What to Say Next(75)

“We’ll see about that.”

“So…so…there might be?”

She elbows me, a friendly nudge, I think, and I nudge back. I take this to mean a warm no, thank you.

“Right. How about hand-holding? Can we do that?” I ask.

“David?”

“Right. I’ll stop talking. We can just sit here quietly together.”

“That would be a good idea.”

“Okay,” I say.

“Thank you,” she says.





David and I are sitting in the bleachers and all of Mapleview is spread out before us like a restaurant menu, and it’s that hour in a late winter day when everything turns the same color of washed-out gray. The air is so thick, I feel like I could slice it and serve it like pie. Our small town looks even smaller from up here.

I let his words settle over me. The idea that I couldn’t have changed a thing. There is math to point to, a model on his computer, apparently. I don’t know yet how I feel about any of this, whether this changes things. Maybe it doesn’t. Maybe there is no such thing as relief for me, only time.

I’m sure David has quantum theories to point to—the unraveling of our future selves, the existence of alternate universes, how healing can occur on a molecular level. I don’t, though. I think it’s all so much simpler than that. My dad was right: Unimaginably bad shit happens. We are left to choose whether to grow or to wither. To forgive or to fester. I’m going to choose to grow and forgive, for both myself and my mom. She deserves the same grace.

I look over at David and he looks over at me and he smiles and then so do I. We turn around again and face outward. I think, for some reason, of those three portraits now hanging in my closet. My chest tattooed with freckled possibility. Pi. Infinity. One open, one closed. Both forever. The thought makes me feel lighter, closer to whole. Bigger somehow.

“139-Z8S?” I ask. “Really?”

“Or if you prefer, I can call you: Z8S-139. Or Z8 for short.”

“I’ll think about it,” I say. Looking at him now, I realize he’s right. He’s not a David. Not even a little bit. “What should I call you, then?”

He shrugs, that unnatural shrug he does, and today I find it adorable.

“I’ll think of something,” I say.

“Will you think more about the kissing?” he asks, and I laugh again and mimic his shrug. If he only knew how much I’ve thought about the kissing.

“Will you reconsider hand-holding?” he asks.

Instead of answering, I move my arm so it’s next to his, so we are lined up, seam to seam. He reaches out his pinky finger and links it around mine and a warm, delicious chill makes its way up my arm.

We stay that way for a minute, in a pinky swear, which feels like the smallest of promises.

And then I grab his whole hand and link all his fingers in mine.

A slightly bigger promise. Or maybe a demand: Please be part of my tribe.

It’s pretty simple, really. For once, things are not complicated. Right now, right here, it’s just us, together, like this. Palm to palm.

The most honest of gestures.

One of the ways through.

Maybe the best one.





I realize I’m breaking one of the novelist’s cardinal rules by admitting that What to Say Next is my favorite of the four books I’ve written (five, if you count the one that will forever stay in a drawer). It’s pretty much like a mom picking her favorite kid. But before this book, meeting my main characters has always felt a lot like looking at myself in a fun-house mirror—they’re all alterna-mes.

With What to Say Next, though, instead of having to stare down my demons in a mirror, the experience felt much more like the best parts of giving birth. I love these characters (and writing about them) in that wholehearted, inexplicable way that I love my own children, which is to say, so much more than I love myself.

One of the many things I love about Kit is that she comes from a family that looks not so different from mine. Her mother is first-generation Indian American (her grandparents hail from Delhi) and her dad is American. My husband’s grandparents are from that same region of India, but he’s British and I’m American. When my real-life children are old enough to read this book and meet their fictional siblings, they’ll get to see someone who looks like them represented in a novel.

And of course, this book also belongs to David, whose voice I will miss in my head most of all. There is a famous expression that when you meet one person with autism, you meet one person with autism. Labels can be liberating, but they can also be limiting. In What to Say Next we meet David. Just David. And what a joy he is.

I wanted to write a story about unexpected connections and finding your tribe. About the wonder of finding an honest and true friend when you feel at your most alone. About the miracle of discovering that special someone who can see you clearly when you feel at your most misunderstood.

I hope you care about Kit and David as much as I do.


Although my name gets to be on the cover of this book, the truth is that writing a novel takes a village. So if you didn’t like this one, here are all the other people you can blame. Just kidding. All mistakes are mine. All credit is theirs.

First off, thank you to Beverly Horowitz, my editor, who pushed me to keep working and editing and tinkering and to ultimately just do better; I’ve met my perfectionist match and I’m so grateful. I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to my agent, Jenn Joel, one of the smartest and sharpest people I know; I feel so lucky to have you on my team. A forever thank-you to Elaine Koster, who is deeply missed.