Push Girl: A Novel

by Chelsie Hill

  On my way out of class, a couple of people walked up to me and said hi and that it was good to see me and that they were glad I was doing better after the accident and blah blah blah. I watched their faces the same way I watched Mr. David’s. They avoided eye contact too much, their gaze traveled down to my legs, where it lingered as their minds tried to make sense of what they were looking at, then—bam!—the sympathetic head tilt. I could hardly even pay attention to them when they were speaking to me because all I wanted to do was leave. Escape the conversation, go home, pretend I had never met these people. Their sympathy was smothering. Suffocating. I wanted none of it.

  Ana sure was right about that damn head tilt, but she didn’t mention how mortifying it was to be stared at like one of those starving children infomercials. I could almost see the thought bubble above everyone’s head. Poor Kara, she’s ruined forever. But thank God it wasn’t me.

  The rest of the day was about the same. Some teachers had tables in their rooms, or had heard I was coming back and was in a wheelchair and thought, Hey, maybe I need a new desk space, and they were prepared. I did have the awkward “sit at my desk for now” again in math, but luckily that was a class I had with Jack, and he sat right in front of Ms. Wiles’s desk, so he spent the whole period entertaining me with stupid faces whenever we made eye contact.

  I was going to try to keep track of how many times I got “the look” from people, but I stopped counting when I realized that I was getting it from everyone.

  CHAPTER 10

  The school day really crawls by when you’re on display, and by the time lunch rolled around, it felt like I’d lived a thousand miserable lives. Jack and Amanda ambushed me when I was leaving my fourth-period class and all the staring eyeballs behind, and while I should have been surprised to see the two of them waiting for me, I really wasn’t. Jack usually had lunch in the activities room with the other Student Government officers and Amanda typically worked through lunch in the media studio, but today they volunteered to have lunch with me anywhere I wanted to go. My choice.

  “Don’t worry about me, you guys,” I said. “I don’t want you changing your normal lunch plans to accommodate me.” I didn’t mention that I was totally lunch-less now that I was also Curt-less. My last school year had been spent in Curt’s orbit, so I wouldn’t even know where to venture for lunch on my own.

  “It’s really no problem,” Amanda said. “The media studio is so dark. A little light will do me some good.”

  I appreciated their efforts, I really did. But I’d been drowning in a sea of pity all day; I didn’t want their pity hangout, too.

  But, more than that, I needed to take this opportunity to find Curt.

  I tried not to show it after the first couple of days in the hospital, but Curt’s lack of contact had me confused and upset. He was my boyfriend for almost an entire year. I went to his water polo games. He picked me up from dance practice. I taught his little sister how to pirouette and what stretches would make her kicks go higher.

  This complete silence from him gutted me almost as much as the accident had. And it was so unlike him, too. Curt was a lot of things, but I never thought he was a dick.

  Since he still wasn’t answering my calls or my texts, I needed to see him face-to-face and find out what was up. Why he was ignoring me like this when I needed him the most. He probably heard I was back at school, and he’d done an excellent job of making himself scarce so far. But he was always over by the pool at lunch, and he couldn’t move the whole water polo team from their usual spot just to ignore me. Plus, he knew I hated confrontation. He was probably banking on me not wanting to talk to him in front of an audience.

  What he didn’t realize was that it wasn’t just the feeling in my legs the accident took from me. It also killed any anxiety I had about having this conversation in public. YOLO, and all that.

  I smiled and waved good-bye to Jack and Amanda, who looked genuinely concerned about me, and I wheeled myself way over to the pool area.

  Sure enough, there was Curt. Laughing and smiling with his friends, drinking a Gatorade. Not dead in a ditch, like I’d told myself he might be when he didn’t answer my texts. Not mysteriously out of the country, like I’d tried to convince myself was the reason he didn’t call back. My denial over his absence had been so powerful that I honestly convinced myself there must be something horrifically wrong with him, which had to be the only reason for him to straight up ignore me. But, nope. He was right here where I knew he would be, healthy and normal.

  Which meant the only reason he didn’t answer my calls or my texts was because he didn’t want to.

  So here I was, rolling along in my wheelchair, my life completely upside down, while he was standing in his same lunch spot and laughing with his buddies. Un-freaking-believable.

  Ideally, I would’ve liked to hide out for a second and come up with a plan of attack before saying something to him, since it really helped me to have a script in my head before I had “a talk” with someone. I’d had all day to figure this out, but between trying to get settled in all my classes and trying to avoid all the stares, I never really got any further in my mental conversation than, Dude, what the hell? And, given my current state as school novelty, I couldn’t really hide out anywhere and get my thoughts together.

  I was going to have to just go in and do this thing.

  Without letting myself think about it too much, I pushed myself over to Curt and his friends, who were gathered into a loose clump in their usual spot by the pool. As I approached them, I felt a quick flash of relief that I was in the chair and not walking. I didn’t have to worry about my legs shaking with nerves.

  “Curt,” I said as soon as I was close enough to say his name without yelling. He and his friends had been so caught up in whatever they were doing that they didn’t hear me or see me approaching.

  He turned around when he heard his name, and I watched an entire range of emotions pass over his face in a matter of seconds. Recognition, surprise, confusion, sadness, pity, and finally … nothing. After all that, he arranged his face so he had this completely detached expression.

  Like he didn’t even know me.

  “Oh, hey, Kara,” he said. “What’s up?”

  Of all the different reactions I’d expected from him, complete and utter indifference was nowhere on the list.

  I drew my eyebrows together. “I was sort of wondering the same thing.”

  He shot a quick look at his buddies, who weren’t very pro at faking like they weren’t being nosy. He stepped closer to me and lowered his voice, but still kept up the act of indifference. “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve called you. I’ve texted you. You haven’t answered.”

  Something flashed through his face again, but it was gone in a second. “Why would I?”

  “Because I was in an accident. I was in the hospital.” My voice was so small, and I wished I could have sounded stronger. But there was strength in just being there. I knew it. “Because I’m your girlfriend.”

  His mouth twitched, and I watched as he managed to look around me. Over my head. To the side of my face. Never at my eyes and never, never at my legs. “Kara, you’re not my girlfriend. Not after how you treated me at Rob’s party.”

  “What?”

  His voice shook. “You think you can just talk to me the way you did and—?”

  “Are you insane? What do you mean, ‘talk to you the way I did’?”

  “At Rob’s party. You made a scene. You were awful to me in front of everyone. That’s not … I thought it was pretty clear that it was over.”

  My memories of the accident were foggy, nothing but darkness, fear, and confusion that floated around in the back of my mind. But the things that happened before, everything that happened at the party, I remembered all that like it was yesterday. I remembered telling Curt how much I needed to talk to him, making that clear several times. I remembered him leaving me outside alone, and I remembered finding him back in the h
ouse, getting drunk with his buddies and Jenny Roy hanging on him like a coat.

  We’d argued, sure. But it wasn’t a scene. It was a disagreement.

  Not a breakup.

  “No, Curt. It wasn’t clear.” I couldn’t help it—the volume of my voice rose and rose. People were looking, and I knew it, but I had almost a month of frustration, anger, and confusion boiling up inside me, and it started to pour out. “We had an argument, Curt. We didn’t break up.”

  He kept looking anywhere but my legs, where my hands were spread out, gripping my knees with so much force that it probably would have hurt if they’d had any feeling. He avoided my eyes, avoided everything about me, like, after almost a year of being my boyfriend, he couldn’t even be bothered with me right now. “Yes, we did, Kara. How could I be with you after … after you made that kind of scene in front of everyone?”

  The impact of his words was like another accident. Another reckless driver hitting me at full speed, sending me crashing through the windshield.

  “You are so full of crap, Curt.” I wasn’t even trying to control the volume of my voice anymore, and his water polo buddies weren’t at all trying not to stare. In fact, a small crowd may have gathered. “I’m your girlfriend, and I almost died. Did you even know that? Do you know that I’m paralyzed? A whole year together, and I can’t believe that you—”

  “Kara.”

  It was a voice that came out of nowhere, out of place in this situation, with these people, but also so, so familiar. And it was here to help me.

  “Amanda, you need to handle your girl.” Rob Chang spoke up from the middle of the crowd surrounding Curt. “She’s getting a little angry.”

  “Maybe because your boy is being a complete dick to her.” Amanda’s voice was quiet, as usual, but it was strong, and she came around from behind me and squatted in front of my chair. “Let’s go, Kara,” she said. “They aren’t worth it.”

  I opened my mouth to protest. Of course Curt is worth it, I was ready to say. He’s my boyfriend of almost a year. We’ve done everything together.

  But as I started to say something, I looked at him. And again, for a second something flashed in his eyes. Concern. Sadness. Maybe a little shame. Before I could really identify it, though, his eyes hardened and he turned back to his friends. Away from me.

  “You’re right,” I said to Amanda, who, still squatting, had her hands resting on the arms of my chair like it was no big deal. “He’s not worth it.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Mom caught me staring out the window again. It wasn’t like I was staring at anything in particular, like looking longingly out into the streets at the life I could have been having or anything emo like that. After my first week back at school, where I felt like I had to be “on” all the time, I was enjoying just zoning out. Home was the only place I could search for “going back to school in a wheelchair” on my phone and spend hours reading posts on disability message boards from people who were going through the same thing I was. It’s where I could relax without people constantly asking me questions or treating me differently, where I didn’t feel like I always had to be on my toes. Or whatever I would say now that I was never actually on my toes anymore.

  At home, I could finally stop being “wheelchair girl” for a few hours, even if Mom was still tiptoeing around me and acting strange. At least she didn’t stare like I was an alien from planet Feel Sorry for Me and ask dumb questions. But I found myself, during my downtime, not working on the huge pile of makeup homework or anything productive, but either Internetting on my cell or zoning out and staring out the window instead.

  It seemed to be freaking Mom out.

  “Kara,” she said on Saturday morning, snapping me out of my latest trance. “I’m going to the grocery store. Do you want to come?”

  Her words pulled me back to reality, but I didn’t turn away from the window. Did I want to go to the store? Not really.

  But should I get out of the house? Probably.

  “I’m still in my pajamas,” I said to the window.

  “Well,” Mom said in a voice of forced lightness. “That doesn’t have to be a permanent condition, does it? You can always change.”

  I wanted to say, No, I can’t. But she was just talking about my clothes and I wasn’t, and I wasn’t ready to have that conversation with her yet. And she wasn’t ready, either, since she kept not talking about my legs and trying to act like everything was the same as it was a month ago.

  “Come on, Kara.” She sat in the chair at the table across from me. “It will do you some good to get out and do something normal.”

  There it was again, that word “normal.” I was really starting to hate it.

  I looked at the clock on the kitchen wall. Fifteen minutes to eleven. On any previous Saturday, I would have been putting on my dance clothes, getting ready to go to the studio for Saturday practice.

  Suddenly I was hit with this overwhelming desire to be there. At the dance studio. I wanted to see my friends and watch them move across the floor. I wanted to listen to the music and close my eyes and pretend that I had a pair of legs that could still dance.

  I finally looked at Mom. “Can we stop by the studio?”

  At my mention of the studio, Mom’s entire face lit up like Las Vegas. I was finally speaking her language again, and this was the first real smile I’d seen on her face since way before my accident. “Of course we can, sweetie.” She reached over to put her hand on my knee, but I noticed her catch herself and move her hand to my arm instead. “I think that’s a great idea. In fact, I can drop you off there while I do the shopping. That way you can take your time.”

  I caught my face before it completely fell and rearranged it into a halfhearted smile. I’d asked if we could stop by the studio. I wanted her to be there with me for this.

  Mom didn’t catch my disappointment, though, and she launched into gear. Fueled by the few shreds of my old life she managed to dig up, Mom pushed me to get showered, dressed, and into the car within half an hour. I didn’t even have enough time to dwell on Mom distancing herself from me again or to think about the reality of what I’d decided. To really think about how seeing my dance friends would impact me.

  That is, I didn’t think about it until I was in front of the studio door, Mom having left me to go get groceries after telling me to “Give everyone my love!”

  Once I was alone in front of the studio door, though, I thought about it. I thought about going in and watching everyone dance. How would that make me feel? At home, the idea had seemed comforting, but now, staring at the door of the studio, the familiar logo—a silhouette of a girl, leg high in an arabesque—on the window, comfort was the last thing I felt.

  I was in the middle of considering how Mom would react if I just pushed myself over to the grocery store and met her there when the door of the studio swung open.

  An unfamiliar woman came out the door. Tall and lithe, her hair was pulled back in a tight bun. A dancer. Probably looking for more information about classes for her daughter, or getting an application to be a teacher or something. She certainly didn’t recognize me, either, because the look on her face when she saw me wasn’t of pity or Oh, poor Kara, look at what happened to you, like the look I’d seen on the face of pretty much everyone I knew. It was only a look of surprise that I was lurking around outside the door.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Let me get this for you.” She held the door open and smiled.

  Until that moment, I’d been pretty sure I was going to go back to my mom at the store without going into the studio, but now this kind dancer woman who didn’t give me the Look of Pity was holding the door for me and smiling and making me feel like I had to go in.

  So I did.

  The lobby of the studio looked like a generic office building. There was a small waiting area with stiff-backed chairs and a table scattered with outdated dance magazines. Susan, the owner’s mom, was usually behind the receptionist desk, answering phone calls and maki
ng sure everyone had paid for and signed in for their classes. But on Saturdays, she was notorious for sneaking off to the Starbucks across the center for a latte once the classes were in session, and sometimes even popping into the nail place for a pedicure. That must be where she was now.

  Without having to small-talk with Susan, which was one of the things keeping me from wanting to come inside in the first place, I could just wheel down the hall and watch the class—my class—for a while.

  My Advanced Jazz class was in the second room, lovingly called “the Sauna,” thanks to the faulty air-conditioning vent. We always complained about Sauna Saturdays, but with a couple of fans on hot days, it wasn’t so bad. The heat kept our muscles loose, anyway.

  The girls were still working on technique across the floor when I pushed myself up to the big window. I saw Christine, our teacher, clapping out a beat as the girls traveled from one side of the wooden floor to the other in a line, each one repeating the move they were practicing over and over again across the floor as Christine called out critiques of their form.

  I didn’t have to be able to hear Christine to know what she was saying about each girl. Sara had never been able to get her toes as pointed as they should be on her leaps. Amber’s back leg looked like it was going to fly off into the sunset on its own. Paige’s legs were perfect, but her hands always did a crooked thing that Christine could never seem to get her to correct.

  I saw Christine say, “Paige! Hands!” as she clapped, and Paige stuck her tongue out the side of her mouth, biting down in concentration as she tried to make her hands look more natural. The whole scene made me laugh, and I felt washed up in a wave of nostalgia for a life that was mine less than a month ago.

  Running technique wrapped up after a few minutes, and the class took a quick break before moving on. For the first time since I woke up in the hospital, I was glad to be in my chair. Because the window in the room was up so high, I knew that if anyone looked over in this direction, which they probably wouldn’t, they would see only my head, and I could easily wheel myself back and get out of view in a hot second. I wasn’t ready to get caught watching class. I wanted to go say hi on my own terms.