“Not much. My older sister was a doctor, before she died. I tried to read some of her books when she was in medical school. That is when I lived at home with my family. I was only fifteen, though.”
“I want to know if you think they can do what they say they can do,” Cameron says.
“I do not know,” I say. “I wanted to see what the doctor was saying today. I am not sure he is right.
Those pictures they showed are like ones in this book—” I pat the book. “He said they meant something different. This is not a new book, and things change. I need to find new pictures.”
“Show us the pictures,” Bailey says.
I turn to the page with the pictures of brain activitation and lay the book on the low table. They all look.
“It says here this shows brain activation when someone sees a human face,” I say. “I think it looks exactly like the picture the doctor said showed looking at a familiar face in a crowd.
“It is the same,” Bailey says, after a moment. “The ratio of line width to overall size is exactly the same.
The colored spots are in the same place. If it is not the same illustration, it is a copy.”
“Maybe for normal brains the activation pattern is the same,” Chuy says.
I had not thought of that.
“He said the second picture was of an autistic brain looking at a familiar face,” Cameron says. “But the book says it is the activation pattern for looking at a composite unknown face.”
“I do not understand composite unknown,” Eric says.
“It is a computer-generated face using features of several real faces,” I say.
“If it is true that the activation pattern for autistic brains looking at a familiar face is the same as normal brains looking at an unfamiliar face, then what is the autistic pattern for looking at an unfamiliar face?”
Bailey asks.
“I always had trouble recognizing people I was supposed to know,” Chuy says. “It still takes me longer to learn people’s faces.”
“Yes, but you do,” Bailey says. “You recognize all of us, don’t you?”
“Yes,” Chuy says. “But it took a long time, and I knew you first by your voices and size and things.”
“The thing is, you do now, and that’s what matters. If your brain is doing it a different way, at least it’s doing it.”
“They told me that the brain can make different pathways to do the same thing,” Cameron says. “Like if someone is injured, they give them that drug—I don’t remember what it is—and some training, and they can relearn how to do things but use a different part of the brain.”
“They told me that, too,” I say. “I asked them why they didn’t give me the drug and they said it wouldn’t work for me. They did not say why.”
“Does this book?” Cameron asks.
“I don’t know. I haven’t read that far,” I say.
“Is it hard?” Bailey asks.
“In some places, but not as hard as I thought it would be,” I say. “I started reading some other stuff first.
That helped.”
“What other?” Eric asks.
“I read through some of the courses on the Internet,” I say. “Biology, anatomy, organic chemistry, biochemistry.” He is staring at me; I look down. “It is not as hard as it sounds.”
No one says anything for several minutes. I can hear them breathe; they can hear me breathe. We can all hear all the noises, smell all the smells. It is not like being with my friends at fencing, where I have to be careful what I notice.
“I’m going to do it,” Cameron says suddenly. “I want to.”
“Why?” Bailey asks.
“I want to be normal,” Cameron says. “I always did. I hate being different. It is too hard, and it is too hard to pretend to be like everyone else when I am not. I am tired of that.”
“‘But aren’t you proud of who you are?’ ” Bailey’s tone makes it clear he is quoting the slogan from the Center: We are proud of who we are.
“No,” Cameron says. “I pretended to be. But really—what is there to be proud of? I know what you’re going to say, Lou—” He looks at me. He is wrong. I was not going to say anything. “You’ll say that normal people do what we do, only in smaller amounts. Lots of people self-stim, but they don’t even realize it. They tap their feet or twirl