📖 “Normal is a setting on a washing machine. Not a measure of worth.”
— Anon
Rat Gang Crew: Synthia’s Not Normal
A Story About Neurodiversity, Friendship, and the Underground CodeSynthia's Diary, The Wrong Kind of Rat
Date: Don't Care
Place: My Bolt Hole, Pipe Junction 8b
Time: Too Early, Too Loud
Dear Diary,
I don’t know if you count as a friend, but you’re all I’ve got.
Today was another day where nothing fit, not the world, not my clothes, not even my own thoughts. Everything was itchy. The noise of the Overground felt like a thousand forks scraping plates in my brain. Too many smells, too many rules, too many “Why are you like that?” stares.
The other rat kids laugh when I flap or when I say too much all at once. They say I’m “weird” or “wired wrong.” Some days I try to mask it, to pretend I’m like them, but it makes my tail hurt, like it’s trying to curl around my tummy really hard. And then I explode. Or freeze. Or run.
I got suspended again. Fourth time this term. Mum cried. I didn’t mean to kick the bin over in Science, it was just too bright and echoey and the new supply teacher wore citrus perfume and said, “Use your common sense, girl!” I tried. But I don’t have that kind of sense. I’ve got uncommon sense.
I’m officially autistic and have ADHD too. That’s what the paper says. The one the adults pass around like it’s a spell that’ll explain me.
Spoiler: it doesn’t.
I’m not bad. I’m not broken. I just see patterns other rats don’t. I hear the walls hum. And sometimes—when the vibrations start under my feet, I feel something shifting deep, deep below us. Not everyone notices the tremor under Station Corner or the way the grates tremble like they’re breathing. But I do. And lately, it’s been getting louder.
Last night I couldn’t sleep. My brain was whirring like an old synth in meltdown mode. That’s why they called me Synthia, after Dad’s music gear, because when I was born, I made more sounds than a drum machine possessed by ghosts. Still do.
Anyway, I went to my thinking place, near the old pipe junction. That’s where I heard it.
A voice.
Mechanical. Almost musical. Like someone trying to speak in Morse code through steel and sorrow.
It said: “Initiating sequence.”
Nobody believes me, of course. Nobody ever does. But I know what I heard.
Something is waking up beneath the Overground.
And maybe, just maybe…
It’s like me.
Yours in the static,
Synthia
🧠 Author’s Note
To every kid who’s ever been told they’re too much, too loud, too intense, too different—this story is for you.
Synthia’s world doesn’t always make sense to others. But she sees things they can’t. Hears signals they ignore. Feels patterns that aren’t in the textbooks.
She isn’t “not normal.” She’s brilliantly neurodivergent.
In this book, difference isn’t a problem, it’s the key to everything.