How I Fly

by Anne Eliot

  “Look, let’s not call it a journal. It was more of a notebook.” I cringe, thinking of the pages and pages of notes and plans I’d made in a spiral-bound notebook about the various ways I could get myself hurt on the football field. Mostly, it was a list of things that went wrong every time I tried to hurt myself and failed, with directions on how get things right the next time. I’d pasted in medical drawings and photos of completely wrecked shoulders, knees, and ankles. Included news articles of all NFL and college players taken out by injury, with lists of the hows and whys behind the injuries that made it so they simply couldn’t return to football.

  “Okay, we’ll call it a notebook,” Tom agrees. “And you must know your father didn’t take the charges lying down. He’s launched a counter-case stating that you want to live with him.”

  “Even though I’d sign in blood that I don’t want to live with him?”

  “The man has rights. And despite what you and I personally think about your father, the charges your mom brought against him are very serious as well. The judge would never take them lightly.”

  All of the air I’d been breathing instantly rushes away, and I clutch the book I’ve been gripping closer to my chest. “What about my rights? Don’t I have any? Anything my mom’s told the judge is true. Every word of what I wrote, if it’s allowed to be used, and even if it’s really awkward, it’s all true. I can’t, I won’t be near that man again. Please tell me he doesn’t have a chance to force me to live with him.”

  “Not based on the reports I’ve been filing on you every month.” Tom smiles and squeezes my shoulder. “Save it for the judge, son. It’s all depending on your interview with him today. There will be a restraining order against your father until you come of age, and then you can decide if you want to establish an adult relationship with him. It’s been a long road for your mom. What she did wasn’t easy, and your father put her through the wringer. From what I’ve heard, she’s lost her job because she had to relocate to Vancouver in order to appear here at court as needed. Your father locked up almost all of the family finances on her. Whatever she had left, she spent paying for that fancy lawyer at her side. Hope you can stomach being part of a single-mom family that’s about to be flat broke until their divorce is final. Although you will be provided for, your dad’s smart enough and seems rotten enough to lock your mom down in court proceedings for years.”

  I dart a glance at my mom. She’s biting her lip. By her wide-eyed expression, I can tell she’s wondering if I’m going to trust her. This actually hurts my heart. I bet she’s thinking she doesn’t deserve my trust, when in fact me, and my impatient, bad temper, is half the reason she’s here today.

  If she faced down my dad without me around to help run interference, this woman went through extremes I can well imagine. If she’s given up our house, money, probably her fancy car—then she did it all for me. I’ll trust her. I’ll give this deal a fighting chance, and I’ll give my mom my heart simply because she fought for me.

  Despite our pasts and the way she could never stand up to Dad before, I know these last six months must have changed her as much as they’ve changed me completely. She and I share something we’ve never even talked about. Dad. How he treated us—what he did to us on a daily basis by slowly turning his controlling screws. That had changed us to the point we couldn’t recognize each other as people who needed to stick together.

  But I see her now. She’s my mom. I’m her son.

  I can only hope without my dad in the mix, forcing us down all the time, she and I can finally figure out some kind of new family. I’m not too proud after all these months to tell her or any judge who asks me that I need that. I need a family and a mom, especially because I understand that I never really had a normal dad.

  I wish I could leap tables and tell my mom that I love her. Tell her we’re going to be fine. But over these past months, I’ve learned restraint and patience and courtroom process. So I whisper, “Tom. Tom? Do you think I can—”

  “Order. Order in the court. It is now 9 a.m. All stand to formally greet Judge Chambers to open this session.”

  Judge Chambers stands up from his seat along with us, nods, and then retakes his chair.

  As everyone in the courtroom is rustling to take our seats, Tom whispers, “Hold your breath. Cross your fingers and start praying.”

  “Already doing that, but do you think I can—”

  I pause to smile at my mom in a way that I hope communicates everything I’m thinking. I want her to see that I’m suddenly able to breathe like I’ve never been able to breathe in my entire life. From the way she’s also pulling in air, I think Mom’s on the same page. But that’s when her face crumples and tears start rolling down her face. Her sobs startle everyone in the room.

  “Oh no,” Tom mutters. “I hope she doesn’t cause a postponement.”

  “Please ask the judge if I can hug my mom before we start? I know that will help her.”

  Thankfully, the judge says yes.

  Ellen

  Because of the crutches, I come to class way too early and grab the long table up front, closest to the teacher. At least I think the sandy-haired, rather tall, skinny and frazzled-looking dude fiddling with computers at the front of the classroom is our teacher. I look around the giant room, feeling both nervous and excited.

  This is not at all like a high school classroom. It’s a huge, open-spaced room shaped like a mini amphitheater. It’s equipped with the most amazing-looking electronic, wireless viewing screen that looks like it fell out of the future because it’s hanging by some thin wire from high above. The effect of the high ceilings plus that thing makes my heart do flips every time I look at it and imagine the teacher—I mean university professor—showing off our photographs on that thing.

  *Screams: My first university classroom, my first real professor! Pinches arm to make sure this is not a dream.*

  The table I’ve picked is next to the double-wide side doors where I entered. To access them, I didn’t have to navigate the main entrance at the top of the stepped tiers behind me. My resident advisor had directed me to come through the little garden behind my dorm room instead. He gave me a special key and pointed me where to go. I used the same key to enter the main photography arts building through another side door, which led me down a small hallway to a door labeled with the classic wheelchair graphic they’d put on my dorm room—only instead these doors were marked: Handicapped Entrance and FIRE EXIT ONLY. Despite the horrible signage, I was slightly relieved and thankful that this school has at least realized and accommodated for the fact that not every student can easily go up and down stairs.

  There’s also a convenient restroom right outside these doors. Should I ever need to make a quiet and unobtrusive exit with my crutches and my wobble-shakes, I’m all set. The little garden also has a shortcut that leads me to the cafeteria. Instead of having to circumnavigate the entire quad to get around from dorm to class to the other buildings, I will only have to crutch through that cute park. Only professors and any other disabled kids will have access to that garden. I took full advantage of my access and even sat by the pond last night, staring up at stars, listening to the crickets as well as discovering the treasure of the five million fireflies flying around the whole place.

  I can’t wait to figure out the best way to photograph those tiny bugs. Watching them made me think of Cam and how much he’d love this place and the fireflies. Studying light was his favorite thing. He would also have loved the look of this amazing skylight-lit classroom.

  I dart a glance and then a tentative smile to the girl who just joined my table. Considering she doesn’t have any sort of disability or any other obvious reason for coming to class extra early, I assume she’s here early to sit up front and overachieve. This is also my goal when it comes to digital photography classes, so I’m hoping she and I might turn out to be friends.

  Instead of smiling back, she rolls her eyes and turns away to her cell phone as she clumps into
her seat. Maybe she watched me limp and topple around while I found a spot to store my crutches out of the way, and she has already placed me in her ‘not-cool’ radar?

  *Sighs: Oh well.*

  I’d meant to save chairs for Patrick, Laura and hopefully Harrison, but by the time I’d settled myself, the room was crowded. All seats on the first tier right behind me had filled. When the girl next to me stops texting and darts me another glance, I try again to smile at her again, but she returns it with a back-off glower.

  Does she know her attitude now makes me want to check my hair and smell my pits?

  Because Cam’s still half on my mind and now I want to get away from Darth Vader’s future wife, I turn away, making a huge show that I’m looking for my real friends anyhow.

  Sadly, though I know it’s futile, I can’t help myself. I slowly scan every single face in the room just in case he somehow showed up late during the night. It’s hard to squelch hopes that he might have missed the check-in day. Maybe he’s been here but living off campus in the dorms, because I heard there are a bunch of local students doing that for the summer. Even before I scan the last row…I already know. It’s like I can feel that he’s not here. Even though it’s silly, I figure the endless heaviness that’s become my heart since he went away would fade away—or at least change some—beat a little lighter if he suddenly came back in to my life.

  Right? Or…wrong?

  I need to get over this idea. Cam’s just not coming back. And like the scars on my legs from all of these surgeries, maybe this heavy heart feeling I keep waiting to leave me is probably never going to fade. It must be some sort of internal and permanent scar from having my heart broken. Though I don’t know much about broken hearts, I do know about scars. They tell you that you’ve been through something. They’re forever ugly, and they tighten up and ache at all the wrong times. But I’ve also learned that scars—the inside ones and the visible ones—are not crippling. They’re simply something you’ve got to work around and deal with so you can move forward, just like everything else in life.

  I sigh heavily, earning yet another eye roll from my table-mate.

  Luckily, before I almost ruin my karma and go for my own eye roll, Patrick, Laura and Harrison barrel into the room through the double doors at the top tier. I actually hear them before I see them, because all three are laughing about something, probably something Laura did.

  I wave then shake my head at them, mouthing the word sorry because there’s not a place for even one of them to squeeze up front here with me and mean-girl. Who by the way, is now moving her stuff to the farthest place away from me on the table while I’m waving, like I’m possibly contagious or something!

  Looking back again, I see them grab the two tables left open on the top tier. Harrison’s waving all funny, motioning me to come up, but I shake my head and hold up my thumb like I’m all good.

  He doesn’t know—me—how I am, and what I just can’t do. And there’s no way, not even with the crutches supporting me, that my current stamina levels would allow me to easily navigate those steps without making a fool or at least a spectacle of myself in front of everyone in this room.

  I see Patrick whispering something to Harrison. This at least makes Harrison stop waving, but it also makes me a little sad, because I’m sure Patrick’s now explaining the extent of my disability and some of my limitations to the guy.

  I shove off any twinge of regret. If Harrison and I are going to be friends—and we’re already that—he might as well know my deal. I suppose it is better if Patrick fills him in. Then I don’t have to say all of the parts I hate to say out loud about myself. I turn away from their smiles and avoid looking at my seat mate again, hoping the teach—professor—who’s now taking his place at the podium won’t assign seats or project partners until tomorrow, because I simply can’t sit next to this girl for the entire summer.

  As I dig into my backpack to pull out my notebook, I hear this terrible clattering behind me.

  The room grows silent as one long crutch stops to the left of my table. The second crutch can’t seem to find a spot to hold it, so it whizzes past us and jets directly at the professor’s podium like a sliding javelin.

  Harrison is calling out, “Sorry. My bad. So sorry,” from the back of the room while he’s managing to stay completely balanced as he hops down the tiers one step at a time, using the chair backs to make his way. It would all look rather graceful and smooth if not for the part where each time he grabs on to the seats and does his next hop down, his messenger bag, heavy with what has to be a laptop or maybe his camera, is almost clocking people in the face.

  They’re ducking and wincing away from him, and because he’s grinning at me the whole way down, he doesn’t see that he’s almost given accidental black eyes to at least ten people.

  Instead of looking embarrassed or devastated by bringing the classroom to a freeze, he’s grinning and chasing the crutches like this happens to him every day. He comes to a standstill at my table, and before I can say anything, he leans heavily on the edge of it.

  “That was a close one.” The professor returns Harrison’s crutches and pushes his wire glasses back up the long, thin nose that’s as long and thin as the rest of him. “I hate doing paperwork, son. So please try to use the doors marked with the handicapped signs in the future.”

  “I’m so sorry to cause a disruption, sir. And for the record…” Suddenly Harrison seems ruffled. “This is not at all how I imagined meeting you, Professor Perry. I’m a huge fan of your Desert Dune photography, as well as your black-and-white Chicago work. Heck…” Harrison turns beet red. “It—it is indeed an honor, and now I’ve made a fool out of myself and wasted your valuable classroom time.”

  “Not at all. The bell hasn’t sounded yet. You’re just fine.”

  Harrison glances down at me. “I thought I had come in the correct doors, but I was sorely mistaken.” He shrugs, eyes going all round and extra apologetic. “It won’t happen again now that I’ve got my bearings in here.” He points at the hateful handicapped sticker stuck at the edge of my table. “Are there any more disabled seats that I could sit in—like this one? Because obviously, I think sitting near this lower exit would help me. I know Ellen Foster here because she’s got—”

  I can’t help it. I hold up my hand, shake my head, and wince.

  He raises a brow, looking between the three of us. “What I mean is Ellen’s got crutches, like me. And excuse me if this sounds rude, because I don’t even know your name.” He pauses, his eyes practically soaking into—and then soaking up—the girl next to me as he looks long and hard at her legs. “But…wait…do you need this table like we do? Would you mind—moving? For me?”

  I bite my lip, almost cracking up while I send him the look that says I know full-well what this smooth talking, floppy haired, Harry-Styles-look-alike, twinkle-eyed guy is up to. My mouth almost drops open as I turn to examine how my table partner’s handling this. Him.

  She’s had a miraculous transformation! She’s become a smiling, flirty-eyes, I-love-this-professor-and-I-love-you-Harrison-Shaw chameleon!

  I almost laugh out loud. Like I said. The guy is just good at what he does.

  “I’m Lola,” the girl says, already gathering her things and putting them into her book bag. “I didn’t see that these seats were for special people.”

  Before Harrison can answer, the professor steps closer and adds, “Yes. Well, due to the angled nature of this particular room, we try to keep anyone with crutches or mobility needs down here for safety reasons, so it would be very sweet of you to move, Lola.”

  “Yes. So sweet.” Harrison grins. “And so appreciated.”

  Lola’s eyes are looking at Harrison like he’s baby back ribs covered in tasty sauce, and she’s been invited to some sort of private barbecue! I don’t blame her. Harrison, this whole time, has been nervously running his hands through that gorgeously thick hair. He’s also sporting the cute glasses today. He swapped yesterday’
s plaid shirt for a faded forest-green T-shirt that hugs his tanned biceps just about…yeah…perfectly. It’s hipster-explorer-guy perfect as well, because it’s got this photo of a huge snow-capped mountain on it and the words: Mt. Shasta. Ya-ya-ya! Sha-sha-sha!

  Over breakfast, we’d all laughed and chanted the nonsense phrase with him, over and over again. And it was quite possibly the most fun any of us ever had at breakfast over a T-shirt. To add to Harrison’s nerd-sexy, he’s matched the shirt with faded jeans that hug his hips all low. And today, the one foot that’s not stuck in the black metal boot is all cute in a surfer-style, leather-topped flip-flop. To me, this footwear is extra impressive because flip-flops and crutches don’t mix very well in my CP world, but he’s so strong and balanced that he seems to pull it off no problem.

  Lola, like me, is already well on her way to a huge crush on Harrison Shaw. How could she not be? It’s only my second day around this guy, and now that he almost fell down stairs to sit with me, I think I’m ready to accept yesterday’s marriage proposal.

  It’s impossible to resist this guy’s charms.

  “So you don’t mind moving all the way to my seat in the back?” Harrison blinks.

  Professor Perry smiles at Lola as she starts up the steps.

  “Anything to help,” she says.

  Only Harrison and I are aware that Lola really means: Anything to help a really hot guy with muscles, great hair and flirty, promise-filled, lying eyes.

  I dart Harrison a glance that says I know what he’s done to that girl. He shamelessly quirks one side of his smile higher and darts me back a fast wink before acting again like he and I have hardly met at all.

  “Thank you, Lola. Your kindness and flexibility has been noted,” the professor calls after her, and he heads back to his podium.