By Abby Feiner

Blue is the color of the sky where he flies his kite. Blue is the color of the hat that his hero, Thomas the Tank Engine, wears. Blue is the color that his hand is being painted as he looks around at the hundreds of other boys just like him.

Andrew was diagnosed with Autism at the age of three. The diagnosis came after fourteen months of his parents arguing about taking him to see a doctor. His mother, Leslie, begged her husband to help her figure out why their two year old son barely said a word while his friends on the playground were forming full sentences. After they separated, Leslie called her estranged husband, Ethan, to inform him that their son was not just shy and would not just grow out of it, as he had insisted.

“I think that somewhere deep down, I knew that when we took him to the doctor, everything was going to change,” says Ethan, “I just didn’t think it would be this.” They both look at Andrew, instead of each other, when they speak.

When Andrew puts his hand on top of mine, Leslie’s eyes tear up as blue paint fills the crevices between my fingers. “He’s not really great with physical contact,” she says with a forced laugh. Andrew smiles, but does not look up. Instead he runs his finger along the blue beaded bracelet that I had bought earlier that morning. His eyes stay frozen on the puzzle piece charm that dangles from it.

“I’m not worried about his mental development,” says Leslie as she bends down to kiss her son’s forehead. “He’s doing so much better than he was a year ago.  But he just started kindergarten and he’s not making many friends.”

If Andrew knows that we’re talking about him, just inches from his face, he gives us no indication. He grabs at his mothers keychain, a small Rubik’s cube and begins to fiddle with it.

“Even though he hardly talks to me, it’s like he communicates with certain objects,” she says. “I know that doesn’t make sense, but I feel like this is his way of working through his frustration.” She looks down and we see that Andrew has solved the cube in less than five minutes. She laughs, “It’s kind of a cliché, isn’t it?”

Leslie looks at her son, who, like one in 68 children in America, is living with something that cannot be cured. He has dark brown hair, which is always shaved close to his head so that his Thomas the Tank Engine hat can go on with ease as it gets to be too small for his head. His eyes are bright blue and are so large that they seem to take up the majority of his face, and from the way he looks at his mother, it is clear that he, like most children his age, has learned how to work them to his advantage. He stares at her and she hands him a lollipop.

They continue to walk the 5k for a few minutes until they stop to look at a large banner. Surrounding the words “AUTISM SPEAKS” are hundreds of blue handprints. Andrew approaches the banner and, without hesitation, puts his own blue hand on top of a print on the banner that is about twice the size of his. Ethan, who had gone to take a phone call, kneels down next to his son. He does not say a word; he just looks up at the banner with Andrew until his five-year-old son indicates that he is ready to leave by scrunching his face and scuffing his shoes against the ground.

Leslie lifts Andrew off of the ground as a young girl who appears to be about his age runs up to them. She wears a “TEAM HAYLEY” shirt and a plastic tiara on top of her head. Her mother runs after her and, after apologizing to Leslie, asks her daughter,  “Captain Hayley” if she wants to say hello to Andrew. Hayley giggles and blows Andrew a kiss. Andrew looks past her with no expression on his face.  He focuses hard on the scene behind her in a way that indicates that he has seen her, but this is his escape. Maybe if he stares at the mob of people long enough, he can be a part of it, instead of here, with this giggly, aspiring ballerina.

Andrew reaches for his father. Ethan holds up his hand, which is now blue. Andrew stares at the paint as Ethan kisses his head. “Look Andrew, my hand is just like yours,” he says.