The Year We Fell Down

by Sarina Bowen

  So Calculus 105 was accessible, if not exciting.

  After that, it was off to Economics 101, a class my father had suggested. “I always wished I knew more about money,” he’d confessed, in a rare moment of regret. “I asked your brother to give econ a try, and he liked it. I’d like you to give it a try, too.” This was a powerful negotiating tactic, seeing as I’d played the Big Brother card for my own selfish purposes. My knockout punch in the fraught discussion of where I should go to college this year had been: “Damien went to Harkness, I’m going too.” Neither of my parents had been able to look their disabled daughter in the eye and argue with that.

  They’d caved, and so to please my father, I signed up for a semester’s worth of microeconomics. Whatever that was. The upshot was that my Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings — with Calculus and then econ — were going to be awfully dull.

  The economics lecture hall was big and old, with ancient oak seats in tight rows. There was no obvious wheelchair parking spot, so I reversed myself into position against the back wall, next to a couple of old mismatched chairs.

  A minute later, someone dropped heavily into the chair next to me. A glance to my right revealed a tanned, muscular forearm stowing a pair of wooden crutches.

  It seemed that my hot neighbor had arrived.

  My little feathered hope fairy woke up and whispered into my ear. Economics just got better.

  With a groan, Hartley kicked his backpack out in front of him on the wood floor, and then wrestled the heel of his broken leg on top of it. Then he tipped his head back against the paneled wall behind us and said, “Shoot me, Callahan. Why did I sign up for a class so far away from McHerrin?”

  “You could always call the gimpmobile,” I suggested.

  Turning his chin, those chocolaty brown eyes caught me in their tractor beam. “Sorry?”

  For a second there, I almost forgot what I’d been saying. The gimpmobile. Right. “There’s a van.” I handed him my accessible map. “You call this number ahead of time, and they’ll pick you up for class.”

  “Who knew?” Hartley frowned at the map. “Is that what you do?”

  “Honestly? I’d rather paste a bright red L to my forehead than call the van.” I made the universal sign for “loser” with my fingers, and Hartley snorted with laughter. His dimple appeared, and I had to fight off the urge to reach over and put my thumb over it.

  Just then, a skinny girl with straight dark hair and giant glasses slid into the seat on the other side of Hartley.

  “Excuse me,” he said, turning to her. “This section is reserved for gimps.”

  She looked up at him, eyes huge, and then bolted from her chair like a frightened rabbit. I watched her run down the aisle and slide into another seat.

  “Well, I knew you were kidding,” I said.

  “Right?” Hartley gave me another smile so warm and devilish that I could not look away. Then he slapped a notebook onto his lap just as a professor began tapping the microphone on the lectern.

  Professor Rumpel looked to be about 109 years old, give or take a decade. “Class,” he began. “It really is true what they say about economics. The answer to any test question is ‘supply and demand.’” The old man let out a breathy gust of air into the microphone.

  Hartley leaned closer to me and whispered, “I think that was supposed to be a joke.”

  The proximity made my face feel hot. “We are in serious trouble,” I whispered back.

  But really, I was referring to me.

  Hartley’s cell phone rang as class ended, so I gave him a friendly wave and rolled out of the lecture hall alone. Then, after consulting my trusty gimp map, I headed toward the biggest dining hall on campus. Harkness Commons had been built in the 1930s to accommodate the entire college at once. Slowly, I wheeled into the crowded, cavernous space. Before me stretched over one hundred wooden tables. After swiping my ID at the door, I had to watch the flow of bodies inside to determine where to go next.

  Students flowed past me toward one wall of the room. So I wound my wheelchair through the tables toward what looked like a line. Drifting forward while trying to read a chalkboard, I accidentally bumped the person in line in front of me. She spun around quickly, a look of irritation on her face until she looked down and realized what had hit her. “Sorry!” she said quickly.

  I felt my face flush. “I’m sorry,” I echoed. And why was she sorry, anyway? I’m the dope who ran into her.

  This was one of the strange truths about driving a wheelchair. Nine out of ten times, anyone I bumped — or maybe even flattened — would apologize. It made no sense at all, and somehow it also pissed me off.

  I found the end of the line. But then I noticed that everyone else in line had collected a tray already, and silverware. So I steered myself out of line, found the trays and cutlery, and then added myself to the end again. Waiting in line in my chair put me at eye-level with other people’s rear ends. It was the same way the world had looked when I was seven years old.

  — Hartley

  I swear to God, the guy who made my sandwich could not have moved slower if he had both wrists tied together. I stood there, my ankle throbbing, my good leg shaking. It didn’t help that I’d skipped breakfast. By the time he handed the plate over, I thought I might pass out.

  “Thanks,” I said. I took the plate in my right hand, and then jammed my right crutch under my armpit. I tried to walk away like that, without gripping the crutch handle. My balance off, I swayed, and then had to lean against the service counter just to stay vertical. My crutch fell to the floor with a bang.

  Fail. The only saving grace was that the sandwich didn’t jump ship, too.

  “Hey gimp!” a voice called from behind me.

  I turned around, but it took me a minute to find Corey, because I was looking for someone my own height. After an awkward second, I looked and spotted her. “Callahan,” I said. “Did you see that suave maneuver?”

  With a smile, she took the plate out of my hand and set it on her tray. “Don’t kill yourself in the name of a…” she looked at the plate. “Turkey club. I’ll carry it for you if you can give me a second.”

  “Thanks,” I sighed. I hopped aside, and waited while the same under-motivated sandwich guy made her lunch.

  Several hours later (I might be exaggerating), our tray contained two sandwiches, chips, cookies, my glasses of milk and her diet soda. “I think I see a free table over there, in the next zip code,” I muttered, crutching forward. Corey wheeled our booty to the table, where I yanked one of the heavy wooden chairs out of the way to make a parking spot for her.

  Then I collapsed into a chair. “Jesus, Mary and mother of God.” I rested my forehead against the heels of my hands. “That only took about seven times as long as it’s supposed to.”

  Corey handed me my plate. “It’s a new injury, isn’t it?” she asked, picking up her sandwich.

  “Is it that obvious? I did it a week ago at hockey preseason training camp.”

  “Hockey, huh?” A strange look crossed her face.

  “Sort of. See, I didn’t break it playing hockey, because that would at least make sense. I broke the leg falling off a climbing wall.”

  Her jaw dropped. “Did the ropes break?”

  Not exactly. “There may not have been ropes. Also, it may have been two in the morning.” I winced, because it’s no fun telling a pretty girl how big an idiot you are. “Also, I may have been drunk.”

  “Ouch. So you can’t even tell people that you’re the victim of a poke check gone wrong?”

  I raised an eyebrow at her. “Are you a hockey fan, Callahan?”

  “Kind of.” She fidgeted with a potato chip. “My father is a high-school hockey coach,” she said. “And my brother Damien was the senior wing on your team last year.”

  “No shit! You’re Callahan’s little sister?”

  She smiled, which made her blue eyes glitter. She had a kick-ass smile, and rosy coloring, as if she’d just run a 5K ra
ce. “That’s right.”

  “See, I knew you were cool.” I took a gulp of milk.

  “So,” she picked up her sandwich. “If your break is only a week old, you must be in a lot of pain.”

  I shrugged while chewing on a bite. “The pain I can handle. But it’s just so fucking awkward. Getting dressed takes a half hour. And taking a shower is ridiculous.”

  “At least temporarily.”

  I froze mid-bite, dismayed by my own stupidity. “Shit, Callahan. Listen to me bitching about twelve weeks in a cast…” I put down my sandwich. “I’m kind of an asshole.”

  She flushed. “No, I didn’t mean it that way. I swear. Because if you can’t complain a little bit, then neither can I.”

  “Why not?” I think I’d just proved that she had every right to bitch. Especially with assholes like me running around.

  Corey toyed with her napkin. “Well, after my accident, my parents sent me to a support group for people with spinal cord injuries, which is how I ended up…” she waved her hands over her lap. “Anyway, the room was full of people who can’t move a whole lot more body parts than I can’t move. Many of them can’t feel their arms. They can’t feed themselves, or turn over in bed. They couldn’t even get out of a burning building, or send an email, or hug someone.”

  I rested my face in my hand. “Well that’s uplifting.”

  “Tell me about it. Those people scared the crap out of me, and I never went back. And if I can whine — and trust me, I do — you might as well gripe about hopping around like a flamingo.” She picked up her sandwich again.

  “So…” I didn’t have any idea whether this was too personal a question. “When was this?”

  “When was what?” Her eyes evaded me.

  “The accident.”

  “January fifteenth.”

  “Wait…this January fifteenth? Like, eight months ago?” She gave me a tiny nod. “So…last week you said, ‘fuck it, it’s September. I’d better move across the country and get on with it?’”

  Corey pounded her soda, quite possibly to escape my scrutiny. “Well…more or less. But seriously, what is the proper mourning period over the use of one’s legs?” She looked me full in the face then, one eyebrow raised.

  Fuck. This girl probably just cured me from whining for the rest of my life, right there. “You are hardcore, Corey Callahan.”

  She gave me a little shrug. “The college offered me a year’s deferral, but I didn’t take it. You met my parents. I didn’t want to sit home and watch them wring their hands.”

  My phone rang, and I had to give Corey the universal signal for “just a second” while I picked up Stacia. “Hi, hottie,” I answered. “I’m sitting at a table against the back wall. Love you too.” I stashed the phone. “Okay…wait. So a little tender loving care drove you into a different time zone?”

  “The three of us were half insane last year. This was best for everyone.”

  That hadn’t occurred to me, but it should have. When you have an accident, it doesn’t just happen to you. “I can almost see it. My mom drove me batshit crazy last week. But I probably deserved it.”

  “Your mom was pissed about your broken leg?”

  “Sure she was. It’s not like I broke it saving babies from a burning building. My mom missed a couple days of work taking care of me, and now there’s a whopping E.R. bill, too.”

  “Your coach must be spitting fire,” Corey pointed out.

  “You got it. I’ve heard the ‘You Let Everyone Down’ lecture several times already.” I began to watch the door for Stacia. A couple of minutes and a half a sandwich later, a gorgeous girl appeared in the archway. As she stood there, scanning the tables, I couldn’t look away. Stacia had it all. She was tall, and yet somehow curvy, with flowing yellow hair and the bearing of a princess. When she spotted me, her big hazel eyes lit up. Then she pointed those long legs in my direction. And the first thing she did when she arrived beside me was to kiss me full on the mouth.

  We’d been dating for most of a year, and it still shocked me every time she did that.

  “Stacia,” I said after she released my lips. “This is my new neighbor Callahan. She and her roommate Dana are in Beaumont House, too.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Stacia said quickly, with the barest glance at Corey. “Hartley, are you ready to go?”

  I laughed. “Babe, you don’t know how hard we had to work for this food,” I said. “So give me a few minutes to finish it.” I pulled out a chair for her.

  Stacia sat down, but didn’t bother to conceal her irritation. She stabbed at her phone while I took my time with my cookies and milk.

  Corey had gone quiet, but that was okay, because Stacia was always ready to fill dead air with another of her first-world problems. “My hairdresser says she can’t fit me in tomorrow. That’s so wrong,” my girlfriend complained.

  “I’m pretty sure they have salons in Paris,” I said, not that she’d listen. Stacia was the pickiest girl on the planet. The food in the dining halls didn’t meet her standards — so she bought most of her meals off campus. Her shampoo was mail-ordered, because none of the fifty brands at the drugstore would do. She wasn’t exactly warm to new people, either.

  And yet Stacia looked at me the same way she looked at a shopping bag from Prada. The fancy girl from Greenwich, Connecticut wanted this guy. This guy right here, the one in the Bruins cap and the Gold’s Gym T-shirt.

  I could tell you it didn’t make me feel a foot taller, but I’d be lying.

  Corey drained her soda, and then began to stack our stuff back on her tray.

  “Hey, Stacia?” I put my hand on my girlfriend’s wrist to get her attention. “Will you do us a solid and bus this?”

  She looked up from her phone, surprised. Then she glanced from the tray to the back of the dining hall, as if calculating the effort. For a long moment, she hesitated. I could tell that Corey was just on the verge of offering to do it when Stacia rose suddenly, grabbed the tray and stomped off.

  I shook my head, aiming a sheepish smile at my new neighbor. “At her house, the staff does that sort of thing.”

  I could tell by the look on Corey’s face that she had no idea whether I was joking or not. Actually, I wasn’t.

  See, Stacia was a piece of work. But she was my piece of work.

  Chapter Three: The Furniture Genie

  — Corey

  “So how was the first day?” Dana asked when I arrived home that afternoon. She was perched on our window seat, painting her fingernails.

  “Good,” I said. “I found all three of my classes on the first try. You?”

  “Yeah! And I really like my history of art professor.”

  “Is he hot?” I made a comical wiggle with my eyebrows.

  “He is if you’re into seventy-five year olds.”

  “Who says I’m not?” I did a wheelie in my chair, because there was really no furniture in my way. Dana’s desk was against one wall, her trunk shoved up next to it. Our room still echoed.

  “Whoa! Isn’t that dangerous?” she asked.

  “Nope.” I did it again, popping back onto two wheels and then spinning in a circle. “But it does make me dizzy.”

  “Isn’t there such a thing as wheelchair basketball?” Dana asked, blowing on her nails.

  “Probably,” I dodged. Given my sporty history, more than a dozen people had asked me the same question already. But before my accident, I’d never been interested in hoops. And I was doubly uninterested in some kind of adaptive bullshit. Why did people think that sounded like fun? Why must all gimps love basketball?

  Dana capped her nail polish. “So…I’m going to the jam tonight. Do you want to come?”

  “What’s a jam?”

  “It’s a concert, a showcase for the a cappella singing groups. Are you going to rush?”

  I shook my head. “I gave up choir in the eighth grade because it conflicted with hockey.”

  “You don’t have to be crazy good,” Dana argued. “T
here are ten groups, and it’s social as much as musical.”

  “Let’s go to the jam, then,” I said. “We’ll check it out.”

  “Awesome! It’s right after dinner. I’ll find this auditorium…” She hopped up to dig a campus map out of her bag.

  “Nice TV, ladies,” a sexy voice said from the open doorway.

  I looked up to see Hartley leaning against our doorjamb. “Thanks,” I said, my heart rate kicking up a notch.

  “What you really need is a sofa right here,” he pointed to the empty wall just inside the door. “They’re selling used ones on Fresh Court.”

  “We saw them,” Dana said. “But we don’t know how to summon a furniture genie to carry it for us.”

  Hartley scraped a hand along his gorgeous jaw. “I guess two gimps and a chick won’t cut it. I’ll work on it at dinner.” He looked at his watch. “…Which starts now. Takers?”

  “Sure,” Dana said. “I haven’t been to the Beaumont dining hall yet.”

  “So let’s go,” Hartley said, turning his crutches toward the outside door.

  Dana and I followed Hartley out of McHerrin and down the street. Beaumont House, in all its Gothic glory, had big iron gates. Dana swept her ID in front of the reader and the gate clicked open. She held the door for Hartley and then for me.

  The gimp parade was slow going, with Hartley on crutches, and me driving cautiously. The flagstone pathway was uneven, and I didn’t want to catch my wheels on one of the cracks and do a face plant. It was hard enough being The Girl in the Wheelchair. I didn’t need to be The Girl Who Ejected From Her Wheelchair.

  We made our way through one small stone courtyard and into the larger one, which was on every official Harkness tour. My brother Damien had once complained about dodging tourists and their cameras when he was on the way to class. But if that was the price of living in an historic granite and marble castle, so be it.

  On the far side of the courtyard, Hartley stopped our progress. “Shit,” he said, looking up at the building. “The dining hall is on the second floor. I forgot about the stairs.”

  “You know, Beaumont dining hall isn’t on the accessible map,” I said. “I think I’ll try another dining hall.” Commons wasn’t open for dinner, but I’d already memorized which houses had first-floor dining rooms.