17th June 2020
Marcus
Marcus appears in the short Loop. He is an experienced canoeist and is a friend of Renee. At camp, he arrives late to canoe with the rest of the team, who have already begun their loop. He is then partnered with the non-verbal autistic girl Renee, much to his confusion. He greets her with a fist bump, but he doesn’t know how to really communicate with her. Despite this barrier, he tries to be friendly and show her his paddling, but Renee doesn’t like it. She shows him a poop emoji on her phone, so Marcus padddles to the port-a-potty at the bank. However, Marcus realises that Renèe didn’t want to go to the toilet at all, but wanted to stim by brushing her hands on the reeds, which Marcus joins in with. Realising that Renee loves her ringtone, he paddles the canoe into a tunnel so Renee could amplify her ringtone. Unfortunately, it also amplifies the noise from a nearby speedboat, which distresses Renee and causes her to have a meltdown. In trying to calm her down from her meltdown, Marcus inadvertently makes things worse. After leaving her alone for some time, he picks up a reed and sets it down next to Renee’s hiding place; under the canoe, and apologises to her. After some more time passes, Renee picks up the reed and calms down. Together, they come to understand each other as they both imitate Renee’s ringtone and they paddle back to camp in the canoe together. At the end of the short, Marcus sends a text to Renee asking her if she wants to hang out with him.