Push Girl: A Novel

by Chelsie Hill

  Mrs. Mendoza scanned Jack’s paperwork. “I don’t know, you guys,” she said, shaking her head. “You know how the Homecoming fund-raisers are. They’re silly and lighthearted. Remember last year? Tegan Foster and the drama department did a fund-raiser to repaint the mascot’s loincloth on the mural outside the theater. Don’t get me wrong—I think this is a completely worthy cause, and a fantastic club to have on campus. And I can see why it’s so important to you, Kara. It’s just … I don’t think Homecoming is the time or place for this type of fund-raiser. Isn’t it something you want people to take seriously?”

  “That’s why we think people will really pay attention,” I said. “We think that by being the one serious fund-raiser of the bunch, we can really get people thinking about drunk driving. I know I’m not going to win. But I think I have an opportunity here to make an impact and really open the eyes of some people here on campus, you know?”

  A line of wrinkles formed on Mrs. Mendoza’s forehead as she glanced over Jack’s paperwork one more time. Then she looked to her left, where Amanda stood, quietly filming everything, and finally her eyes traveled down to me. Me and my chair.

  “Fine,” she said. “But don’t say that I didn’t warn you when this becomes weird.” She picked up the clipboard again and scribbled on the bottom of her master list. “Now, there’s a meeting after school today in the gym for all the nominees, so make sure you’re there, okay, Kara?”

  “Oh, we’ll be there,” I said. And by “we,” I meant the adorable boy who was hugging me like his life depended on it, and the awesome girl behind the camera who was beaming and giving me a thumbs-up.

  * * *

  Amanda met me outside the room for the Homecoming meeting after school, camera in hand.

  “You know that me following you around with this thing—” She waved the camera in my face. “—is only going to bring more attention to you, right?”

  Jack, who turned out to be full of great plans last night, gave Amanda the idea of switching topics for the media class scholarship project, and she had been completely on board. She acted like she’d do pretty much anything to avoid the cross-country team, but I knew she was super pumped about showing how active a disabled high school student could be. She’d follow me around during my Homecoming campaign, going to physical therapy, adjusting to life in my wheelchair, and film the whole thing for her project, which she would edit into an awesome documentary-style video that met all the requirements of the scholarship contest. It would help her to have a totally original project that she was so much more invested in than the cross-country team, and it would help me pump up awareness for our new chapter of Walk and Roll and raise funds for drunk-driving education in the school and the community. It was pretty fantastic for everyone.

  So, I was okay with the extra eyeballs on me, since it was all for a good cause.

  Well, most of the eyeballs. The only unwelcome ones were Jenny Roy’s.

  Any truce that might have passed between me and Jenny Roy on my first day back was broken the second I entered the room for the Homecoming meeting after school, which was slowly filling up with the other nominees. Instead of ignoring me, as she had every time I saw her around campus over the past week or so, she shot daggers at me with her eyes. When I smiled at her in an attempt to be friendly, she jumped up from her chair, literally pushed a girl out of her way, and crossed the distance between the two of us within seconds.

  She opened her mouth to say something, but before she could, I noticed her shoot a glance at Amanda and her camera, and Amanda lifted her hand and waved at Jenny. I laughed at this, especially because Jenny’s face started to twitch as the wheels turned in her simple little head. Would she let the camera keep her from saying the awful things she wanted to say to me? Knowing our past, how she never let anything stop her before, probably not. Apparently, her solution was to step closer to me, so she was practically in my lap, and lower her voice—as if that could keep Amanda’s camera from picking up her vitriol.

  “What are you doing here?” she spat at me. “Didn’t you get the memo? I’m water polo’s nominee now.”

  “Didn’t you get the memo? I didn’t want to represent water polo anymore. I gave up the nomination. So, you know, you’re welcome.” Okay, so I let a little bit of snark creep out through my voice. I couldn’t help it.

  Her eyebrows drew together, wrinkling her forehead. “Just because you’re confined to a wheelchair, you think—”

  I gave her the sympathetic head tilt. “No, you have it backwards. The wheelchair is what keeps me from being confined somewhere. If I didn’t have it, I’d be confined to my house.” I patted the wheels of my chair and smiled. “I’m super grateful for my chair, actually. It’s not something I’m stuck in like some kind of prison.”

  “Whatever,” she said. “I know you think you can turn Homecoming into your own personal soapbox, but here’s a newsflash for you: No one cares, okay? You’re not the big deal you think you are, Kara, and no one wants a depressing Homecoming full of PSAs and life lessons and charity work and whatever other nonsense fund-raiser you have going on. Stop trying to make everyone feel bad for you all the time and let us have fun.”

  Anger bubbled up under my skin, ready to burst. Like I wanted people to feel bad for me. Like I wanted everything to be about my chair. None of this had been my choice.

  Everything inside me wanted to explode at Jenny.

  But I thought back to my argument with Curt when I first came back to school. I had been upset, and I really let him get to me. I went crazy and made a scene, and even though Curt had been a total dick to me in front of everyone, I was the one who left embarrassed.

  I didn’t give two effs about Jenny Roy or what she said or thought about me. She obviously wanted some kind of fight, but I wasn’t going to let her get to me like that. I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction.

  So, instead of picking one of the colorful insults flying through my head to throw back at her like a grenade, I folded my hands on my lap and smiled. “Good luck with your fund-raiser, Jenny. I hope it’s wildly successful.”

  Then, as the meeting was about to begin, I pushed myself away from her, over to the other end of the room, so I could find out exactly what I’d need to do to win Homecoming and roll over Jenny Roy on my way there.

  CHAPTER 18

  “If I’m wincing in pain, you need to turn off the camera, okay? No ugly face on video.” I settled into my chair in the parking lot as Amanda slammed her trunk closed and locked up her car. The hospital had referred me to a new physical therapy center that focused specifically on spinal cord injuries, and Amanda was tagging along on this visit to get some footage for her video.

  Amanda accompanying me to physical therapy was like worlds colliding, but she said it would make her project better to show me being active in multiple ways. Better video project, better Homecoming campaign, better chance of beating Jenny Roy, better chance of making more money for our project.

  “Deal,” she said. “Now, let’s do this. You hold the camera pointed at yourself and I’ll push you up to PT while I interview you, okay?”

  I told her how to get to the physical therapy room at the medical center, and I positioned the camera so it was facing me, selfie-style.

  “So, Kara,” Amanda said in her best investigative-journalist voice. “What do you want to get out of physical therapy? Do you have a specific goal, or is it for general recovery and well-being?”

  “I want to walk again.” I didn’t think about my answer for a second; it just leapt from my mouth like it had a life of its own.

  It’s not like I’d been spending time thinking specifically about walking. Between my parents, Jack, Homecoming, and all the drama at school, I’d had enough on my mind as it was. Especially because it wasn’t something I’d thought was possible. Dr. Nguyen told me I would never walk again.

  The end.

  But deep in my heart, in the place I kept my wildest hopes and craziest secrets, it was what I
wanted. I wanted to be able to walk.

  And, even more, I wanted to dance.

  “Do you think that will happen?” Amanda asked.

  I let out a long sigh. “Well, nothing will happen if I just sit in my chair, right? If I accept the fact that my legs are never going to work again, then they aren’t, for sure. But if I work hard at PT and do everything in my power, then maybe there’s a chance. It might take twenty years or forty years, but I need to start now, and work for it every day.”

  Amanda pushed me through the automatic doors, and we followed the hallway down to the PT room.

  “I want my life to be full of possibilities, not regret, you know?”

  “That’s a sound bite if I’ve ever heard one.” Amanda leaned over my shoulder so her face was in the lens of the camera, smooshed up right next to mine. “Note to self: Self, put that in, for sure.”

  I made a face at the camera, and I handed it back to her. Pushing my shoulders back, I wheeled myself into the PT room, Amanda followed with her camera, and the first person I saw was Ana, saying good-bye to the techs and gathering her things.

  “Kara!” She wore her usual smile, like physical therapy on her paralyzed legs was the most fun she could imagine having today.

  “You’re coming here now?” I asked. “How was your PT session?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Yeah. Sometimes I think they’re trying to kill me. But in a good way, I guess.”

  I introduced Amanda to Ana and explained the video project. Ana, who was still in middle school, hung on every word, like high school Homecoming was everything the movies and TV shows told her it would be. I guess my story did have a lot of drama.

  “Kara’s going to be Homecoming Queen,” Amanda said, smiling.

  Ana clapped excitedly. “Oh my God, really? I want to see pictures! Will you show me pictures?”

  Amanda chimed in with a singsong voice, “And Kara has a boooy-friend, so—”

  “You have a boyfriend?” Ana squealed. “Tell me! Do you have a picture?”

  Heat rushed to my cheeks. Jack made sure to tell me before he left my house after we’d kissed that he wanted to be my boyfriend again, and I had agreed. And, of course, the second he was out the door, I’d called Amanda and filled her in on the details. She’d been relieved to hear that Jack finally made his move; apparently, he’d been asking her for advice on how to go for it since my first day back at school. She’d even faked that stupid popcorn sickness after our mall date to give us some alone time so he’d do something about it. I’d been worried that our new couple status might upset the Kara–Amanda–Jack balance, but we’d done this threesome before with no issues, and it was like falling back into a familiar pattern. It was comforting to know that some things could go back to how they used to be.

  I was about to try to explain our situation to Ana, but a tall man with a mustache poked his head in the room before I could even begin. “Ana,” he said. “Time to go, mija.”

  Ana smiled. “That’s my dad. I have to go. But you’ll tell me about your boyfriend the next time we run into each other, okay, Kara?”

  “Or just give me your number,” I said. “I’ll text you.” Somewhere in the middle of all this, even though she was so much younger than me, Ana had become an actual friend. Going through all these wheelchair adventures together could really bond you to someone, I guess, and it was pretty awesome to have someone who could really understand it, even if she was still in middle school. She was like the real-life version of all the people on the disability message boards I’d come to count on every night before I went to sleep. She understood the sometimes-conflicting, always-confusing feelings I had about life in a wheelchair, and she got me in ways Jack and Amanda and my parents never would, no matter how hard they tried.

  As Ana rolled herself out the door, she turned her head back to face me. “Last time I saw you, you looked really sad.”

  I nodded. “I was.”

  “Before my accident, my dad and I fought all the time. He was never around. But it’s crazy. Now that he has to help me out so much, and I guess he thought he might not make it or something, things have totally changed between us.” She shrugged. “I’m not glad I got hurt, but I’m glad to have my dad back, you know?”

  I knew what she meant. There was no way I would have realized my feelings for Jack if it hadn’t been for my accident. I’d still be with Curt, who sucked. It took this drastic, world-altering event for me to realize the awesome thing that was right in front of me all along.

  * * *

  Even though Amanda had driven me to PT, my parents asked if they could pick me up and take me out to dinner. Things had been odd in my house over the past few days, and their insistence on family time was leaving me a little uneasy.

  The fight my parents had the night of my accident, and my mom’s confession about their possible divorce, was never far from my mind. And for good reason, because as soon as I settled myself in the car, I could sense weirdness, so obvious that it was almost like a fourth passenger, buckled up next to me.

  “Is everything okay?” I asked.

  But instead of answering, Mom asked, “How was PT today?”

  Mom hadn’t asked about it before, since it seemed like her mission in life was to avoid, avoid, avoid, so I jumped at the opportunity to tell her how it was going. “Amanda got most of it on video, actually, so you can watch it. I’m not making a ton of progress yet—”

  “But it’s still early,” Dad broke in. “It’s only been a month. Tiny progress you make now snowballs as you go, and you’ll be wheeling circles around that place in no time.”

  Or walking, I thought, and I smiled at the possibility.

  The weirdness from the car followed us into the restaurant, my favorite Mexican place with the best chips and salsa ever. There was no conversation as we perused the menus and ordered our dinner, and I watched through narrowed eyes as Mom and Dad shifted around and coughed and looked anywhere but at me.

  “Okay, please just tell me what’s up,” I said when I couldn’t take the heavy silence for another second. “I can tell something is going on with you guys. Whatever it is, I can handle it.” I didn’t know if I could handle the reality of my parents getting a divorce, but I could handle it more easily than them keeping it from me and acting all shifty. The longer they hid things, the more my overactive imagination took over, and right now I was picturing the messiest divorce and custody battle this side of a daytime soap. There was no way the truth could be that bad. At least I hoped not, anyway.

  Dad cleared his throat and Mom shifted around in her seat some more.

  “Well,” Dad said, poking at the ice in his water with his straw. “You know your mother and I have been having some … difficulties.”

  Here it was. I nodded, gripping the wheels of my chair until my hands started to tingle.

  “I don’t know if you remember the conversation we had right before your accident,” Mom said, reaching across the table with her hand outstretched.

  I nodded again, afraid to speak, and placed my hand in hers.

  She smiled. “Sweetie, you have inspired us.”

  I yanked my hand away and rolled my eyes. I was in no mood to deal with this crap from my parents, too. “God, Mom. Don’t—”

  “Just listen to me,” she said. “I know you were struggling. With your chair, with your medication, and with all the feelings that came along with all of this. But you didn’t accept that. You wanted to do everything you could to feel normal again, even if it meant admitting you needed help and going to therapy.”

  “That inspired me and your mother, Kara,” Dad said. “It really did.” Now he reached across the table and grabbed Mom’s hand, smiling at her. “So while you were at PT today, we went to our first session of marriage counseling.”

  “What?” I blinked at him, trying to make sense of what he was telling me. “So you’re not getting a divorce?” I didn’t realize I’d been carrying the thought of my parents splitting up around w
ith me like a weight on my lap, but the second my dad said counseling, I felt instantly lighter. Unburdened.

  “We don’t know what the future holds right now. But I promise you that we’re going to try to work on our problems before we let it come to that,” Mom said.

  “We know it’s not going to be easy.” Dad reached his free hand across the table and grabbed my hand, so we looked like we were about to start a prayer circle or something. “Things aren’t going to magically get better for us, sweetie. But we’re going to work hard on it. And we’ll need your help to work on our relationship as a family. Can you help us out?”

  I smiled. It was a smile so big that it actually hurt.

  No divorce.

  And the crazy thing was, if I hadn’t gotten in an accident that night, this might never have happened. My parents would have divorced for sure. My family would have imploded, and there would have been nothing to prompt them to try to work things out.

  Maybe good things could grow from the ashes of destruction. Maybe this accident was the end of my old life, but it was also the beginning of a new one. And maybe that new one had the potential to be okay after all.

  CHAPTER 19

  “Amanda, stop drooling over the competition,” Jack said, smacking her on the arm. “You’re not helping our cause that way.” The last few days before Homecoming were the fund-raising days, and today was the last lunch period we had to squeeze as many donations as we could from the pockets of the student body.

  All the queen candidates had spent every free minute before school, during break, and all through lunch at tables in the quad, with bright, hand-colored posters announcing the club they represented and their fund-raiser. Most girls decorated their booths with ridiculous pictures of their silly project, and they tried to lure passersby and their money to their table with candy giveaways or crazy chants.