Push Girl: A Novel

by Chelsie Hill

  Since my fund-raiser was the only serious one in a sea of frivolity, I decided to go all the way. I created a presentation board with drunk-driving statistics. I printed out a handout with facts about spinal cord injuries and the freedom a wheelchair could provide to someone who needed one. I set up an iPad playing a rough cut of the footage Amanda had been shooting for her project, and I recruited her and Jack to help me out by talking to people who stopped by the booth to donate their spare change.

  Of course, we were set up right next to Jenny Roy, who sank to new levels of ridiculous with her project of buying new Speedos for the water polo team. She even convinced some of the players, including Curt, who was earning a varsity letter in ignoring me, to actually stand at her table in their old Speedos and pass out candy with her name on it.

  W. T. actual F.

  “I’m sorry,” Amanda said, throwing up her hands, “but she’s just playing dirty. It’s impossible to compete with half-naked guys with perfect bodies. I mean, who knew Rob Chang had a freaking six-pack? My God.”

  “Focus,” I said, handing her a stack of Walk and Roll flyers. “Maybe try to get some of their overflow to sign up for our club meeting.”

  Crowds of students filed through the quad, stopping at the various booths and tossing change into the fund-raising jars. Our booth wasn’t as busy as Naked Guy Central next door, but there were definitely students interested in Walk and Roll.

  “The jar is filling up,” Jack said. “Lots of pennies, though. Did you know it costs more to produce pennies than they’re worth? Pennies actually cost the government money. Isn’t that insane?”

  “Jack,” I said, rolling my eyes. “I thought we were done with the trivia.”

  He shoved his hands in his pockets and shrugged. “Sorry. I’m just … I really want you to win, and it’s making me all nervous.”

  I wheeled up to the table and examined my jar. It was filling up, but Jack was right. It wasn’t full of dollar bills, or even quarters. People were tossing change in, but it was nothing significant. Would it be enough to actually do something meaningful with? Starting a Walk and Roll chapter was great, but winning Homecoming Queen would really get the money and attention we’d need to get some great service projects going. With a jar full of pennies, it seemed like the whole thing might fall flat.

  Amanda and Jack’s penny analysis, and my penny gazing, was interrupted by three girls who walked up to our booth and tossed a crumpled-up napkin covered in nacho cheese sauce into the jar.

  “What the hell?” I snapped.

  “You’re depressing,” the tallest one, clad in all black, said. “I can see why your club is called Walk and Roll. You’re making me want to freaking roll myself out into traffic.”

  “You’re the one who looks like a walking corpse,” Amanda said, pulling out attitude from somewhere inside her I had no idea existed.

  “Homecoming is supposed to be fun,” the shortest one said. She looked a bit like a troll, and she spit when she talked. “Not a time for charity work. No one cares.”

  The middle one snorted. “I bet you’re just raising this money for yourself. So you can buy yourself a new wheelchair or something.”

  I tightened my hand into a fist and held back the string of profanities that I wanted to spit at them. “Better than stealing my clothes from Goodwill.”

  It wasn’t my best comeback ever, but they didn’t listen, anyway. They walked off, probably in search of a booth that was less depressing. But they left behind the seeds of doubt they had planted.

  “What’s wrong with people?” Jack grabbed my hand and squeezed it, but I yanked it away. I wasn’t in the mood for comfort.

  Instead, I covered my face with my hands. “They’re right. This was stupid. I never should have done this.”

  Jack squatted down next to me and looked me right in the eyes. “You know that’s not true,” he said. “You’re doing something good. Most people respect that. Sure, there are some A-holes, but just ignore them, okay? You’re amazing.”

  “Look at her.” I pointed to Jenny’s booth, which started to resemble a beehive with all the people buzzing around it. “She’s had a crowd the whole time.”

  “Crowds don’t matter,” Amanda said, leaning back against our table. “Not if she’s not making any—”

  “Even Alice from the Japanese Club has more people stopping at her booth than we do. She’s raising money to do an anime intro on the morning announcement video. Is that more important to people than a fund-raiser that will actually help people? Our club could save lives. What do they do?”

  Self-doubt was drowning me, crashing down on me like waves. I had no idea what I was doing. Thinking that anyone else besides me and my friends cared about drunk driving and spinal cord injuries was ridiculous. Those girls were right. I thought I could swoop in here with my tragic story and change the world, but really, Speedos were going to win every time.

  Could I drop out of the running now? No, everyone would know I quit out of embarrassment. But I’d just be humiliated at the Homecoming assembly, when I lost after having raised hardly any money for my club.

  I was seconds away from asking Jack and Amanda to help me brainstorm an exit strategy when Baker, a guy from my English class, came up to our booth and shoved a twenty-dollar bill in the jar.

  “Wow.” Baker had been on my radar since he spoke up in my behalf to Mr. David when I first came back to school, but this was quite a shock. No one had donated that much yet, and his generosity quickly snapped me out of my spiral of self-pity. “Thank you, Baker. Really.”

  “No big deal.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and stared at the ground, his voice growing quiet. “My cousin Owen has been in a wheelchair for five years. He was in a drunk-driving accident, too. It killed his twin brother.”

  Amanda’s hand flew to her mouth, and I gasped. I couldn’t help it.

  “I know,” he said, scratching the back of his head. “It … it sucked. So, uh, if you need any help with Walk and Roll or anything, just let me know. I’m down to do whatever I can.”

  Jack walked up to Baker and slapped him on the back. “That’s awesome, man. Thanks.” The two of them walked behind the booth, talking about this drunk-driving awareness program called Rally4Reality that the Walk and Roll Foundation put on at Baker’s cousin’s high school and coming up with ideas on how Student Government could help host it.

  Baker was just the reality check I needed. Jenny Roy’s booth may have drawn in the quantity, but there were some people on campus who knew there were more important things in life than Speedos. I’d take that kind of quality any day.

  * * *

  The night before Homecoming, Amanda came over to help me get ready for the Homecoming assembly. Our school loved to make the Homecoming hoopla last as long as possible, so we held an all-school assembly during the day on Friday to crown the queen. Friday night was the Homecoming football game, where the queen got to be escorted by her dad down a red carpet on the field during halftime. Finally, the Homecoming Dance was on Saturday night, so all the girls would have plenty of time to get done up, and the queen and her date were the guests of honor. It was all a production, but it was usually pretty fun. This year, though, it was causing me nothing but stress. Good thing I had Amanda to help me get organized.

  After my dress, shoes, and makeup for the assembly were all laid out and ready to go, the two of us sat on my bed, watching TV and talking about our plans for the dance. I was going with Jack, and Amanda had gotten up the nerve to ask Sergio, this guy from her media class she’d been admiring from afar, and he’d said yes. She was in the middle of dissecting their most recent text exchange with me when she jumped to her feet, excited. “I totally forgot. I have an early cut of my video project ready. You want to see?”

  “Of course I do! Grab my laptop.”

  Amanda picked up my computer from my desk and grabbed a disk from her bag, which she slid into the side of my laptop. “You can keep this disk for now, and I’ll
get you a copy of the final one when it’s ready to go.”

  As soon as she clicked Play, music blasted through the speakers as various shots of me over the past week—in my chair at school, campaigning for Homecoming, working out my legs at PT—collaged across the screen. Then my name popped up. KARA MOORE: NOT AN INSPIRATION.

  I laughed so hard and so suddenly that I choked on it. “Awesome,” I said as it followed up with, AT LEAST NOT IN THE WAY YOU THINK.

  The video moved on to a series of pictures of me dancing, starting from when I was a little kid.

  I smiled as the images of me in various sparkly costumes flashed across the screen, but seeing Mini Kara leaping through the air, no clue that her dancing time was so limited, sent little stabs of pain through my heart. “Where did you get these?”

  “Your mom. She had a blast going through them and picking out her favorites.”

  Knowing Mom, she probably acted like the trip down memory lane was fun while Amanda was there, but cried her eyes out the second she was alone with all these pictures and the past. When I lost dance, she lost her role as Dance Mom, and it turns out that was just as much a part of her identity as dancing was for me.

  The dance montage moved into an accident montage, causing me to gasp in shock when a photo of the crash I had never seen before filled the screen. I’d looked at the accident photos only that one night, so it made sense that there might be pictures of it I hadn’t seen. I liked it that way, though. I wasn’t ready to have those living in my head.

  Luckily, before I had too much time to dwell on the accident photos, the video moved on, now flashing quickly from clip to clip of my new active life, with music and a voiceover from the little interviews I’d done with Amanda playing over it all. “I want my life to be full of possibilities, not regret, you know?” my voice said over a shot of me sitting on the table at PT, the tech bending and straightening my knee. Amanda also worked in captions in colorful fonts and cool transitions between the clips. And over and over it emphasized that, yes, I was in a wheelchair. But that didn’t change the fact that I was a normal, active high school senior. I wasn’t strong or brave or an inspiration any more than anyone who got up and came to school every day was.

  I was just me.

  “It looks professional,” I told Amanda as she turned to me to see my reaction. “I knew you were talented at this stuff, but … wow.”

  “This is just the first version so I can turn it in to Mr. Graham for credit tomorrow. After the election, I’m going to do a longer version that has all the Homecoming results included, too, and that’ll be the one I submit for the scholarship.”

  I beamed up at my best friend. “You’re going to win for sure.”

  “And you’re going to win Homecoming Queen for sure,” she said, leaning down and hugging me.

  “You know, I might not. It’s just great that we raised money and have like fifteen members for Walk and Roll already.”

  She elbowed me playfully. “You sound like one of those ‘It’s an honor just to be nominated’ people at the Oscars.”

  “Well, it’s true. We’re doing something good. That’s what matters, right?”

  “Right. But you can’t tell me that Mrs. Mendoza putting that crown on your head tomorrow wouldn’t feel amazing.”

  It would. I knew it would. But I also knew that Mr. David had been right when he told me I would never win. The school would never vote me as Homecoming Queen, not like this. So there was no point in getting my hopes up only to be disappointed.

  Anyone good at making videos? Last minute!

  It was the subject on the first post on my disabilities message board, and I normally would have passed right over it in favor of someone’s PT update or success story, but Amanda’s video was fresh on my mind, so I tapped on it out of curiosity.

  The post was a link to a contest for videos about overcoming adversity, sponsored by a local news channel. They put the videos on their Web site, viewers voted for their favorites, and the winner got featured on the news and won a five-hundred-dollar cash prize.

  Wow. Five hundred dollars? We could really use that money to get Walk and Roll off the ground.

  The post on the message board said,

  Current entries are about dogs and/or babies. I think one of you WheelFriends can totally rock this contest if you can throw together a quick video.

  Yes, I thought as I read through the requirements. Amanda’s video would be perfect for this. But there was a deadline. The contest closed tonight at midnight, only an hour away, and Amanda’s video wasn’t even finished yet. No time for her to get it done. No time to even really talk to her about submitting it.

  And wasn’t I always saying I wasn’t an inspiration? Would entering myself into a contest like this make me a complete hypocrite?

  It’s not like her video would win, though. I mean, she did an amazing job on the technical stuff, but my story wasn’t all that life-changing. Would anyone even care?

  I looked at the post on the message board again. I think one of you WheelFriends can totally rock this contest.

  Without letting myself think about it, I grabbed my laptop from the table next to my bed. I filled out the short entry form on the news station’s Web site, and I uploaded Amanda’s unfinished video from the disk she left in my computer. After I clicked Submit and pressed my laptop shut, I snuggled under my covers, closed my eyes, and I fell asleep easily for the first time in a month.

  CHAPTER 20

  It was about half an hour before the Homecoming assembly was going to start, and I’d be lying if I said that puking didn’t sound like a fabulous idea. I knew I looked put together on the outside—Mom had curled my hair and given me a perfect smoky eye and glossy lip this morning, and I wore a long, spaghetti-strapped hot pink sequined dress, tight all the way down to the ankles. But inside I felt like I could fall apart at any second.

  All the queen candidates and our escorts assembled in the small room adjacent to the gym, where Student Government was putting the finishing touches on their balloon arches and students were starting to file in. I was doing my best to keep my nerves under control, but unfortunately, my shaky hands were a dead giveaway to what was going on inside my head.

  “Don’t be nervous,” Jack said, leaning over to kiss my cheek. “You look amazing.” Jack was my escort for the assembly, and he looked adorable in his black suit and hot pink tie, which matched my dress perfectly. He looked like a model in his sleek suit, and I was impressed that he even took off his beanie and tamed his mess of blond waves for the occasion.

  “You like my shoes?” After some research, I did end up getting new ones—a fierce pair of ankle-strapped black patent leather five-inch stilettos that I didn’t have to worry about wobbling in when I walked, wouldn’t give me blisters, and stayed on nice and snug.

  “I like everything about you,” he said. He leaned down so his lips brushed ever-so-slightly against my ear, and he whispered, “And I’d show you just how much, if we weren’t standing right in front of my math teacher.”

  Laughing calmed me down considerably, and for a second I managed to forget that I was about to parade myself around in front of the entire school. But reality slapped me in the face with an open hand when Jenny Roy, smug as ever in a tiny red strapless dress, strutted in with a suited-up Curt.

  And they were holding hands.

  I think my mouth might have fallen open at the sight of them, but I managed to close it before Jack noticed. I couldn’t stop the sinking feeling in my stomach, though. I’d known Jenny was after Curt, obviously. He’d been her main mission in life before I was even in the picture, but this was a new development.

  And I’d gotten over Curt. Really, I had. Losing him was a different sort of loss than my legs, a misery that lived in a different part of my heart. I’d spent a lot of time crying and wondering what I could have done differently, how I could have changed to make him love me again. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that Curt had been re
ally heartless. I shouldn’t have to try to make him love me again when I’d done nothing wrong. I’d loved him and trusted him and he’d completely betrayed me when I needed him the most. He was the one who’d done something wrong, not me, and I didn’t want or need someone like that in my life.

  It took Jack showing me what I deserved to figure it out.

  But even knowing all of that, it still stung like a swarm of angry bees to see Curt holding hands with Jenny. To see that she finally got what she wanted.

  It would have been nice to avoid them, but that was impossible. Jenny headed in my direction the second she spotted me, like a heat-seeking missile of awful, and she dragged a terror-stricken Curt behind her.

  “Hey, Pity Vote,” she said. “Did your little club end up raising any money? Or was it just a bunch of dirty napkins in your jar?”

  I was about to continue on my Kill Her with Kindness campaign, which really seemed to annoy her more than sinking to her level did, but to my surprise, I didn’t have a chance. “Stop it, Jenny!” Curt snapped at her, dropping her hand. He still looked terror-stricken, but now his cheeks were pink with embarrassment, too. “Leave it alone.”

  She rolled her eyes. “God, I was only—”

  Curt cut her off. “Kara, can I talk to you a second? Alone?”

  He wanted to talk? Now? Ha, this would be good. I nodded, and looked up at Jack, who was watching the whole exchange with an expression of utter disbelief. “I’ll just be a minute, okay?” I told him.

  Jack glared at Curt, but he nodded anyway. “Jenny, I think you need to check in with Mrs. Mendoza,” he said. “Let’s go.” He reached over and grabbed Jenny’s bony arm, dragging her over to Mrs. Mendoza, who was scanning her clipboard and barking out orders.

  “Look, Kara,” Curt said when we were Jenny-free. His eyes focused squarely on his shoes, and his voice shook. “I, um. I owe you an apology.”

  I was about to say, It’s okay. No big deal, because Old Kara would have forgiven Curt anything. He could’ve purposely run over Logan with his truck, and I probably would have blamed my poor little dog. But I wasn’t Old Kara anymore; I was Kara 2.0. So I said, “Yeah, you do.”