“That’s fine.” I looked at the framed photos of Kaitlyn and her glamorous friends, unable to imagine what their lives must be like. “But you do realize this is the scene where Lady Macbeth goes insane, right? You don’t get to wear a tiara and practice your courtly wave. You have to act crazy.”
A blank expression came over Kaitlyn’s face, and she wrung her hands. “Out, damn spot! Out, I say!”
“Not bad, my lady.”
Kaitlyn gave a slight curtsy. “Thank you, thank you. What do we want to do for costumes?”
Eli grew tired of our conversation and opened Kaitlyn’s laptop to play some online fighting game. Kaitlyn rolled her eyes but didn’t say anything. Apparently, jocks were exempt from her scorn.
K
a
itlyn
and I worked out the costume details and then agreed we’d wait until Saturday to start filming. That would give us all time to memorize our lines and pull together all the props we’d need. When we’d finalized our plans, Kaitlyn finally remembered Eli was in the room. She ran her manicured fingernails through his curly brown hair. “What are you playing?”
“Urban Destruction. Do either of you want to play?”
Eli walked us through the rules. Kaitlyn totally sucked at it. I started getting the hang of it, but I couldn’t read the clues that flashed across the bottom of the screen. When an enemy sniper took me out, I looked back at Eli. “I guess I’m a pacifist. I don’t like killing people, even in computer games.”
“You were pretty good, for your first time. What kind of games do you like to play?”
“Old-school eight-bit games.” I swiveled in Kaitlyn’s desk chair so I was facing them. “They’re all strategy and no fancy graphics. Tetris is probably my favorite.”
Eli found a free online version and raised his left eyebrow. “You any good?”
My fingers danced over the arrow keys as the colored blocks fell from the top of the screen. They twisted and turned at my command, stacking into neat, even rows. The score climbed higher, and the blocks fell faster. Then a credit card form popped up — I’d beaten the free version. That was lame.
“How did you do that?” Eli asked.
“Nice work, baby brain.” I spun around and saw Lissa standing in the doorway.
Kaitlyn glared at her sister. “When did I say you could come into my room?”
“Chill, I’m in the hallway.” Lissa rolled her eyes. “You guys got quiet, so I wanted to make sure nobody died. I’m relieved to know you’re simply enamored by the awesomeness known as Sam — the cleanup’s much easier.”
I felt my cheeks flush. All I’d done was beat a stupid computer game. Why did Lissa have to make me look like a freak show in front of the only two sophomores who had spoken to me since I moved here? I didn’t really want to become best friends with Kaitlyn, but I didn’t want her to start teasing me even more.
“Sam is pretty awesome.” Eli glanced at the time on the bottom corner of the computer screen. “But my mom wants the car home by ten. I guess we should get going.”
I pulled myself together enough to gather my belongings. “Yeah, see you tomorrow, Lissa.”
“Later, baby brain.” Lissa tousled my hair as I walked past her toward the front door.
Eli didn’t start the engine right away. Instead, he turned sideways in the driver’s seat to face me. “Samantha?”
“Elijah?”
He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, then turned the key. “Never mind.”
“What?”
“It’s just…forget it.”
Curiosity ate at me as we backed out of Kaitlyn’s driveway. “Eli, what do you want to ask me?”
“I don’t want to offend you or anything, but do you have Asperger’s syndrome or something?”
I pulled my knees into my chest and started rocking back and forth. Then I realized that was a totally autistic thing to do and forced myself to stop. “Why would you even ask me that?”
“Crap, I don’t know. I wasn’t asking as an insult or anything. You just seem different somehow. You’re crazy smart about stuff, and when you were playing Tetris back there, it wasn’t normal-teenager-that’s-good-at-video-games behavior. It was unreal, like you went into a trance or something. I just thought maybe there was a reason for it, but I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.”
I wasn’t offended — it’s not like his question had never entered my mind. We drove past Nate’s street, and I thought about all the things I had and hadn’t talked to Nate about, and how scared I was of Nate’s friends. Eli was different somehow. English was the only class he was doing well in, and that was only because I’d explained the entire play to him. I doubted he’d even read it. Maybe I told him the truth because I didn’t think he would make fun of my answer.
“Asperger’s deals a lot with not being able to understand other people. Not reading body language properly and stuff like that. I think I’m okay at that kind of stuff, but I do have some other pseudo-autistic traits. Like, I’m really sensitive to sounds, and things like buzzing lights or a whirling fan can drive me totally bonkers. It’s easy for me to obsess about one thing. That’s why I’m so good at math. I probably fall somewhere on the autism spectrum, but I’ve never been formally diagnosed with that.”
Eli pulled over to the side of the road, as if he couldn’t drive and talk at the same time. The attention made me feel really important. Plus, it was cute how seriously he took his driving. Now that I thought about it, there were a lot of things about Eli that were cute, but I noticed my heart rate stayed even — I wasn’t freaking out. “What have you been formally diagnosed with?”
“I’m dyslexic,” I said. “I sort of can’t read.”
“What?” He shook his head in confusion. “You know
Macbeth
upside-down and inside-out. I might not be a straight-A student or anything, but we sit right next to each other in class and I do have eyes. I know you can read.”
“I listened to
Macbeth
. I didn’t read it. I listen to all my textbooks too. I’m good at math, and puzzles, and stuff like that. I’m sure I’d be in calculus no matter what. But the only reason I’m in so many other AP classes is ’cause it’s easier to get college-level textbooks in audio.”
Eli ran his fingers through his curly brown hair. “Isn’t that kind of a cop-out?”
“I like to think of it as a coping skill.”
Headlights from oncoming traffic illuminated Eli’s bewildered expression. “I don’t mean a cop-out for you. I mean for the school. If you can’t read, isn’t it their job to teach you how? Not just hand you some audiobooks and send you on your way.”
“Do you really think I should drop out of all my classes and start taking special ed?”
“No, but I don’t think you should go through life not knowing how to read either.”
Maybe it was the dark, or the odd safety of Eli’s mom-mobile, but for some reason, now that I’d started talking, I couldn’t stop. I wanted Eli to understand the truth. I wanted to understand the truth.
My lies had caught up with me halfway through second grade, when I took a statewide assessment test. I was four grade levels ahead in math, and I couldn’t properly identify the twenty-six letters of the alphabet. Everyone freaked out: my teacher, my parents, the school administrators, the district administrators — everyone.
For years, I’d managed to trick everyone into thinking I was some sort of child prodigy. Now, I became a mystery and an abomination. Nobody knew what to do with me, so they brought in some kind of specialist to run a bunch of tests. They gave me an IQ test. It was supposed to be culturally unbiased, which meant it was just a bunch of puzzles and didn’t have any words. It was like playing Tetris. When it was over, they told my mom I was a super genius. Then they gave me a second test, one that did have words in it, and I was disabled again.
That afternoon, I curled into a ball on the corner of my bed, counting and multiplying, searching for a hidden number that would somehow set me free. My mom came into my room waving a couple of pieces of paper. She sat down beside me and started reading the first page.
“Thomas Edison, Agatha Christie, Charles Schwab, Pablo Picasso, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ted Turner, Winston Churchill, Edger Allan Poe, Ansel Adams, Walt Disney, Nelson Rockefeller…Samantha Wilson.”
I looked up at her and shook my head in disbelief. “Why is my name on that list of smart people? I’m an idiot who can’t read, remember?”
“This isn’t just a list of smart people,” my mom told me. “This is a list of dyslexic people. And I know you’re going to do just as many amazing things in your life as the rest of these people. I’ve known that for years.”
Thomas Edison invented the lightbulb. I doubted I’d ever do something that cool, but maybe I could at least pass second grade.
I lifted a second sheet of paper off my bed. “Whose names are on this page?”
She took the paper from me and read: “A letter to dyslexic children, from Nelson Rockefeller.”
For I was one of the “puzzle children” myself — a dyslexic, or “reverse reader” — and I still have a hard time reading today.
But after coping with this problem for more than 60 years, I have a message of encouragement for children with learning disabilities — and their parents.
Based on my own experience, my message to dyslexic children is this:
Don’t accept anyone’s verdict that you are lazy, stupid, or retarded. You may very well be smarter than most other children your age.
Just remember Woodrow Wilson, Albert Einstein, and Leonardo da Vinci also had a tough problem with their reading.
You can learn to cope with your problems and turn your so-called disability into a positive advantage.
Dyslexia forced me to develop powers of concentration that have been invaluable throughout my career in business, philanthropy, and public life. And I’ve done an enormous amount of reading and public speaking, especially in political campaigns for Governor of New York and President of the United States…
I know what a dyslexic child goes through — the frustration of not being able to do what other children do easily, the humiliation of being thought not too bright when such is not the case at all.
My personal discoveries as to what is required to cope with dyslexia could be summarized in these admonitions to the individual dyslexic:
Nelson Rockefeller hadn’t quit, and he wound up vice president of the United States of America. I looked at my mom. “What if I can’t do it? What if I never learn how to — ”
“But, Sam,” she cut me off. “What if you can?”
I wanted to believe her. I really did. “Do you think it’s possible?”
You’re the smartest person I know.” She grabbed hold of my head and shook it playfully from side to side. “You are smart enough to solve this puzzle.”
The school came up with a complicated plan to divide my time between special ed, remedial reading, accelerated math, the talented and gifted program, a personal aid, and a mainstream second-grade classroom. But the section of my day devoted to the classroom was microscopic, meaning I’d be alienated from my peers, so my mom decided to broker a deal that would save the school district a small fortune and give me a fighting chance at a normal childhood at the same time.
She hired a private tutor to teach me how to read after school, and I got to stay in class full time. My friends quietly read me anything I didn’t understand, and my teachers pretended not to notice.
Eli drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “You didn’t listen to Rockefeller’s advice. You’re hiding the truth and denying you have a problem. Sam, you’ve quit.”
I felt like he’d just slapped me in the face. He was right. I was fifteen, and I read like someone half my age. I’d given up on trying to fit in by hiding behind my abilities and looking down on people who succeeded by conventional means.
“Maybe I did. I met with Martha, the tutor my mom hired, three times a week for four years. I slowly learned my ABCs. And at the end of sixth grade, I graduated from tutoring reading at a first-grade level. I can sound stuff out now, if I really work at it. But all those years I was in tutoring, I was also getting really good grades in school without ever reading anything. Maybe I did give up on myself. ’Cause continuing to not read feels so much easier.”
Eli put the car back in gear. “You’re obviously ten thousand times smarter than me, so I guess you can do whatever you want, but I don’t think you should give up. You should finish cracking that puzzle.”
He pulled up in front of my building a couple minutes later. “Thanks for the ride — and for listening.”
“No problem. I seriously love driving.”
H
ola, chica.
” Gabby picked up on the second ring. Nate’s strategy was working. Our nightly chats in
español
were helping a lot.
“
Yo quiero dos muchachos, quiza.
”
“You like two guys now?” She forgot to speak in Spanish.
I did my best to describe Eli in Spanish. I knew he was
atlético, atractivo, amistoso, y quiza un poco mudo.
“
Mudo?
You like a dumb guy?”
“I also said he was athletic, attractive, and friendly.”
“You like a cute popular jock who’s also kind of dumb? Sam, did you fall and hit your head or something? What happened to this Nate character, who you described yesterday as ‘
el hombre mas perfecto del mundo
’?”
“I’m still crushing on Nate in overdrive, but nothing ever happens when we’re together. He tells me I’m cute and acts like he likes me, but then we just do homework together. I’m sure he thinks I’m cute in a little kid way. Nate’s eighteen. I won’t even turn sixteen until the end of the summer. If he even notices I’m a girl, he thinks of me like a little sister — that’s it.”
“Okay, okay, okay, you can start flirting with this new guy in front of Nate. Remind him that you are a gorgeous young woman that he desperately needs to pay more attention to.”