Push Girl (15 page)

Jack recoiled like I’d slapped him. “Um, okay,” he said, lifting himself up from the beanbag chair. “I guess I’ll see you Monday morning, then.”

“Wait, Jack.” I reached out my hand in his direction as he walked to the door. My hand didn’t quite reach him, so I leaned over an inch or two so my fingers grazed his arm. “That’s not what I meant. I just mean, I don’t want you to—why are you doing this? Why are you spending so much time with me? And helping me? We’re not…”

I didn’t let myself say “we’re not together anymore,” which was what I was thinking. But I didn’t know what to say instead, so my words just trailed off into silence as he stared at the door of my bedroom.

“You know what I really want?” I said after a long moment. “I want to be able to dance again. I want to walk. I want my legs to work. That’s what I want.”

Jack sighed. He stepped back from the door and sat down next to me on the bed. “You will, Kara. I know you will.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes, I do. Because you have always gotten everything you wanted. You’ve gotten things you didn’t even know you wanted. That’s just the kind of person you are.”

My nose crinkled. “Way to make me sound spoiled.”

“Not spoiled.” He smiled. “Charmed. There’s a difference.”

I snorted, and then I laughed because I totally didn’t mean to snort. “I think you have me confused with someone who is not paralyzed and in a wheelchair. Newsflash: There’s nothing charmed about my situation.”

“Isn’t there?” he said, tilting his head to the side. “You’d rather be dead?”

“No, but—”

He adjusted his beanie. “You need to turn your attitude around, okay? You could have died and you didn’t. You have a life you could have lost. That’s awesome.”

“But I lost the thing I love the most. I can’t dance anymore. I’m not—”

He put up his hand. “Stop it, okay? Stop talking about yourself like you’re ruined. You know, there’s a whole segment of people with spinal cord injuries who—”

This time I cut him off. “Why do you do that?”

“What?”

“The random facts. The trivia and the inspirational quotes and all that. You never used to do that before.”

He stared down at his hands, fingers spread out on his knees, and a little pink flushed his cheeks. After a too-long silence, he looked back at me and shrugged. “I missed you, okay? I know you moved on and had your Ken doll boyfriend, but I missed having you in my life and I wanted a way to be your friend again. I know it’s dumb, but it was all I could think of.”

His words sent a flutter through me. An unfamiliar flutter that started in my stomach and spread all the way to my fingers, warming me from the inside out.

“You looked up all that random crap just for an excuse to talk to me again?” It was so Jack to go to all the trouble of thinking up an elaborate excuse to text me when any other person would have been fine with “Hi!”

He laughed. “Hey, I learned a lot. It was very educational.”

“Well, you can stop it now, okay? We’re friends again, so you don’t have to think up cheesy things to say to me.”

“You don’t like the fun facts?”

I locked eyes with him. “They aren’t you, Jack.”

Memories of my relationship with Jack filled my mind. Jack and I holding hands as we walked into school together on our first day of freshman year. Jack and I throwing tennis balls for Logan at the dog park, challenging each other to quote movie trivia with each ball Logan brought back to us. Jack in the audience of every one of my dance recitals, always waiting for me after with flowers.
That
was Jack.

“Yeah,” he said. “You’re right. But it worked, didn’t it? We’re friends again.”

“I guess.”

“Well, as your friend, I feel it’s my duty to remind you that you aren’t ruined. You’re different. Kara 2.0. And maybe Kara 2.0 should try some things that Kara 1.0 would never have done.”

I knew when he said that, he was talking about Homecoming. Putting myself out there in front of the entire school, wheelchair and all. I don’t know why me running for Homecoming Queen was so important to him. It’s the kind of thing we would have laughed at back in the day. But maybe there was more to it than just Homecoming.

“I’ll think about it,” I said, chewing on the tip of my thumb. Before I could stop it, a huge yawn came out of nowhere, and I slapped my hand over my mouth in an effort to hide it.

“You’re tired,” he said, getting up from the bed and fighting back a yawn himself. “I should go home. But think about what I said earlier, okay?”

I rolled my eyes and smiled. “Thank you, Jack.”

“See you Monday.” He leaned forward, wrapping me up in a tight hug. And as he pulled back, he stopped and pressed a quick kiss onto my cheek.

It was an innocent kiss on the cheek from an old, good friend, but it left me stunned. And I felt it burning on my skin long after Jack had gone home.

*   *   *

Even though we’d talked about so much more, Jack saying “You’d rather be dead?” stayed in the back of my mind all night.

I had survived the accident, but the guy who hit me, the drunk driver, hadn’t. I asked some questions about him and the logistics of what happened right after I woke up in the hospital, but Dad was quick to tell me not to focus on it, to put my energy into recovery instead. And when I asked Mom for any details, she changed the subject as quickly as she could. Even Amanda and Jack had warned me not to look into it, saying the whole thing would just upset me. So, since I couldn’t remember the accident anyway, and adjusting to my future in a wheelchair was more than enough for my brain to process, especially with all the meds I was on, I put it out of my mind.

But that night as I tried to fall asleep, Jack’s mention of how easily I could have died triggered something in my head. And his comment coupled with the morbid curiosity that comes alive in the middle of the night prompted me to do a search for my accident and see what came up. I typed “Kara Moore + accident” into the search on my phone and chewed on my thumb while I waited for the results to load.

At first, I couldn’t understand what I was looking at; the picture that loaded on my phone screen didn’t make any sense at all. It wasn’t until I enlarged it that I was able to see that the unrecognizable blob I stared at was my car. My poor Prius, a gift from my parents on my sixteenth birthday, crumpled into an indecipherable pile of metal bits and pieces.

I was in there,
I thought as I stared at the horrific photo. My mind struggled to reconcile that fact with the image on my screen, so I kept thinking it over and over.
I was in there. I was in there.

Eventually I made myself move on from the photo, and I scanned the attached article for any piece of new information until I found what I was looking for. The name of the driver.

Kyle Hayes.

Kyle Hayes was twenty-nine years old, single, and had two previous DUIs and a suspended license. He’d been kicked out of a bar earlier in the night—probably around the time I had been sitting out on Rob Chang’s patio waiting for Curt—for being too drunk, but someone put him in a cab. It’s unclear how he ended up behind the wheel of his car that night, the police said.

And now he’s not around to ask.

There was a small photo of him at the bottom of the article, and seeing the face of the man who had changed my life was more of a stab in the chest than seeing my shredded car. I guess I’d been expecting the guy who drunk-drove his car through a red light and right into my spine to look trashy and gross, like some pathetic loser who didn’t have a handle on his life. Like someone who lurked in back alleys and wore dirty tank tops and smelled like cigarettes and failure. But he didn’t. Kyle Hayes had worked in pharmaceutical sales, the article said, and he was actually sort of hot.

I guess even hot guys can get drunk and ruin someone’s life.

I couldn’t get comfortable as I tried to fall asleep, and no amount of turning over from my front to my back and over again was helping to clear Kyle Hayes and my broken car from my mind. I still couldn’t process what I had seen of the accident, but looking up that article did prove one thing to me: Jack was right. I was lucky to be alive. Charmed.

A second chance at life, that’s what I had in front of me. Now all Kara 2.0 had to do was figure out how to use it.

CHAPTER 14

Missing homework was avalanching in a big way, so Monday morning I got to school early to stop in to a few classes and beg for some forgiveness. First stop was English with Mr. David, who needed to give me a makeup quiz on the beginning of
Pride and Prejudice
.

“Ah, good morning, Kara,” he said when he saw me lurking in his doorway. “Come on in. I have your quiz right here.”

Luckily, the quiz was pretty easy, thanks to SparkNotes and Colin Firth, and I finished in a matter of minutes. I had tried to read the chapters, really I had, but all the meds the doctors had me on left me staring at the book without registering a single word. “Is there anything else I need to make up while I’m here?”

“Oh, I’m sure there is,” he said, and clicked away on his computer, probably checking out my grade. “You sure have a lot to catch up on, don’t you? That must be tough on you. With everything you’re going through and all.”

“Yeah, between making up homework, physical therapy, and—” I took a deep breath and prepared to say it out loud. “—now starting my fund-raising campaign for Homecoming, it’s going to be a lot to do. But I can handle it.” I let a smile creep into my voice as I said the words, thinking back to my talk on Saturday with Jack. After spending all Sunday deliberating, I’d decided he was right. I could do this and I should do this. I deserved to do something to get my life back to normal. I shouldn’t let Kyle Hayes continue to have power over me.

Mr. David’s head snapped up from his computer at my mention of Homecoming, and he tilted his head and crinkled his eyebrows. “You’re in the running for Homecoming Queen?”

I nodded. “Water polo nominated me before the accident.”

“Oh,” he said. “Have you talked to them since then? I mean, now that you’re…?”

Did he seriously just say that? Of course he did—he’s a jerk.

I opened my mouth to reply, but he kept on yammering.

“You know, they might not even realize … you should probably go over to Activities after this and talk to Mrs. Mendoza.”

“What are you saying?” I’d always gone out of my way to be extra polite to teachers, but no teacher had ever made me feel as small and worthless as Mr. David just had. No
person
had, actually, and his words exploded like shrapnel in my head, causing more damage the longer they bounced around in there.

And, the funny thing was, I didn’t even care about Homecoming all that much. When Jack told me my name was still on the ballot, my first instinct was to roll in to school as fast as my wheels would take me and ask to be taken off. But Jack’s belief in me sparked something, a desire to push myself out of my comfort zone. And after reading about my accident, I’d poked around some of the disability message boards I spent my nights reading, and I learned that there were lots of girls in wheelchairs around the country doing awesome things at their schools.

I’d started to think that maybe this whole thing could be fun.

I guess not.

Mr. David stood up and walked toward me. “Don’t get me wrong, Kara. I was only saying—”

Hands shaking, I gripped my wheels and rolled myself back. Away from him. “You were only saying that water polo wouldn’t want some cripple representing them at Homecoming. Just that a girl in wheelchair would never win anyway, so why bother. Right? That’s what you were saying?”

“Kara, no. That’s not—”

“That’s sure what it sounded like to me.” The classroom felt like it was closing in on me, and I wanted desperately to get out of there. But another disadvantage of a wheelchair is that you can’t really make a dramatic exit. There’s no wheelchair equivalent to “turning on your heel and storming out.” I pretty much had to maneuver a three-point turn to get myself toward the door again, but once I was facing the right way, I pushed myself out of that classroom as fast as my arms could manage. Mr. David called after me the whole time, but I ignored him.

I couldn’t ignore what he’d said, though.

In all honesty, he put in words exactly what had been running through my mind since I started back at school. I wasn’t a normal girl anymore, not a girl who could win Homecoming. I was Wheelchair Girl now, and no one would vote for Wheelchair Girl. I was sure water polo didn’t want me.

But I wasn’t going to let Mr. David get to me, was I? He was a jerk to everyone, all the time. No one ever believed the completely insensitive and insulting things he said. Why should I start now?

Stopping at the corner, I ran my hands through my hair over and over as Mr. David’s words repeated in my head. Somewhere in there, my conversation with Jack was trying to break through—but Mr. David’s words were louder. They resonated so loudly because they were an echo of my own thoughts.

I pushed myself forward, in the direction of the activities room. Of course, the first person I saw when I got there was Jack, making his Red Ribbon Week posters outside the door with some of the other Student Government people. “Hey, Kara!” All smiles, he hopped up from his poster making and came over to me. “Are you going in? Allow me.” He held open the door and followed me inside. “Did you come here to help with posters or something? Did you get my mental signal that we’re short on girls with nice handwriting this morning? No one should let me write the posters. I thought they learned that from the prom debacle last year.”

“I’m actually looking for Mrs. Mendoza. Is she here?”

The problem with someone like Jack, whom I’ve known so well for so long, is that he knew all my voices. My happy voice, my scared voice, my nervous voice, my fake voice. So I couldn’t even pretend like I was there for some innocent reason. He could hear it in my voice.

“Kara, no.”

“I just … I can’t do it.” I let out a long sigh and told him about the conversation I’d had with Mr. David.