The Birth of Super Crip (13 page)

Red managed not to respond. Not even a flinch.

“Form is everything when you lift weights. Strength
lets you focus more on your form. Helps you learn balance between
body and mind. Both will get stronger. Better.”

Feeling comfortable again, Red didn’t risk words. He
just listened.

“You are just scratching the surface. Don’t be afraid
of it. Use your strength. We all have strength. You are very smart.
Trust intelligence. It will tell you where to go with it, yah? Use
it in good ways,” Scheinberg said. He picked up the folder from the
exam table, and saw the paper with the blurb about Saturday night’s
events that was under it. Showing it to Red just before putting it
back in the folder, he added, “I suspect you are already doing
that.”

So many questions danced through his mind, but Red
didn’t dare ask any of them.

Scheinberg softly tapped him on the knee with the
folder as he stood up. “Now we get your shot, and I will see you
again soon.”

Chapter
16

Finishing his last bite of a roast beef sandwich that
he figured had probably spent most of the morning under heat lamps,
Red looked around the rest stop. About half of the tables were
empty, summer travel having seen its final hurrah weeks ago. A few
truckers had actually decided to eat their meals while at a table
instead of doing seventy-five miles per hour as they slurped down a
soda. One table became a conference room for three thirty-something
guys in button-down shirts and ties, who seemed convinced they were
poised to set the world ablaze with their brilliance. And a mother
sat at a corner table two over from Red’s mom, who was seated
across from him. The woman lingered over some French fries while
her three kids—two boys and a girl who was about four and the
youngest by at least three years—played on the jungle gym behind
Red. The girl had already done what Red was beginning to think was
the obligatory task of small children to point and ask their mother
what was wrong with him.

He took a sip of his soda and watched his mom glance
over at the kids. Red eyed the mother, who hadn’t reacted at all to
her daughter’s question.

“You can’t worry about it,” his mom said.

“I’m not worried about it,” he said. “I’m just sick
of it.”

“I know.”

“Everybody acts like it’s just some quick little
thing,” Red said. “It’s not. It’s all the times it happened before
and all the times we both know it will happen again. It gets
old.”

“The mother is the real problem. Didn’t even flinch.
Correct her daughter. Apologize. Nothing.”

He nodded and glared over at the mother.

“How’re you feeling?” his mom asked, trying to change
the subject.

“Pretty good, actually,” he said. “I guess I’m
getting used to it or something.”

“You seemed calmer this time when they were giving
you the injection, even before they gave you any gas. Maybe that
helps.”

“I kind of knew I wasn’t going to feel much of
anything from last time, so it was easier not to think about it
beforehand. It’s weird how they can give you just enough gas for
the moment.”

“Trust me, watching you get the shot is what’s
weird,” his mom said, scrunching up her face and shaking as if a
burst of cold air ran up her spine. “They put that huge needle
right into the base of your skull. And you’re strapped down in that
contraption so you can’t move. It reminds me of watching
Frankenstein when I was a kid.”

“Gee, thanks,” he said as they both laughed.

“Well, we better get rolling,” his mom said,
gathering up the food wrappers, napkins, and cups. “I have a couple
of stops to make.”

He rolled his eyes as he worked his legs over the
bench one at a time.

“Oh, I know, it’s going to kill you,” his mom said as
if she could feel his pain. “Look at it this way, you could be in
class instead of running errands with your wonderful mother.”

Red started to laugh but stopped suddenly. He
remembered exactly where he’d be in school at the moment—in social
studies class reviewing for tomorrow’s test. “Can we stop at
school? I just remembered I forgot my social studies book.”

It was his mom’s turn to roll her eyes.

“Oh, I know, it’s going to kill you,” he mimicked her
as she walked back toward him and they headed for the exit.

They heard the mother of the three kids tell them it
was time to go. The three of them hustled to the door, practically
knocking Red over as he was about to reach out to push the door
open. Not one of them even looked back as they rushed out ahead of
him, laughing.

Each one failed to hold the second door as well. The
little girl laughed as she ran outside, saying, “I told you I could
beat him!” Her older brothers laughed and stole looks back at Red,
confirming his suspicion that they’d been the ones to make a game
of getting to the door before he could for their sister. Feeling
the kids’ mother behind her, Mary was proud of Red for not
reacting.

The mother hustled around Red and his mom the second
they were outside. The two boys had turned away to hide their
laughter at Red. And the little girl had apparently decided to
continue her race all the way to their car.

Her blond pigtails continued to bounce as she jumped
off the curb like a hurdler and raced for the grass island that
formed the opposite border of the drive between the restaurants and
the parking lot. She didn’t notice the truck cruising slowly down
the drive.

As his brakes screeched the trucker laid on his horn,
knowing he didn’t have a chance to stop the 18-wheeler before he
hit the little girl who was suddenly frozen in place from fear.
“Alexis!” her mother screamed helplessly as the boys and Red’s mom
looked on in horror.

Red pushed the wave out of his head in such a rush
that he almost wanted to pull it back, fearing it might be just as
devastating to the girl as the impact of the truck. Wishing he had
gone for the 18-wheeler instead, he threw his arms out in front of
him as if he could catch her and cradle her to the ground on the
grass she’d been rushing toward. A short screech of the tires ended
with a
bang
that sent a gasp through the small group of
spectators as Alexis was launched into the air. She tumbled to the
ground, cartwheeling once as she came to rest on her hands and
knees. Stunned for an instant, she quickly began fumbling for her
purple hairpin, which she spotted on the grass.

As if regaining the power of movement after an
instant that felt never-ending, the little girl’s mother rushed to
her. Taking Alexis into her arms, she frantically checked her
daughter for cuts and bruises, stopping intermittently to ask the
child if she was okay. The truck driver jumped down from his rig
and hurried to the girl as well. His apologies mixed with people
yelling for someone to call 9-1-1 and amateur instructions on what
to do with the child. It was only later that the driver and others
inspected the front of the truck, the entire face of which was
smashed in several inches as if it had met its equal head-on.

With the scene unfolding around them, Red and his mom
stood motionless for several minutes. Mary instinctively looked at
her son after the realization settled in that a tragedy had been
averted. He seemed to do more than take in what was going on around
them. He looked slightly pale, his body just starting to relax
after having tensed up, which she knew wasn’t unusual given what he
had just seen. But his eyes looked as though he had tried to absorb
everything. It was his somehow, as though he’d been more than an
observer of what had occurred.

Finally, their eyes met. Red exhaled and felt his
pulse begin to slow as the wave receded. No spots had come to his
eyes. No dizziness. He wanted to wipe some sweat off his forehead,
but the look on his mom’s face told him not to. She already
suspected something, he knew, just as much as he knew the absurdity
of what she was thinking wouldn’t allow her to say it out loud.

“I think she’s alright,” he said, struggling a little
with his speech from the emotion of the moment but trying to force
himself and his mom to move on.

Mary nodded. “Yeah,” she said, absentmindedly. “Yeah,
she seems to be fine.”

Taking his arm, she looked directly into his eyes and
wondered again if her son had done more than witness the events
that had just unfolded. Red felt her grip becoming firmer as if she
was supporting him, and they finally began walking to the car. As
they circled around the grassy island, which was now swarmed by
onlookers, including people rushing out of the rest stop, he
spotted Alexis, still in her mother’s arms. Despite the growing
crowd around her, she looked up and made eye contact with Red. She
was unconsciously holding her hairpin with both hands, like a
safety blanket, thwarting her instinct to wave.

Instead, she smiled, allowing Red to offer an easy
smile in return.

Chapter
17

Most of the staff in the administrative offices got
nervous whenever one of the students with disabilities went in to
ask for a late pass or hand-in a note from home after an absence,
so Red did his best to casually walk by when he entered the school
building. He knew his speech disability would be especially nerve
wracking for whichever secretary happened to be at the desk, and
explaining something out of the ordinary—like stopping in on a day
when he had an excused absence to grab a textbook from his
locker—would take way more effort than it was worth. He was
relieved when he made it through the lobby without being
noticed.

His mom insisted on running another errand while he
went inside to grab his book. As he walked toward B-wing he had to
admit she had a point about making it back before he was outside.
Used to moving through the halls in his power chair, he felt like
he was walking in quicksand.

He remembered using the spare manual wheelchair in
the nurse’s office one day during freshman year when the battery
died on his chair. Walking to a couple classes was more than enough
for Red to never again forget to make sure he had enough of a
charge to get through a day—getting bumped and knocked into by
other students despite hugging the wall the whole way, he almost
fell three or four times. But what he remembered most were the
comments from Mr. Nicklaus when Red finally had a period in the
resource room and asked if someone could get him the manual
wheelchair from the nurse’s office.

All he had to do was get the wheelchair, Red
remembered. I got myself to all of my classes that day. But for a
week the teacher constantly asked him, in mock baby talk, “Does
Weddy need anything else?”

Poor Li’l Nicky actually had to do something besides
work on his graduate degree all day, Red thought. He shook his head
and laughed as he continued walking down the hall, realizing the
chair was still in the corner of the resource room because Mr.
Nicklaus never bothered to bring it back to the nurse’s office.

Finally making it to his locker just outside the
resource room, Red checked the clock that hung over the exit sign
at the end of the hallway leading to the outside walkway to A-wing.
He rolled his eyes, realizing he’d be lucky to make it back outside
to meet his mom before the bell rang and the hallways filled with
students. I can stop an 18-wheeler and pick up a child at the same
time, he thought, but it takes forever to walk down the frickin’
hall.

His mom hadn’t said anything about the little girl on
the long ride from the rest stop to the dry cleaners, where they’d
picked up his dad’s shirts. Maybe she didn’t know what to say, Red
thought. He’d spent most of the ride trying to figure out how he
had done both things at once. I didn’t know what to say about it
either. Even if I wanted to. But he did want to, and he knew it.
Red wanted to tell his mom everything, but he didn’t know where to
start.

He replayed the moment again in his head. It was like
hitting the pause button on a VCR.

I could see everything that was about to happen, he
thought. Everything I needed to do. But even with the wave it was
too late. Only it wasn’t. Everything I thought, everything I wanted
to do. It was like I just did it as fast as I thought of it.

He remembered Dr. Scheinberg telling him he was just
scratching the surface. Was he right? Red hadn’t even been totally
sure he was talking about the wave. He wondered if the shot he’d
gotten that morning could already be giving him more control of the
wave. Maybe that’s why I didn’t feel any dizziness or see spots, he
thought.

Struggling to talk for a second after the girl was
safe and everything was over also came back to him. But he knew in
his heart that the second it took to relax and be able to speak was
from the cerebral palsy and trying to regroup after watching the
little girl almost get hit.

He pulled on the lock for the third time and slammed
it against the locker when it failed to open. Quickly looking
around, he was happy not have drawn attention to himself. He
checked the resource room door last, especially happy Mr. Nicklaus
hadn’t stuck his head out into the hall.