The Birth of Super Crip (3 page)

“Hell-oo. So, when do you go back to the guy?” Scott
asked, repeating himself.

“Next week, I think,” Red said, realizing he hadn’t
heard his brother the first time. He looked at Scott, wanting to
tell him about the strange sensation he’d experienced during his
confrontation with Chuck. They usually told each other everything.
But his gut told him not to. He would just laugh, Red thought. Or
blow it off. He wasn’t sure what to tell him anyway.

“What’re you in such deep thought for all of a
sudden?” Scott asked.

“I’m not,” Red said, knowing he couldn’t get a lie
past Scott but going with it. “I don’t know, it’s not like the shot
did anything else for me.”

“It certainly didn’t make you any smarter.”

“Uh-duh, you write that one?”

Scott got up and pretended to throw the ball at him,
only to let go of it as he extended his arms and catch it before
the ball dropped to the floor. Red’s head snapped back a little and
he put his hand up to block the ball.

“Two for flinching,” Scott said, punching his brother
in the arm twice as he left the room.

“That’s a real skill to make a person with cerebral
palsy flinch, asshole,” Red called after his brother, tossing an
eraser at him in the hallway as they both laughed.

Chapter 5

Red rolled over and finally turned the clock on the
end table back toward him. The bright red numbers seemed to taunt
him with the knowledge that it was 2:37 in the morning. There was
no more denying that he couldn’t sleep. He turned the clock to face
the wall again, hoping the extra bit of darkness would help.

His mom had taken another turn at interrogating him
about what she kept calling “the fight” before he went to bed. Do
they all really think I had a fight with a football player? Red
thought. Especially one where he ended up on the floor?

Folding his pillow in half, he laid on his back. It
was impossible. I didn’t touch Chuck, he thought. He would have
kicked the crap out of me.

Now he knew he was lying to himself. Nobody was going
to beat up one of the kids with disabilities. Even the “dirts”
wouldn’t beat up one of us, he thought. Red had known it on some
level his whole life. Wrestling with his brothers when they were
younger, he’d catch his father giving the other three a look that
they all understood. You can handle him. Smack him around a little
if he gets a few in on you. But don’t hurt him.

It wasn’t quite the same in school. All the kids in
the mainstreaming program had been picked on. Dirts, who had earned
their nickname because they always seemed to wear the same clothes
and were constantly getting sent to the office for wising off in
class or getting into fights, often made kids with disabilities
their targets. They would mumble as they walked past Red to mock
his speech, or kick his desk chair in during class if they happened
to sit behind him, or make sarcastic comments about the kids with
disabilities to their friends loudly enough for Red and the others
to hear. Some would give him the finger just to see him give it
back, as if he were a monkey in a zoo.

But Red always knew he could come back at them just
enough. Tell them to screw off. Compliment the dirts on their
streak of wearing a black T-shirt under an open flannel with jeans
and boots, which they wore regardless of how hot or cold it was
outside. They weren’t really going to do anything. Not to one of
the kids with a disability. It was an unwritten rule even among the
kids who were sent to the office every other day.

Red suddenly remembered putting a freshman against a
locker the previous year. The kid would stick his foot under the
wheel of Red’s wheelchair and yell as if Red couldn’t control his
chair. The first couple times Red actually apologized. But when it
kept happening day after day, he caught on. It was one of the
dumbest ways he’d ever had a kid try to pick on him. Apparently,
the laughter from the kid’s friends when he would scream that “the
crippled kid did it again” was worth what had to be actual
pain.

One day both of them happened to be late getting to
their next period. Any excuse that the hallway was too crowded for
the kid to avoid the wheelchair was gone. Even with no one around
to impress, the kid did it again. After feeling the bump of the
kid’s foot under his back wheel, Red kept going for a moment only
to decide it was time to do something. Turning around, he could see
the kid was the only one left in the hall. The freshman had stopped
at his locker and clearly hadn’t given Red a second thought. It was
the perfect opportunity. Gripping the handlebars of his power
chair, Red rammed the kid’s ankle against the wall with the front
bumper of his chair, pulled himself up with the handlebars, and
grabbed the kid by the back of his shirt. All the while his heart
was in his throat.

“You do it every day,” he yelled. “Do it again, I’ll
kick your ass.”

Instead of the punches he expected to take, Red only
heard the kid mumble to no one in particular, “Is this kid
serious?”

A drop of sweat rolling down the side of his face,
Red sat back down and drove his power chair toward the lunch room.
Halfway down the hall a teacher had come out of her room to see
what the commotion was about. Red was surprised to get nothing more
than a grin and a nod. He never heard another word about it.

Red suddenly realized his muscles had tensed up as he
lay in bed. Taking a deep breath, he pushed his head back into his
pillow to feel its softness.

The kid never did do anything, Red remembered. Didn’t
even seem to think about it. He didn’t stop the little stunt, but
from then on he only had the guts to do it about every other
week.

As much as Red would swear that he could hold his own
against the kid in a fair fight the way he and Scott would go at it
on their knees horsing around, he knew he’d been completely
vulnerable that day in the hall. One halfhearted shove would have
knocked him to the floor. Maybe the kid feared the punishment he’d
get. It occurred to Red that the kid might not even respect him
enough to fight him. Whatever the reason, Red knew the unwritten
rule applied more than he thought.

But the truth was that he really didn’t touch
Chuck.

So why do I keep feeling like I’m lying? he wondered.
Each time he’d been asked about it, including after dinner by his
mom, he felt a little guilty saying he didn’t touch Chuck. He knew
he wanted to push him, but he also knew he hadn’t felt Chuck at all
when he reached out to shove him. Not his jacket, his face, his
shirt. Nothing.

He rolled onto his side and hugged the sheets closer
to him. A yawn escaped from him as he finally began to feel the
tension in his muscles subside. Before he could close his eyes he
noticed he hadn’t turned the clock far enough away from the bed. He
could still see the red glow from the numbers. He tried to close
his eyes and forget about it. He was tired. He was warm. The sheets
were around him just the way he liked.

And he felt compelled to turn the clock further. He
sighed, frustrated that he couldn’t just drift off. Forget the
stupid clock, he told himself. But as he lay there, he knew it
wasn’t working. Finally, he opened his eyes. He was about to reach
for the clock when he heard a noise.

Red froze. As fast as he heard it, the sound was
gone. He looked around in the darkness. He couldn’t hear anything
more. He lifted his head to listen. Maybe someone else couldn’t
sleep and went downstairs, he thought.

Putting his head back down, Red felt exhaustion
finally winning. He felt a touch of the light-headedness he had
after reaching for Chuck, as if the feeling had already receded. He
noticed it enough to think it was strange, but didn’t care enough
to focus on it.

If it puts me to sleep, I’ll take it, he thought. His
eyes closed and he could finally feel himself drifting off. I
should have pushed the pain in the ass a lot harder.

Red’s eyes shot open. I should have pushed him
harder? The thought echoed as if it had come from someone else.

His eyes searched for the glow from the clock to
orient himself in the darkness. It was gone. The clock had been
turned toward the wall. And he was still hugging his sheets, having
never relinquished their warmth.

Chapter 6

Reaching the top step as the morning announcements
began, Red felt Bonnie let go of his arm after he was stable on the
floor of the entrance to the second floor hallway. He took his
folder for Computer Programming II from her and double-checked his
pocket to make sure he had the key to his wheelchair. The fact that
it came with a key was, in Red’s mind, the only good part about
having a scooter-style chair versus a regular power chair. He
thanked Bonnie, glancing down the stairwell as he did every morning
to confirm that he’d parked his wheelchair under the stairs and
hadn’t left anything on it.

“Need anything?” Bonnie asked.

“An elevator for A-wing?” Red joked. “It would make
life so much easier for both of us.”

Bonnie laughed and said, “Tell me about it.” She had
a tone that always seemed to suggest she was inconvenienced by
having to help the students with disabilities. Red resisted the
urge to finally tell her about it as she headed back down the
stairs to sit in the resource room and read the paper during second
period. It was the same thing she did during first period before
homeroom. Red got to watch that during his first resource room
period of the day, except on Tuesdays, when he had speech
therapy.

She wasn’t his favorite person in the world. But now
that he was finally learning how to deal with the moody teacher’s
aide from the resource room, Red didn’t think she was that bad.
Saying
please
and
thank you
for absolutely everything
she did, and forcing himself to include her in things like gripes
about having to walk up the stairs every morning—as if it really
affected her as much as anyone—made the day go much smoother.
Besides, he had to admit that getting assistance from Bonnie was
better than dealing with Mr. Nicklaus, the resource room
teacher.

The bell ending homeroom went off, but the computer
lab was just across from the doorway of the stairwell landing, so
Red knew he had plenty of time to beat the crowd as he walked into
the hall. Alley seemed to come out of nowhere as he reached the
door with her on his heels.

“Hey Red,” she said, opening the door and letting him
walk in first. “Make it up okay?”

“Yep,” Red said, smiling at the question she had
asked about once a week since they’d started talking in Computers I
during their sophomore year.

An exaggerated “Yep” came from the hallway, and they
both looked back to see Chuck walking past the door, his eyes
straight ahead as if he hadn’t said anything. Red tensed up,
gripping his folder so tightly that he bent the edge he was
holding. He stopped briefly, feeling his head swirl, but was able
to continue walking as Alley closed the door behind her.

“Not exactly my biggest fan since I turned him down
for a date to the freshman dance,” she said, shaking her head and
walking to her computer station to put down her book bag. “You’d
think he’d get over it by junior year.”

“I usually only have to deal with him right after
lunch,” Red said, reaching his station, happy to sit and rest his
legs. He tried to blink away the dots that flashed past his
eyes.

“Are you okay?” Mrs. Jenkins asked, getting up from
her desk with her tea cup in her hand.

“Yeah,” he said. “I guess by Wednesday walking up the
steps wears me out a little. It’s nice to have homeroom right
before class this year so I can get here easier.”

Mrs. Jenkins stopped to chat with Alley for a minute
before she left the room to get a fresh cup of tea. Red heard her
ask if Alley was okay helping him get settled.

“Oh, I guess I’ll help the li’l pest,” Alley joked
after the teacher had disappeared into the hallway.

Mrs. Jenkins had asked her to help Red get on and off
the computer the previous year, when they both started in Computers
I. At first Red resisted, not wanting to draw extra attention to
himself. But Alley was always very casual about it, and he had to
admit that her help getting the key guard on and off, inserting the
floppy disk into the drive, and pulling drafts of his programs from
the printer saved him at least five minutes each class.

“You know you love all the brownie points you get
helping me,” he teased back.

She stuck her tongue out at him, wiggling her hips to
accentuate the playful childishness of her response, and grabbed
the key guard off the top of the cabinet. “How far are you on this
project?” she asked as other kids started to file into the
room.

“I think I figured out the subroutine last night, so
if it actually works when I type it in, I think I can get it in on
time,” he said.

“Well, you’re probably doing better than I am on this
one,” she said. “I just started on that part.”

“Well, if this year is anything like last year it
won’t be long before I’ll have to spend at least one study hall a
day on a computer just to not fall too far behind,” he said. “It
takes me forever just to type everything in.”