by Chelsie Hill
“You need to settle down,” Jack said as he pulled the car back onto the street and headed toward school. “It’s school, not Disneyland.”
“Nothing wrong with being high on life,” she said. “Right, Kara?”
“I wouldn’t know,” I mumbled. It wasn’t just that I was heading to school for my first time since the accident; it was that I was heading to school for the first time in almost a year without Curt. His absence left me feeling just as hollow inside as my spinal cord injury did.
“I had a feeling you were going to be a little down this morning.” She rummaged through her bag and pulled something out. “Here, this is for you.” She reached over the seat and dropped something into my lap. It was a small stuffed bear wearing a T-shirt with a picture of me and Amanda from fourth grade screened on the front. Amanda and I got the peach-colored bear, which we named Patrick after our favorite SpongeBob character, at a street fair in elementary school, and we passed it back and forth anytime one of us needed cheering up. I hadn’t seen Patrick in years, but the sight of him in my lap as I was so full of anxiety about going to school, well, it was just what I needed. I took one look at it and burst out laughing. Like, snorting, ugly, hysterical laughter. I hadn’t laughed that loud or that heartily in so long, I couldn’t even remember when. It was before the accident, that’s for sure. Before the chair. Before my legs. Nothing since I’d woken up in the hospital had made me laugh like this little bear.
It was a relief to laugh again. I’d wondered if it was going to happen, and I’d spent quite a few lonely nights in the hospital drowning in my feelings, convinced that nothing from that point on would ever make me happy again. How nice to be proved wrong so soon.
Unfortunately, my light mood slipped away as we pulled into the school parking lot. It had been almost a month since I was last here, and even though it was obviously the same school filled with the exact same people, it felt completely foreign. I knew how to get to all my classes, but would I be able to go my familiar route in my wheelchair? It never occurred to me if there were stairs or bumps or anything that would prevent me from following my usual path to and from classes. And the people I knew, those familiar faces … how would they act? Would they be normal, like Jack and Amanda? Would they be weird like my mom? Would they treat me like I was completely helpless like my dad? Would they ignore me? I wondered what would be worse—being treated differently or being treated like nothing had changed.
“Okay,” Jack said. “You ready for this?”
“No,” I said, handing Patrick back to Amanda. “Let’s do something else. I’m totally down to go back home and go to bed. Or we could make a blanket fort. That sounds pretty awesome right now.”
Amanda leaned forward over the seat. “I know you want to go hide right now. And I don’t blame you. But you are stronger than that.”
I bristled at Amanda saying I was strong, just as I had when Dad said it last night. I wasn’t being strong. I was just going to school. I needed to. My doctor’s note was expiring, and I was already a month behind. I had to graduate at the end of the year.
This wasn’t strength. It was necessity.
I didn’t say anything, though. She was taking the time to be here for me, and she had been since I woke up in the hospital, since before the accident, actually, even though I’d been keeping her at arm’s length. I couldn’t snap at one of the few people who was actually supporting me.
Instead I said, “Fine, let’s go.” Not for the first time, I wished I could just step out of the car and stomp off, but I had to wait for Jack to get my chair from the back of his car and lock it into place before I could lift myself out. All settled in, I grabbed my backpack from Jack’s outstretched hand and arranged it in my lap. I could have hung it from the back of my chair, but I liked having it in front of me, like a shield from the world, one I could hide behind.
This time it was Amanda who was impressed with my maneuvering. I’d have to remember to tell her about the awkward boob-grabbing incident later.
The three of us headed through the parking lot toward school. We passed through small groups of students lingering by their cars before class started, and I noticed eyes following me as I wheeled myself through the unevenly paved lot. I’d always been irritated by the loose gravel and bad paving job in the parking lot, but it had never been more than a general annoyance. Now that I was trying to wheel myself over the top of it, though, it was making my life downright miserable. My arm strength had improved significantly just in the past week or so of using my chair—I was getting some major biceps—but it still wasn’t all that great. I was a dancer, after all, and my strength was in my now-useless legs.
I hit my first major snag when I got to the front of the fenced-in parking lot. The lot had a large chain-link fence all the way around it to keep students from wandering off campus. The only way I’ve ever known to get from the lot to campus was through a small opening in the gate right by the front; all the students filed through this one opening before and after school. I’m not sure if I realized it first or if Jack did, but we both stopped in our tracks, him walking and me pushing, while Amanda kept right on walking through the gate. When she realized we weren’t behind her, she turned around and looked at us. “What?”
I watched Jack look at her like she was a complete idiot, and I turned back to her to see realization cross her face. “Oh, no,” she said, her face falling. “You don’t fit.”
Sure enough, my chair was too wide to fit through the narrow opening in the gate. The three of us searched around for another way to exit the parking lot aside from the entrance that we drove into from the street, and we didn’t see anything. Unbelievable. I’d made it all the way to school, and now I was trapped in the parking lot.
“Do I seriously have to go all the way around? Are you kidding me?” My voice was shrill, and I knew I sounded whiny, like a little kid who was being told to go to sleep when everyone else got to stay up, but seriously? I couldn’t fit through the gate everyone walked through? I’d have to wheel myself back across this bumpy asphalt only to have to come all the way around on the sidewalk? That was ridiculous.
“Oh, look,” said Jack, pointing about fifty feet down from where we were lurking. “There’s an opening right there.”
“Is it locked?” Amanda asked.
“Let me go check,” Jack said, and he jogged off.
I looked up at Amanda. “The bell is going to ring soon. Don’t stand around with me. Just go to class.”
She smiled back at me. “Don’t be silly.”
“It’s open,” Jack called, waving us over toward the opening. I wheeled over to the gate he was holding open. “A secret door. Who knew?”
A group of people on the other side of the parking gate had stopped to watch me figure out how to get through, like I was some kind of circus act performing for their entertainment. “What are they looking at?” I mumbled.
“Don’t worry about them,” Amanda whispered back. “They’re just curious.”
I wanted to say about a hundred different things, but I knew Amanda wouldn’t understand. She didn’t know how it felt to have the most basic conveniences taken away. She didn’t know how it felt to have people stare at you for just trying to get to class.
Once I was out of the parking lot, I was back on sidewalk that was much easier to maneuver over than the bumpy asphalt. But a smooth surface didn’t mean a smooth journey to class. Now eyes followed me all the way to first period, coming at me from every direction. People looking. People talking. Jack and Amanda talked up a storm as they walked on either side of me, but I couldn’t listen to them when I could feel everyone I pushed past, people I didn’t even know, had never spoken to before, staring at me. I figured my accident had become news at school, so freshmen, new students, people who’d never seen me before probably knew who I was now. But these stares. They made me feel like a zoo animal on a campus where I used to blend right in.
I tried to focus on what Jack and Amanda were sa
ying, but it was almost impossible while trying to do two other things at once. One, avoiding all the staring eyeballs as I wheeled down the walkways, and two, keeping on high alert for Curt. I knew he usually hung out around the pool before school, since he had morning water polo practice. As we went by the pool, I slowed down so I was behind Jack and Amanda, and I scoured the area. I didn’t see him at all, but I didn’t see any of the water polo guys, either, so maybe they were still in the locker room or something.
Of course, though, because this morning had to be as annoying and difficult as possible, I did see Jenny Roy.
She was typing furiously on her phone as she walked out toward the parking lot while Jack, Amanda, and I headed in toward school. Knowing Jenny, she was probably planning to ditch first period and plot evil schemes with the devil himself over mochas at Starbucks or something. As soon as I caught sight of her, I felt my posture fall. Without even meaning to, I curled myself back into my chair as much as I could while still moving myself forward. But trying to slip by unseen was pointless. One thing that had been made clear to me already was that there was no way to make myself invisible.
It took only a few moments for her to notice me, and as she slipped her phone in the back pocket of her shorts, our eyes met. I braced myself for an eye roll or a snarky comment, but I got nothing.
Well, it wasn’t nothing. Her eyes passed over me, from head to chair, and something flickered across her face.
Pity, I thought. It looked like she felt sorry for me.
Then, right as we crossed paths, she brought up the side of her mouth in an attempt at a half smile and she shrugged and just kept on walking. No stink eye. No comment. Nothing.
Was Jenny Roy making a truce with me? Was I not even worthy of her disgust and disdain now that I was disabled?
I knew I should have been relieved that the person who never missed a chance to stab me in the front completely passed over an opportunity to be the first to make an issue about me being in a wheelchair. But instead of relief, it was a choking sadness that filled my throat.
I was actually upset that Jenny Roy didn’t toss a snarky comment my way, because that meant that I was Different now. And everyone was going to treat me that way.
“Well, here you are,” Amanda said as we came to a stop in front of my first-period English class. We’d crossed the entire campus, and I didn’t even realize it. “And I’m all the way across campus for AP Physics, so I’ll see you later. You’ll rock this.” She leaned over, hugged me, and darted off into the sea of students in the hallway before I could say good-bye.
I watched her dark braids bob out into the crowd, and I turned to Jack and shuddered. “Do I have to?”
“According to the State of California, yeah, you do,” Jack said, patting me sympathetically on my arm.
“Don’t leave,” I blurted out as he walked off to his own first period. He stopped in his tracks and turned slowly back to face me. “Stay with me, Jack. Please. Change your class schedule.” I’d tried to sound light, like I was totally joking, but my dread at facing this class alone, at being Different without anyone to help me deal, had totally crept out in my voice.
“I wish I could,” he said, his mouth turning up in a sad smile. “I really do. But you’ll be fine. I promise. And text me if you need anything, okay? One of the privileges of being a Student Government officer is that teachers believe me when I say there’s some kind of school emergency and I need to leave in the middle of class. I’ll come find you, wherever you are.”
He turned to walk, but at the last second he turned back and, like Amanda, leaned over and hugged me. But his hug was tighter and longer and I didn’t want to let him go. I didn’t want to be alone.
I watched him walk away until he, too, was absorbed by the crowd, and then I gave myself a quick mental pep talk and wheeled into English class, where I was faced with Obstacle of the Day Number Two. Where do I sit? My assigned seat had been directly in the center of the classroom. But with over thirty students and desks packed into this small room, there was no way I could maneuver through this maze. And even if I could get through to my assigned seat, it’s not like I could get myself into the desk with its attached chair.
Well, this was awkward.
And to add to the fun, the tardy bell rang just as I was entering the classroom. Which meant the room quickly filled up with students. Students who hadn’t seen me since before my accident and had no idea I was going to be back in school today.
Of course, everyone stared as I wheeled to the front of the classroom to ask my teacher, Mr. David, what I was supposed to do. Mr. David had been my least favorite teacher since the first day of school, which was too bad, because I usually liked English. But he established almost immediately that he had no idea how to talk to any of us like we were normal people, and not a day had gone by in class that he hadn’t seemed to go out of his way to say something insensitive and insulting to at least one person in class. In the few weeks we’d spent together before my accident, he’d made a comment about how girls just pretend to enjoy sports to impress guys; said gay people could do whatever they wanted, he just didn’t want to hear about it; and referred to Kristina Lin as “Oriental.”
He was pretty much a walking, talking insult to everyone who wasn’t straight, white, male, and ignorant, and no one could understand how he still had a job. I was so not looking forward to his reaction to my wheelchair.
His back was to me as he scribbled the agenda on the whiteboard, and the longer I had to wait, the more I could feel eyes drilling holes in the back of my head. I could even hear my name, and whispers of some version of “Did you know Kara was coming back today?” I was half-tempted to turn myself around and yell, Hey, everyone! Get a good look! But right as I was considering it, hands actually on my wheels, Mr. David finished what he was doing and turned around.
“Oh, good morning, Kara! It’s great to see you back!” I watched his eyes. They traveled down from my face to my legs and lingered there a few moments longer than was polite. His mouth pulled down in a little frown as he seemed to consider my chair, and he drew his eyes back up again and tilted his head to the side. Ah, the sympathetic head tilt Ana had warned me about. I wondered if this was going to be the way everyone looked at me now. “I don’t know if you got the makeup work I sent you so you could stay caught up—”
“I got it,” I said. “But I haven’t had much of a chance to work on it yet. Things have been a little crazy.”
He let out a laugh that was too quick and too loud. “Fair enough,” he said. “Well, we’re in the middle of reading Pride and Prejudice. Did you get a copy from the library? I have a copy you can borrow right now if you need one, and you’ll…”
He kept talking, but I hadn’t even cracked the book, so listening to him was pointless. Especially because the bell to start class rang, and, just like on my journey from the parking lot, I could feel every eye in the room on me.
“Where do I sit?” I cut him off. I didn’t care about what chapter of the book we were on; I’d be lost anyway. I just wanted to know where I could go to get away from all these eyeballs and pretend to melt into the floor.
“You can take your normal seat,” he said. “I didn’t give it away while you were gone.” He laughed at this little joke of his, and he didn’t seem to understand why I wasn’t laughing along with him. Or moving from my spot.
“Uh, Mr. David.” It was Sarah Donovan, the girl sitting closest to Mr. David’s desk. “How is she supposed to get over to her desk? There’s not enough room.”
“Yeah,” said Baker, the guy next to Sarah. “And wouldn’t it be easier to have her pull up to a table instead of trying to move into a desk?”
On one hand, I was grateful to Sarah and Baker for speaking up in my behalf so I didn’t have to snark at Mr. David on my own. But on the other hand, who were they to speak for me? I didn’t ask for their help, and they weren’t my friends. They didn’t visit me in the hospital. They didn’t send a card. Who were
they to try to jump in now? Especially when I was perfectly capable of giving Mr. David attitude on my own. It’s not like my mouth was paralyzed.
I decided to ignore them, and I kept on staring at awful Mr. David, who was now clearly regretting his dumb joke and shifting from foot to foot.
“Uh. Good morning, everyone,” he said to the entire class. “Get out your Pride and Prejudice books and spend a little time reading chapter ten silently. I’m going to get Kara caught up on what she missed while she was gone.”
Baker snorted as he leaned over to pull his book out of his bag, and I couldn’t help but smile.
“Okay, Kara,” Mr. David said, in a loud whisper. “We’re going to need to find you somewhere to sit since you aren’t going to be able to sit at your normal desk anymore.” I bristled at the word “normal” without even thinking about why. “Where can we put you?”
We both looked helplessly around the classroom, where, of course, everyone was staring at us instead of reading, but there wasn’t even a table or anything in the back I could roll up to and disappear behind.
“I’m going to have to call up to the office and see if they have an extra table they can set up as a desk for you. For now, why don’t you use my desk instead?”
“You want me to sit at your desk?”
He looked uncomfortable at his own suggestion, but it really was the only thing we could do for right now, aside from balancing all my folders and books on my lap and just staying in the middle of the aisle. So, while everyone watched instead of reading Austen, I wheeled myself to the very front of the class and unpacked my things right there on Mr. David’s teacher desk. Right in the perfect spot for absolutely everyone in class to gape at me from behind their books until the bell rang.
The rest of class was torture, especially with Mr. David frequently forgetting I was sitting at his desk and trying several times to sit down or get something and then turning around all awkwardly. Finally the bell rang, after what seemed like an entire school year, and I could make my escape.
