Wheels (Tabor Heights Year Two)

by Michelle Levigne

  She hadn't realized how bad the situation was becoming in the four-plex room until she came back from mid-term break to learn their other two roommates had left, moving to another dormitory without warning. Two girls who had been living in the overflow housing had moved in the same day. The first sign of impending trouble was that they moved Natalie from her bottom bunk to the bunk over Suzette's bed without waiting for her to come back to the dormitory. Over the next week, Natalie discovered that Suzette had thoroughly indoctrinated their new roommates into all of Natalie's alleged sins. By Friday afternoon, she was sick of comments such as, "You should be ashamed of yourself," or "You still call yourself a Christian, after what you did?" and no response except disgusted sighs or eye rolls whenever she asked what they were talking about.

  Friday night, Natalie came back to the dorm from an on-campus Starship Defiance meeting to find that her desk and closet had been ransacked. Everything that "offended" Suzette lay in a pile in the middle of the floor. She walked in on her three roommates dismantling the new paperbacks she had bought when she was home, tearing one page out of the binding at a time.

  "You call yourself a Christian?" the short blond one shrieked -- after all these years, Natalie couldn't remember her name -- when Natalie tore her precious new books out of their hands.

  "What are you doing with my stuff?" was all she could manage to get out of her mouth before she found herself on trial. The brunette girl would pick up an item from the pile of "offensive" items on the floor while Suzette lectured on why she had no right to have it in the dorm room, offending her roommates and damaging their weak spiritual lives.

  Natalie still couldn't remember what the first two items were, because she had only been able to focus on her mangled books. No words reached her brain through the roaring in her ears.

  "What gives you the right to tear my books apart?" she finally shouted. "Who do you think you are?"

  Suzette shrieked, managing to spit on the few sibilants, "You have brought demons into our room with your science fiction books!"

  Before Natalie could untangle her thoughts to respond, or even consider using her fists, five other girls on their floor burst in, drawn by the outraged screams of the Inquisition. No one had realized Natalie was there until they heard her shout. As the floor supervisor later testified before a panel of counselors, the dormitory supervisor, and the chaplain, everybody on their floor was so disgusted with Suzette and her clones, they were willing to let them have their cat fight and clobber each other, as long as they didn't take their witch burning crusade to the rest of the floor. The other girls had intervened for Natalie's sake.

  Natalie had moved to another dormitory, even though a room was available on another floor. She didn't want to have to see those three girls on a daily basis, and especially not during dormitory activities. The girls on her floor wanted Suzette and her two clones moved to another dormitory, but it was easier to relocate one girl rather than three. Natalie soon came to wish the three girls had been split up and sent elsewhere. No one in the dormitory would socialize with them, so they were stuck with each other. A battle of words slowly built up for the rest of the semester, with the three telling their story everywhere about how the rest of the floor -- and then the whole dormitory -- ostracized them.

  To Natalie's shame, she didn't react well to the battle of words. It was gratifying that her former dorm-mates struck out in her defense, but every time someone came to her to find out her side of the stories they were hearing, she found increasing pleasure in airing her hurt and anger.

  The clones didn't come back to SCC after Christmas break. Suzette hung on through the end of the school year, and at one point got into a shouting match with some of the girls from the dormitory in the middle of the student center, ending with the proclamation that she was going to take Natalie to court for defamation of character. That got her laughed out of the student center, but Natalie was frightened when she heard about Suzette's threats. She called her parents that evening, and her father snapped. He demanded all the information on Suzette that Natalie could give him, because he was going to sue her for how she had tormented Natalie.

  His fury on her behalf reminded Natalie of how angry he had been when Jonas Donnelly walked out on his family and destroyed his testimony. Terrified, feeling guilty, Natalie begged him to let it go. She didn't stop talking about Suzette and her Inquisition altogether, but she did reduce her incidents of complaining.

  In a painful encounter during summer camp two years later, a new friend essentially slapped her between the eyes with a spiritual two-by-four to make her see she didn't have the right to hold onto her pain and sense of betrayal. She was only hurting herself by repeating what Suzette had done to her, and she was hurting others by dwelling on it, inflicting her indignation on people who hadn't been there.

  Now, sitting in the guest room of her parents' new home, Natalie wondered if that was when she started growing up, spiritually. Perhaps emotionally, too. She had learned the harsh lesson that she had to be ready to defend herself, to consider what people were saying and how they were treating her and try to anticipate how they might attack her. She had learned from that painful sophomore year and from psychology classes that people often attacked others out of their own insecurities and an attempt to establish a pattern in the world, a solid foundation, a sense of control, because they were afraid.

  Natalie thought she had grown beyond that horrid first semester in the four-plex, but looking at Suzette's email now, she honestly had to wonder just how grown up she was. Why would Suzette admit the friction between them to total strangers? What benefit did she think she could gain, and at what price? The Suzette she had known at SCC never admitted guilt or apologized for anything, even when all the evidence shouted that she was in the wrong.

  "The ball is in my court now, isn't it?" she murmured, staring at the email.

  Timing, she decided, was everything. After all, a man she despised even more than "Saint" Suzette sat in her father's office right that moment, making amends for the devastation he had wreaked on his own Christian testimony and the spiritual lives of countless others. If Jonas Donnelly could humble himself in front of people who might even have forgotten about him after all these years, was it possible Suzette Emsworth had also grown up spiritually, and was trying to clear the air?

  Or maybe it was a ploy to establish contact so she could complete her "mission" in life, to remake Natalie to suit her vision of what a "real" Christian woman should be?

  "Get real," Natalie said with a snort. Even Suzette couldn't be so self-righteous that she would hold onto her witch hunt after all these years.

  That thought jolted her, especially when another immediately followed it.

  "You haven't let go or forgotten after all this time," she whispered. "Why do you expect her to?"

  Chapter Three

  Shaking a little, Natalie decided she needed to move, do something, to break free of this particularly unpleasant, guilt-ridden walk down memory lane. Marking the email as new, she saved it to think about and deal with later. She put her jacket back on and crept down the stairs. Male voices still rumbled softly in her father's study, but at least the door was closed, so no one could see her walk past. She made sure the front door was unlocked as she went out to her car to get her suitcase from the trunk. It would be embarrassing to have to ring the doorbell to be let back into the house. The phone rang just as she stepped into the house, and she heard her mother answer it. Natalie felt like she had the one time she broke curfew, sneaking back into the house and praying her parents were already asleep so they wouldn't know how late she had been out.

  Once safely up in the guest room, she busied herself putting away her clothes. Halfway through that chore, she heard the men's voices get louder, and guessed they had come out of her father's office and stood near the stairs. A few moments later, the voices softened and she heard the creak of the front door opening, then felt the shift in air pressure when it closed again and the
men's voices stopped. She tried to imagine, just for a moment, inviting Suzette into her house to talk and make things right from that wound so long ago.

  Invite her nemesis into her home? Hardly. Then again, letting Suzette have her email address at America's Voice was very different from letting the vicious girl know where she lived.

  "Hey, little girl," her father said, startling a yelp out of her. "Sorry." He chuckled and stepped into the room and reached to pick up the stress ball painted like a globe that she had dropped. "Deep in thought, huh?"

  "Very." Natalie took the ball and set it on the nightstand, then dropped onto the side of her bed. "You really believe him, don't you, Dad?"

  "Yeah, well, I have to," he said with a shrug, after just a moment of hesitation. Natalie noted that he didn't ask who she was talking about. "If not, how can I expect you and your mom and brothers to believe me when I say I've changed?"

  "That's different."

  "How?" He crossed his arms and leaned into the frame of the door, visibly settling in for a long talk.

  "You didn't destroy our lives. You didn't walk out on Mom just because she finally stood up to you and called you a hypocrite."

  "You're absolutely right. I broke down and cried when she did it."

  "Huh?" Natalie shook her head, positive she hadn't heard right. "Mom--"

  "Called me a hypocrite. Thank goodness she never really needed to 'finally' stand up to me. She's stood up to me plenty of times when I really needed it."

  "Dad…" Natalie sighed, feeling a sudden aching, heavy weariness in her arms and legs. "Is it hard to forgive for something so… awful?"

  "It's been a struggle." He tipped his head to one side, studying her. From downstairs, her mother's voice came to them faint and distant, calling them to supper. "You think I shouldn't have?"

  "I'm thinking of Tommy."

  "Yeah." He grinned and leaned into the room to snag hold of her hand and pull her to her feet. "You always were."

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "Baby girl, you had a crush on Tommy so bad, so intense… well, a total stranger could come into the room, take one look at you watching him, and know you were a lost cause." He wrapped an arm around her as they stepped out into the hall. "Thank goodness Tommy was totally oblivious to how you felt, otherwise I would have been obliged to get my rifle out of the basement."

  "Dad…" Her face felt scorched, and she was grateful she had to go down the stairs ahead of him. It gave her a chance to cool off and will her color back to normal. Natalie feared she was glowing like she had been covered in neon.

  *****

  Natalie woke up at two in the morning, feeling the usual restlessness that came from sleeping in an unfamiliar place. Perversely, that restlessness never tormented her in hotels, just when she slept in someone's home. She reasoned with herself that the furniture and decorations were totally familiar, so why should everything feel slightly unfamiliar? Using logic didn't seem to help, so finally Natalie climbed out of bed and explored the shelves full of knickknacks and old photo albums. She was startled to find a photo album that belonged to her, because she could have sworn she had taken everything when she got her first apartment. Why was this one in her parents' home?

  She flinched and then felt a little chill when she flipped the album open and found the first page was filled with pictures of Tommy, pre-broken back and wheelchair. She had newspaper clippings detailing his prowess in Little League baseball. Each clipping was laminated. Natalie remembered getting in trouble when her father found out she had used the expensive laminating sheets he had brought home from the office to get some work done one weekend. Fortunately, she had figured out how to put multiple clippings inside each laminating sheet, so she hadn't wasted much.

  Hands shaking a little, she slowly flipped the pages, glancing at snapshots of Tommy playing baseball, or skateboarding down their quiet street, racing her brothers. Many showed Tommy clowning, in his backyard or hers, at a picnic table, where she could see the smiling faces of his family and hers. Natalie couldn't remember snapping many of the pictures, but she must have because she wasn't in them. To her amusement, many of the photos were blurred, meaning she hadn't been a natural talent with the camera back in the beginning.

  She flipped to the end of the book and was surprised to see the pages empty, the clear sheets never peeled away from the sticky backing that held photos in place on the page. Frowning, Natalie riffled the pages, trying to find the place where she had stopped putting in photos. A handful of loose photos slid out from about two-thirds of the way back in the album, most of them landing face-down on the bed and carpet. The three that landed face-up explained everything, with a jolt that chilled her and brought angry tears to her eyes.

  One photo was of Tommy and his teammates, proudly holding their Little League championship trophy. Most of the team, including Natalie's brothers, had been cut out, because all she had cared about that day was getting Tommy's picture. He had gone through a growth spurt that summer, so large portions of dusty, sunburned skin showed from the ends of his sleeves and pants, and he stood taller than everybody on his team except his coach.

  The other two pictures were of Tommy in the hospital weeks after the accident that had occurred the day of the championship game. One showed him almost lost in the apparatus used to treat his shattered back and prevent further damage to his spinal column. Natalie wasn't sure why she had taken that photo, or even how she had managed to get into the hospital room with her camera. That camera had been an extension of her body that summer, so she had most likely brought it with her without even thinking about it when her family visited Tommy. She did remember now the tears that had choked and blinded her, and how she had run out of the hospital room. She had planned to throw that photo out. Why hadn't she? What made her want to remember the horror of that hospital visit?

  The third photo showed Tommy with Natalie's brothers. He was free of the cage of hospital equipment, sitting up in bed, laughing at something Neal had said, judging by the disgusted look on Karl's face, the older-brother-amused-superiority on Nick's, and the pride on Neal's. This was a changed Tommy, hair cut unnaturally short, his features nearly skeletal, his hospital gown hanging loose on a frame wrapped in pale skin and not much else.

  That was why she had stopped filling the album. Her world had changed after that championship game. Tommy's father hadn't come to pick him up after the game. Natalie's family was heading off on an extended vacation directly after the game, otherwise they would have given Tommy a ride home. He had taken a ride with another teammate, whose father had been drinking through the whole game. The Schaeffers hadn't heard about the accident until weeks later, when they came back from their trip.

  Natalie took a few deep breaths and blinked hard against tears as she slid the album back in the bookcase. Now she knew why she had left it behind. Even now, it hurt. She felt again the fury, and her support of her father for his anger against Jonas Donnelly -- until he pulled their whole family out of their church membership and accepted a new job in another town. Natalie remembered what felt like weeks of crying, trying to figure out how she could manage to stay in Owens Forge. Tommy would need her help, she was absolutely sure. She had a plan all put together, but before she could approach Claire and suggest that she move in to help take care of Tommy, his parents' marriage disintegrated in a loud, painful and public fashion.

  Now Jonas was back in Owens Forge, humbling himself, awaking old, painful memories to make amends, confessing his wrongs. Natalie didn't want to believe him. She wanted it to be all show, maneuvering to get sympathy. Still, if her father believed Jonas, that made her inclined to believe him. Maybe part of her wanted to believe him, because wasn't that justice, that the one who caused the pain admitted his crimes and apologized and tried to repair what had been damaged?

  "Yeah, and if you can believe him, maybe you should believe Torquemada," Natalie murmured.

  Rubbing the last of the tears from her eyes, she picked u
p her tablet and got online again, to reread Suzette's letter. At the top of her email list was one from her editor, passing along praise from various organizations for her story on handicap awareness efforts throughout the country. It had been a side piece, a collection of observations she had made in the pursuit of profiles and interviews and feature pieces.

  You have a real eye for this kind of thing, and the right balance of attitude, realistic and sympathetic. We've been bouncing the idea around for the last couple weeks, and finally came to a decision and plan of action in the monthly call-to-action meeting. What do you say to changing your focus and actively looking for stories focused on the handicapped, instead of just mentioning the ones you run across? We want you to get beyond the politically correct mumbo-jumbo and the Tiny Tim feature pieces everybody writes. Show us the real people, the ones who have to live with this, who have lived with their handicaps for years. Give us some down sides and bad attitudes. Show us the problems that the ADA legislation is causing for financially strapped governments on the state and local level, and what people are doing to make do and fill in. Point out the really stupid decisions and accommodations that the handicapped hate. You mentioned some idiot who tried to launch a class action against specially designated handicapped parking spots, because he claimed it was discrimination against the physically able -- do some stories like that. And that photo you sent us, showing the long row of handicapped parking spots right in front of a dance studio. More of that. The funny and weird as well as poignant. We want at least one story in every issue, and on the anniversary of the ADA and the amendments, devote maybe half the issue to it.