“Yes.”
“Today was my first kiss too.”
“But you’re a senior.”
He laughed, his finger tracing my arm. “Until I met you, Lissa was the only girl who would even talk to me, and she’s not exactly girly. I’ve wanted to kiss you since that very first day in Spanish class. I just haven’t known what to say or do. You’re so perfect. You kind of freak me out.”
“I’m not perfect. I’m in special ed, remember?”
“It’ll be okay.”
I wanted to believe him, but wasn’t sure if I knew how.
Below us, the Willamette River carved the city in half. Mount Hood tucked itself neatly into the background. Millions of tiny lights flickered on as the sky darkened from red to purple. A million people moved around below us, living their lives. “I wish I was normal.”
“What’s normal? Everyone has problems. Maybe this life is normal.”
“Sometimes I just wish I was more like Kaitlyn.”
“Kaitlyn Banks? Lissa’s evil little sister?” Nate was totally laughing at me now.
“Yes, Kaitlyn Banks — beautiful, stuck-up, annoying, normal teenager.”
“I’m not sure if Kaitlyn’s all that happy. She totally bitched me out today while I was chilling at your locker after school, but I could tell she was sad. She’s invented this persona, this ‘normal teenager’ image, as you so nicely put it, and now she’s totally trapped. She can never be herself, ’cause she’s too busy being a caricature of what she thinks people want and expect.”
I looked down on my new city. “Okay, so maybe I don’t want to be Kaitlyn, but I don’t really want to be me either. I was super bummed when I heard we were moving here. My friend Gabby tried to cheer me up by telling me how exciting starting over could be. I could just leave all the drama of my old life behind and reinvent myself as this totally happy, normal teenager. And as stupid as it sounds, I wanted to believe her. I thought I could come here and just magically stop being me and act like Kaitlyn instead.”
“Then you met me, and I ruined everything?”
“You didn’t ruin anything. You’re the one good thing about this town. It’s really hard here. I miss my old friends so much, and yours terrify me. I might actually be relieved to finally get some support if I wasn’t so freaked out about what the Brain Trust will do to me tomorrow when they find out. I mean, Nate, they’re putting me in special ed, for crying out loud. Are you even allowed to talk to me anymore?”
His breath tickled the back of my neck, and his arms squeezed tight around me. “Don’t worry about my friends. They aren’t important.”
The light rain misted my glasses, blurring my vision of the city below us. “Is that your polite way of telling me to prepare for large-scale public scorn and humiliation?”
“Probably only small scale.” Nate’s words didn’t make me feel any better. “Graham will probably make fun of you the most. He judges his own worth based upon how his grades compare to others, and it’s obvious to everyone that you’re way smarter than him. You scare the bejesus out of him. So when he finds out, he’ll be mean about it.”
“Why are you even friends with him?”
“If he acts the way I expect, tomorrow I won’t be.”
“You’ll pick me over Graham?”
“Duh.” He squeezed me tighter.
There were a million and one reasons why I liked Nate, but I still wondered what he saw in me. “Nate, I just moved here a month ago, and we’ve been dating for all of five minutes. Why are you willing to throw away one of your closest friends for me?”
“Because you make me feel dumb.”
I tore my eyes away from the city and turned my head to face him. “What? That doesn’t even make any sense.”
“I know it’s really egotistical, and deep down I’m probably an even worse person than Graham, but most of the time when I meet people, I can’t help but judge them — even teachers. I just know they aren’t as smart as me. And it leaves me feeling, I don’t know, lonely. Lissa and Haroon are smart enough to talk to about stuff, but even around them, I always know I’m the smartest person in the room. Unless you’re there.”
“Nate, I’m not smarter than you.”
“We have different strengths and weaknesses. I know you aren’t perfect at everything, but somehow that just makes you more exceptional. Talking to you, it’s so obvious your mind is going a million miles an hour thinking up all these crazy thoughts that I wouldn’t even be able to understand. Being around you is never boring.”
I stood up and turned to face Nate. He was still sitting on the stone wall, legs slightly parted. I stepped between them and cupped his face in my hands. “I understand what you’re trying to say. I get lonely too. I thought if I could somehow be like everyone else, then I wouldn’t be so empty inside. But I’m not like everyone else. I’m not even like you. But in my entire life, I’ve only met three people I honestly think of as my peers, and you’re one of them. And the other two, well, they’re a long ways away right now.”
He pulled me into him. Our third kiss was even better than the second. My glasses got really fogged up, so I couldn’t see a thing, but we finally got the nose alignment figured out.
About the time my entire body turned tingly, Nate pulled away. “Special ed will be good. Graham and the other morons at our school might not understand, but you need this. If Ms. Chatman can help, you have to let her.”
“Why are you still talking?” I covered Nate’s mouth with my own, and for the very first time, I was glad I’d moved to Portland.
Nate must have been a psychic. The next day at lunch, things went down exactly how he’d predicted. Graham tossed his art history exam on the table. “Booyah, it is time to bow down and worship the honorable Graham.” I’d been sitting at their table long enough to know Graham’s 96 percent wasn’t worth getting excited over, but Graham was just like that.
Everyone else tossed their tests onto the table next to Graham’s. Everyone had A’s. Haroon managed a 98, proving that Graham wasn’t as cool as he thought. The whole thing pissed me off.
Did anyone in this group ever get a B, ever?
“Where’s yours, Baby Picasso?”
“Yeah, Sam, how did you do?” Miles looked over at me expectantly.
I shrugged. “I got an A on it, but I don’t have my paper.”
“Why not?” Lissa arched her pierced eyebrow.
“Well…”
How can I spin this?
“Yesterday, I had a conference with my mom and Ms. Sterling and a couple of my teachers to see how I’m adjusting to the new school and all.”
Miles nodded. “So how are you adjusting?”
“Everyone decided that five AP classes was a bit much for a sophomore, and I needed to work on improving my skills in some other areas. So I ended up dropping art history and I’m gonna have an independent study during seventh period now.”
Of course, Graham laughed. “What does that even mean? Working to improve your skills in other areas? Are you going to special social skills therapy or something ’cause you’re too big of a dork?”
“Only you would need a class like that.” Lissa elbowed Graham in the side.
Nate’s fingers brushed against mine under the table. I grabbed his hand for support.
I inhaled a giant breath.
Here goes nothing.
“I don’t process information the same way as most people. I have an audiographic memory, so I remember everything I hear. I get audio versions of most of my textbooks, which is why I get hundreds on all my exams. I got a hundred on my art history exam. My problems are all related to reading and writing. I have dyslexia.”
“No way.” Miles jumped out of his chair. “Baby brain has a learning disability.”
Haroon pushed him back into his seat. “Dude, not so loud.”
Miles smiled. “This school is so damn cool.”
Graham wasn’t as excited as Miles. He looked at Nate. “You knew? You let her prance around like the queen of England when she really belongs in special ed? That’s where you’re going for seventh period now, isn’t it?”
“So what if it is?”
“No, nuh uh.” His eyes narrowed on Nate. “It was bad enough when you invited a sophomore to sit with us, but this table has standards. She’s in special ed, dude, and she’s not even that good-looking. Are you seriously so desperate to get a girl to like you that you’d go slumming with a retard?”
“You did not just say that.” Nate jumped out of his chair and raised clenched fists.
Were they gonna fight? I stood up and grabbed Nate’s arm. “It’s okay. I can tell where I’m not wanted. I’ll sit someplace else.”
I grabbed my lunch and moved over to the next table. Three boys were sitting on the other side of the table talking about basketball stats. “Hey, guys, I’m gonna sit here now.”
They just looked at me weird and went back to their conversation. Nate slid into the seat beside me. “You should have let me deck him.”
Miles landed in the chair on my other side. “This is the best lunch period ever.” He was so enthusiastic about everything. Too bad Gabby lived in San Diego. They’d probably get along.
Haroon showed up next. The freshman boys eyed my rapidly growing posse and moved to a new table.
I looked at my friends. A sweet, dark-haired boy who hid behind a world of books. A budding computer programmer who occasionally forgot to bathe. And a nonstop bundle of energy that absorbed everything put in front of him but never seemed capable of sitting still. They were nothing like Gabby and Arden. But they were here, choosing to be my friends. “So is this the end of the Brain Trust?”
“I always hated that name.” Miles focused his attention on Nate and Haroon. “I mean, I like you guys, and it’s cool that you let me hang out with you even though I’m only a junior. But the constant competition was just, well, dumb.”
Haroon jerked his head back toward Graham and Lissa. “The Brain Trust is still intact. Clearly, they’re the smartest people in this school and none of us is good enough for them.”
“Clearly.” Nate opened the paperback he had stashed in his lunch bag and started reading.
I looked back at my former lunch table. Graham had never even
pretended
to be nice to me, but he wasn’t alone. Lissa hadn’t followed me the way Miles and Haroon had. I’d thought we were friends, but maybe I was always just her annoying lab partner. I hoped she wouldn’t make me move tables in physics too.
I
was angry when I headed toward Ms. Chatman’s room that afternoon. Graham and Lissa thought I was retarded. Graham had even said it. He called me a retard, right there in front of everyone. It was mean, but it was also kind of true. I had a learning disability, a very serious learning disability. And people with serious disabilities are disabled. I was disabled.
Retard
is a dirty word that nobody is supposed to say, but all it means is “disabled.” So it was true.
I tried to pretend it wasn’t. I tried to prove to everyone how smart I was. How special I was. Special. Yeah, I was that too. A
special
student on her way to special education.
Special
was a nicer word than
retard —
it was even nicer than
disabled,
but it meant the same thing.
Special
means “different.”
Special
means “not good enough.” That was me, not good enough.
When I pulled open the door to the special ed classroom, I spotted half a dozen other special kids scattered around the brightly colored work tables. There was a girl about my age with a flat face that announced extra twenty-first chromosome, sitting at the first table I passed. She was coloring with fat stubby crayons. This is where I had landed. I’d been pulled out of advanced placement art history so I could color pictures with Down syndrome kids. I didn’t belong here. I forced myself to believe that, even if it was a lie.
Ms. Chatman stood beside a pair of boys, both working on some kind of math worksheet. She glanced up and smiled at me. “Samantha, you made it. Take a seat and I’ll be right with you.”
The other students all stopped their special work to stare at me. Even the Down syndrome girl stopped coloring so she could properly gawk at me while I walked toward an empty table. The blond boy doing basic arithmetic next to Ms. Chatman glared at me with what could only be described as hatred. I’d never seen him in my life. I looked down at the gray industrial carpeting, unwilling to face the boy’s contempt. What had I done to piss him off?
Ms. Chatman pulled out the chair across the table from me and smiled. “Welcome to the resource room, Samantha.”
“Thanks.” I glanced around the room one more time, avoiding making eye contact with the blond boy.
There were only seven students in the room, including me. The coloring girl with Down’s, the two boys doing math, two other students sitting on beanbag chairs in the back of the room reading picture books, and a girl in a wheelchair staring blankly out the window. She looked really
special.
Like she could star in her own sappy made-for-TV movie designed to make people feel better about their own, less crappy lives.
I knew I wasn’t as well-rounded as I’d let Graham and Lissa think I was, but did I really make the school’s top seven bad students list? “Where are the rest of your students?”
“We try to mainstream all students as much as possible.” Ms. Chatman must have understood the real nature of my question. “This room acts more as a home base for a number of students. It’s a safe place to come and get all the extra help you need so you can succeed in your other classes. A few students spend several periods here each day, but the majority are only here for one or two periods.”
I glanced back at the girl in the wheelchair still staring out the window. She was probably the non-mainstream-able student. Could she even talk? “So what do we all do here?”
“Each student in this class is on his or her own Individual Education Plan.”
IEP.
That was a very dirty word. Worse than
special.
“I’m here to help you, but mainly you’re here to help yourself. Our time together will be more of an independent study than anything else.”
Is she serious? Independent study?
I could have studied independently after school and stayed in art history. I didn’t belong here. I wanted to run away. My mom hadn’t let them put me in special ed back in second grade even though the school district had wanted to. Everyone knew I was an illiterate retard, but my mom was a big-shot architect, and I was good at spouting out big numbers and acting like a whiz kid. So the school agreed with Mom’s plan to hire Martha. I didn’t have to go to special ed because Martha was going to teach me how to read.