Marcelo is an autistic teenager. He’s getting ready to go into his senior year at Paterson, the school he attends for kids with cognitive disorder. He hears music inside his head, and he calls it the Internal Music, or IM. It’s not really a song, but it’s more like a rhythm that he hears sometimes. His father wants to send him to a “regular” high school so he gets a taste of the “real world”. Marcelo doesn’t want to go to a public high school because he’s been guaranteed the job of stable boy for the horses at Paterson. His dad also wants him to work in the mailroom of his law firm this summer. He tells Marcelo that he has his choice to work in the mailroom, and then go to Paterson, or he can skip working in the mailroom, but he would have to attend a public high school next school year. Marcelo chooses to work in the law firm. Marcelo gets to work and meets his coworker, Jasmine. Jasmine isn’t particularly happy to be working in the mailroom either, and she isn’t happy that Marcelo is working with her. She wanted to work with her friend, Belinda, but since Marcelo’s dad kind of runs the law firm, Marcelo got the job instead. In the law firm, he also meets Wendell. Wendell is the son of another worker there. Wendell is very arrogant, big-headed, and, in the words of Jasmine, he thinks he’s “God’s gift to women.” Wendell tries to teach Marcelo a thing or two about women, dating, and beauty, but Marcelo’s just not interested. He’s more interested in religion. He visits his rabbi often, and, as autistic kids usually have one special “focus”, his is religion.
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