“It’s not really a punishment. It’s more like a therapy. It’ll calm you down and give you a break from your rebellious attitude. We’ve found that taking a break allows students to realize that their behavior was all rather silly and unnecessary and that following the few rules we have is simply better for everyone. Now I need you to concentrate on something calm and soothing, something right here in the room that you can actually see … say, one of our lab animals. They’re all pretty peaceful. Which one is your favorite?”
Aliya got up and inspected the small zoo in the back of the room. There was a rabbit, a guinea pig, a snake, a box turtle, a goldfish, and some mealworms.
“I guess I like the …,” Aliya started. She waited for Taliya to say the rest, but of course she didn’t, because she wasn’t in the room.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t quite catch that. Did you say mealworms?”
“No! The mealworms are …” Aliya stopped again. Try as she might, the words wouldn’t come. As she struggled to say “I like the goldfish,” it dawned on her what had transpired with Cole, Marlon, and Janno. Now that she was standing right in front of the animal cages, it was all very clear. Hypnotherapy! That was it!
“I know what you’re doing, you’re hypnotizing students to behave like …”
“… goldfish!” Taliya yelled quite out of the blue. The students in journalism class looked at her as though she were insane. Class had run several minutes late because they were learning to use the page layout program, and everyone wanted a turn manipulating the images on the screen. They were just gathering their backpacks when Taliya had her outburst.
“Are you all right?” asked Leo.
“I knew something was wrong when Tweedledum showed up without Tweedledee,” Victoria said wryly.
“… disgusting!” Taliya squeaked.
“Maybe someone should take Taliya to the nurse,” Mr. Mister said.
“… the animals they choose,” Taliya blurted. She ran to the computer and started typing directly into the layout program, her fingers flying across the keyboard as she channeled the information from her sister.
“Wow, look at her go!” Ruben said.
Jory read the computer screen as Taliya typed, his eyes growing wider and wider.
“… effects last for a day,” Taliya murmured. “Marlon chose the rabbit, Cole the turtle, and Janno the snake, which explains how at lunch today she ate an entire meatball sub without chewing.… Relaxing … wet … algae … treasure chest … bubbles … Oh my gosh!” she exclaimed, jumping to her feet. “It’s done. It’s really done. Aliya’s been hypnotized into thinking she’s a goldfish! Come on!”
Taliya bolted from the room, followed by the rest of her classmates. In no time they were at Mr. Gruber’s science class, arriving just as Aliya emerged, wiggling her rear end and making kissing motions with her lips.
“Aliya? Are you okay?” Taliya moved toward her sister, who quickly wiggled down the hallway.
“How can she breathe on land?” murmured Margo as the group followed the elusive girl. They caught up with her at the end of the hall, where the janitor had left his cleaning cart momentarily. Taliya took a step toward Aliya, who darted behind the cart.
“Come on, Aliya,” Taliya coaxed. “It’s time to go home.” But Aliya wouldn’t budge. Taliya moved around to the other side of the cart, but Aliya slipped to the opposite side, always keeping the cart between them.
“Hey, you kids, stay away from my cleaning supplies,” Mr. Parker said, returning from the janitorial closet with a mop.
“Sorry, we were just trying to get my sister to come with us,” Taliya explained. “She thinks she’s a fish. If we don’t take her with us now, she could end up anywhere.”
“She might end up flushed down the toilet!” Margo fretted.
“Why don’t you just go fishing,” Victoria said sarcastically, but much to her surprise her suggestion was taken seriously.
“That’s a good idea,” Mr. Parker said. He cut a three-inch section of string from a ball of twine that he kept on the cart and handed it to Taliya. “Try this.”
Taliya dangled the twine in front of Aliya’s face as though it were a worm on a hook, instantly drawing Aliya’s gaze. She wiggled eagerly toward her sister, who kept a gap of three feet between the two of them, and in this way Taliya led her twin down the hall and out the double doors, walking backward and jiggling the twine.
Twenty-four hours later, Aliya was back to being her old self except for one important thing: Aliya could start and finish her own sentences. So could Taliya. To celebrate, the next day they came to school wearing different-colored headbands. The yo-yo remained at home.
LEO’S STORY
Student Activist Stages Rally
By LEO REISS
So often kids are accused of being passive, preferring to watch TV, play video games, or spend hours on their computers rather than directly engage with their community. Not so at Kaboom Academy, where seventh grader Lee O’Reese led a group of over a hundred students in a rally to draw attention to the needs of disabled students at the school. Though this reporter was part of the demonstration, he was unable to track down other participants for interviews. Indeed, with only fifty-five students enrolled in the school, it is a small mystery how so many demonstrators came to participate in the rally to begin with. That said, the event is one that will long be remembered.
Leo headed upstairs to Miss Schacher’s classroom. It was only October and already he needed help with math. He wasn’t surprised; this had happened every year for the past three years. Ever since he’d lost most of his vision the summer between fourth and fifth grades, he’d struggled to keep up in his classes. Leo was not much of a complainer—he didn’t like to trouble other people with his problems—but even he had to admit that the last few years had been exceptionally rough.
A month after his tenth birthday, Leo started getting horrible headaches, accompanied by nausea and dizziness. He was thirsty all the time, and his vision was blurry. When his parents took him to the doctor, he was referred to a brain specialist, who put him through a series of tests, including a magnetic resonance imaging scan, or MRI, to take pictures of his brain. The procedure involved being stripped of anything metal that would be attracted to the magnets in the machine, lying on a slab with a thin blanket covering him up to his neck, and being fed into a tiny hole where he was told to remain perfectly still for close to an hour while being subjected to loud noises, all the while wondering if he was going to live or die. It did not help that his mother cried the entire time.
After getting the results the doctor diagnosed Leo with craniopharyngioma, a tumor near his pituitary gland at the base of his brain. The good news was that it was benign, meaning it was not cancerous, and that the prognosis for Leo’s recovery was very good. The bad news was that once the doctors began the surgery to remove the tumor, they realized that the tumor had already done significant damage to Leo’s optic nerve. Not only would his vision not improve, but it would most likely get worse.
It did get worse.
In one summer Leo went from being a popular Little League pitcher and skateboarder who had a good eye for drawing to a kid who would never be good at sports again, could barely see an object twenty feet ahead of himself, let alone draw it, and whose friends drifted away, uncomfortable with his condition. Leo could still see shapes and shadows, but sometimes he wished he had gone completely blind so he could don dark glasses, tap around with a white cane, use a Seeing Eye dog: the whole package. At least then people would believe he couldn’t see anything. But without those physical manifestations of blindness, he only confused people. They kept forgetting about his condition, and once they were made aware it was too late—they had already passed judgment on him. He found out the hard way that first impressions really are important.
School became a nightmare. Leo could get around his elementary school campus all right; after five years there—kindergarten through fourth—he knew the layout of the
campus well. Even so, the school wasn’t well equipped for somebody with limited vision. His parents didn’t want Leo placed in a “special” class with kids who had learning disabilities, pointing out that “special” usually meant “remedial” and that Leo had been a very good student the previous year. Instead, Leo was mainstreamed with the rest of the student body, but of course he was not like the rest of the student body. He needed to press his nose up against a book to read it. He had to remind teachers to say out loud what they had written on the board because he couldn’t see it, even from the front row. He made requests that the classroom not be rearranged or he wouldn’t be able to find anything. He was forced to ask people to read the specials on the cafeteria menu for him. Nobody wanted to be paired with Leo because he was slower at getting assignments done. Every day he came home depressed, wanting to cry, angry, but as soon as he saw his mom, he sucked it all up.
As tough as the whole experience had been for him, it had been devastating to Leo’s mother. She had gotten so worried and worked up, she’d stopped eating. It was weeks before she could look at Leo without bursting into tears. His mom still seemed so fragile; he didn’t want to make it worse. He also felt guilty. Leo’s parents couldn’t have children; he had been adopted. For ten years he had been the perfect son to his father: joining him at ball games, helping him build stuff in the basement workroom, and sharing his father’s obsession with airplanes to the point that they had planned for Leo to learn how to fly a plane before he was sixteen. He had also been a very good son to his mother. He could tell she got an immense amount of pleasure from having a healthy, handsome, helpful, and happy boy. But now he was damaged. He was not healthy and was far less helpful—in fact, he needed constant assistance. He couldn’t tell if he was handsome—in the mirror his face was a blur. And he wasn’t very happy; he was just hanging in there.
And what about his future? His plans to be a pilot had instantly evaporated. He thought the MRI machine was pretty cool, and he had gotten more interested in medical science recently, but what kind of job would he be able to get? It didn’t matter how many times the doctor assured him that visually impaired people could live meaningful, active, and enriching lives; he didn’t believe it, and neither did his parents. Sure, they said he’d be able to get a college degree, they encouraged him to aim high and dream big dreams, but meanwhile, his dad was making plans to remodel his basement work space into an apartment. Leo knew his parents were expecting him to live with them for the rest of his life. Nobody even mentioned the possibility of Leo meeting a girl and getting married. That idea landed firmly in the category of miracles.
Leo moaned out loud as he trudged up the second flight of stairs to the third floor. Thinking about his future gave him a stomachache. What if his parents adopted another child, a healthy one? He wouldn’t blame them if they did. After all, who would care for them in their old age? Who would be able to support them when they truly needed it? They probably wouldn’t adopt again, though, out of consideration for his feelings. Thank goodness for that. Meanwhile, he would just try to make his problem appear to be as trivial as possible.
The only person who had made the experience bearable was Jory. Jory and Leo had long ago bonded over their interest in flying, Leo by plane, Jory by his own devices. They both liked to draw too. Leo sketched landscapes and imaginary worlds while Jory designed superheroes. After Leo’s operation Jory came by to visit constantly, and even when it was clear that Leo’s eyesight had been permanently damaged, Jory treated him the same as he always had. He never made Leo feel helpless or felt sorry for him. Somehow Jory knew that normality was what his friend wanted and needed most. At the same time Leo was struggling through his visual problems, Jory was dealing with his parents’ separation and later, their divorce. In their mutual suffering the two were on a level playing field. They’d sit on Jory’s roof, talking about flying and all the places they would go. Jory never once reminded Leo that he would probably never pilot a plane, and that if he did go anywhere interesting he wouldn’t be able to see it. Leo really appreciated that.
Still, as much as Leo had Jory’s support, and as much as he wanted to minimize the impact his blindness had on his life, the truth was that everything was harder for him, including the mundane aspects of school. Just navigating a new campus was hard, and now, walking down the hallway looking for Miss Schacher’s room, Leo had to count the number of doors he passed, touching each one to figure out when he arrived at his destination, because he could not see the numbers over the classroom.
Leo knocked. “Come in!” a voice called out brightly. He opened the door and entered. From the smell of the room, he could tell Miss Schacher was eating her lunch—a tuna sandwich, if he wasn’t mistaken. Being blind really did sharpen your other senses.
“Hello, Leo,” Miss Schacher said. He could see her shadow rise from her desk and walk toward him. “I understand you’re here for some tutoring.”
“Yes, I didn’t get a very good grade on the quiz,” Leo admitted. “I thought I understood the material, but …” His voice trailed off as he held up his test paper. It had a red B– circled at the top. Miss Schacher took the quiz from him and looked it over.
“You know, it seems to me that you understand the concepts. There are just a lot of careless multiplication errors here.” She handed the paper back. “Were you rushing?”
“Kind of. It takes me a little longer to read the problem because of, you know.…” Leo pointed at his glasses. He hated to admit that his poor vision was holding him back in any way. All of his teachers were supposed to have received a special notice about him so that he wouldn’t have to keep explaining it. But if they had gotten such a notice, it was pretty apparent that most of his teachers either didn’t believe it, didn’t understand it, or didn’t read it. Leo couldn’t clearly see the expression on Miss Schacher’s face, but her verbal response clued him in to the fact that she had no idea what he was talking about.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Miss Schacher said. “But listen. Over the years I’ve found that students who think they are bad at math aren’t so much having trouble with the concepts as simply not grasping the basics. Have you ever used a multiplication table?”
“Yes, in third grade,” Leo replied.
“So you know how to use it,” she confirmed.
“Yes.”
“Wonderful! I just got a new one. It’s right over there.” Leo glanced across the room in the direction where Miss Schacher was pointing, but all he could see were dark rectangular shadows on the wall. “Now I’m afraid there’s a teacher’s meeting in the auditorium during lunch that I can’t miss, so I’ll leave you with the multiplication table. Practice with it. Some people require that kind of visual aid.”
Leo was going to tell her that visual aids were of little use to him, but she had already grabbed her sweater and was out the door. Leo sighed, heading to the back of the room. He walked right up to the wall until he was only a foot away and stared at the various posters. One was a picture of Albert Einstein. Next to it was a picture by M. C. Escher, a graphic artist who was a favorite of many mathematicians because of his depictions of impossible structures and the metamorphosis of images. Leo recognized this particular picture of an infinitely descending staircase from a book his family owned. The next poster was higher up and Leo was too short to see it. He stood on a table that was up against the wall so that he could get a closer look. As he climbed up there was a small flash of light, as though somebody had taken a picture, which of course he didn’t notice.
The third poster was a humorous flow chart describing the process of a typical student’s decision making when it came to studying. While reading the comments in the bubbles and chuckling, Leo heard a laugh right next to him. He was so surprised he nearly fell off the table. With him on the platform stood another person, and this person also had his nose only a few inches from the flow chart.
“Hey!” Leo said.
“Hi!” the boy said.<
br />
“What are you doing?”
“I’m reading this poster.”
“I can see that. Are you making fun of me?” Leo said angrily.
“No. I have to look this closely. I can’t see very well. I’m legally blind.”
Leo blinked, surprised. He had no idea there was somebody else at the school with visual impairment. “You’re kidding me. I’m legally blind too! What’s your name?”
“Lee O’Reese. Seventh grade. I came in here to get some help with math, but the teacher took off.”
“Yeah, I was here when that happened. I didn’t know you were in the room, though.”
“I came back here to look for the multiplication table, but I don’t see it.”
“Me either.”
If the boys had knelt down and placed their noses an inch from the surface of the platform on which they were standing, they would have seen a small sign indicating that they were in fact on top of the multiplication table. The table to which Miss Schacher was referring was not a chart but an actual piece of furniture, and one of Dr. Kaboom’s many inventions. This is how it worked: a small dial on the side of the table could be set from one to twelve. Once it was set, any object placed on the table would be multiplied by that amount by pressing the button in the lower right-hand corner. If the dial was set for six and three pencils were placed on the surface, with the push of the button they would be instantly multiplied into eighteen pencils, all very real, all able to write, erase, break, and stick into the acoustic tiles in the ceiling if flicked just the right way. If the button was pushed again they would become 108 pencils. One more push would yield 648 pencils. It was a wonderful tool for people with good eyesight.
But it was not of much use to Leo, who had accidentally stepped on the button while climbing on top of the table. The dial had been set for two, so Leo had been instantly doubled. Unfortunately, when he hopped off the table, he accidentally brushed the dial, moving it to eight. Meanwhile, Lee sat on the edge of the table, swinging his feet.
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