be up early to go to work tomorrow morning. Come on, let’s go.
 
 
 
       Chapter 1: Lunatic
 
~
 
- Eighteen, five, eight, fifty, ninety-nine, three, eleven, six hundred and sixty-three, eight hundred and sixty-four…
Clarke was whispering to herself, trying to calm down. She was sitting in front of Dr. Tipple, a psychologist recommended by her father Hank, whom she had not seen since last summer vacation. He left the day after her twelfth birthday, a disruptive event that Clarke had experienced without any difficulty, dealing with it far better than her mother Emma, without a doubt.
What bothered her right now had nothing to do with her parents’ divorce: she hated this office where she had been forced to come once a week for the last six months. The smell of the sofa, treated with chemicals supposed to protect the leather, made her as nauseous as the greenish color of the walls. Clarke looked at her fingernails: she should file one of them before it broke. She tried to focus on the tiny noise she was hearing, the one coming from the water running in the aquarium by the window, where a stunning blue and red betta let its vaporous fins guide it in a solitary and singular hypnotic dance.
- You know why you are here Clarke, don’t you?
Clarke knew.
- I come here every Friday, she reminded.
- That is correct, but there is another reason that you come here and I would like us to discuss it.
There had been a slight incident at the Providence mall. Clarke had left without paying. But just because she had forgotten to do it.
- Eighteen, five, eight, fifty, ninety-nine, three, eleven, six hundred and sixty-three, eight hundred and sixty-four…
She tried hard to calm down, she fitted her back properly in the sofa and looked at Dr. Tipple from the corner of her eye. She could not help noticing all of the small defects that were on his not very welcoming face, and most of all she could not miss the huge wart planted on his flat nose, which housed numerous blackheads. His bald head beaded with sweat due to the broken air conditioner. He smelled of sweat and he had dark stains in his armpits that she could see each time he readjusted his round glasses with his small chubby fingers.
- I did not steel that black pen, she repeated.
- Yes, that’s what you told the security guard and your mother, but you didn’t stop at the counter to pay, which, by law, is considered as theft. You know you have to pay for whatever you take in stores, don’t you?
Clarke rubbed her hands on her pants, annoyed by this discussion.
- I know, I’m not stupid!
- Then why didn’t you stop at the counter?
Clarke did not want to answer. Whenever she talked about her daydreams, the voices and the numerous conv