It is a somber
day as I approached the lunch table. This group of SPED students (Special
Education) has experienced a tragic loss – their teacher was killed last night,
run down by a truck outside her apartment. We’ve never had such a tragedy at
Mark Twain High. Ms. Lorna Ashley had been teaching Special Education for four
years and her class was always self-contained. That means the students were
with her the whole day, for every class. Her current group consists of six male
students, all gathered around the most beat-up of the lunch tables not far from
their classroom. I have my faithful photographer with me – Jasmine Rodriguez –
and we both try to look professional as we stop at their table. These kids have
a reputation around campus for being weird and usually nobody ever goes near them.
One of the boys is in a wheelchair, but the others look normal. You’d never
know they were Special Ed.
I introduce Jasmine
and myself. The boys stare at us like we’re from Mars or something. The white
haired boy, Alex, the one in the wheelchair, has these amazing blue eyes that
almost make me forget what I was there for. I explain that I write for the
school paper and we’re doing a story on Ms. Ashley’s death.
“Why?” That
comes from the light-skinned black kid named Java. He glowers and looks
suspiciously at the camera Jasmine holds.
“Well, we’ve
never had anything like this happen before,” I explain, “and it’s big news when
a teacher gets killed.”
Israel, dark
hair, really handsome, blurts out, “What the f**k?”
That catches me
off-guard. “Well, I just mean, it’s something the school paper can’t ignore.”
Jorge, tall and
thin with unkempt black hair, hands me a piece of paper with no expression on his
face. It has a big red “V” scrawled on it. I exchange a nervous glance with
Jasmine, who stifles a giggle, and then turn back to Jorge.
“What’s this
for?”
“We’ve never had
anything like this happen before,” Jorge says in a monotone voice, repeating my
words to me. I confess, I’m feeling creeped out.
Roy, the skinny
white kid with snakebite piercings in his lower lip brushes hair from in front
of his eyes. Those eyes look sad to me. “Ms. Ashley was a great teacher. She
was like a mom to us. That’s all you gotta write.”
There’s a
Vietnamese kid named Cuong at the table, but he just plays with a Gameboy like
we’re not even there. Alex stares at me with those blue eyes and I feel like
he’s looking right through me. I shiver. He’s the one our readers most want to
hear from because he’s the most disabled kid we have at Mark Twain, being in a
wheelchair and all. So I focus on him.
“So, um, Alex,
do you have anything to say about Ms. Ashley?”
Alex’s intense
look doesn’t let up at all. His white blond hair falls across his forehead and back
over his collar. His serious expression doesn’t hide his good looks. If he weren’t
crippled he’d be hot enough to date.
“Like Roy said,
Ms. Ashley was the best teacher I ever had,” Alex answers, his voice filled
with sadness. “She never got mad at us when we couldn’t do something. She just
helped us find some other way. She loved us.”
I take notes as
he speaks, still feeling those deep blue eyes looking through me. “So, you guys
are Special Ed, right?”
“Yeah, so?” Java
says. He’s big and buff and wears one of those tight shirts like football
players wear. He looks scary.
“Well, our
readers don’t know much about being special ed. Are you guys like, retarded?”
I ask it
innocently because that’s usually what special ed means, but Java’s face turns
stormy.
“We are not
f***ing retarded!” Israel says loudly. Other kids milling about look over
curiously. Now I feel embarrassed.
“Sorry,” I say.
“It’s just, well, that’s what normal kids think about special ones.”
“We are normal,” Roy says. “For us. Right,
Alex?”
Java looks ready
to explode so I turn to Alex.
“Roy’s right,” Alex
says, his voice tight with anger. “We don’t read or write good, but we’re the
same as you.”
“Except
you can’t walk?”
“The
hell?” Roy blurts. He stands and towers over me. “Get outta here! You don’t
know s**t!”
Alex
places one hand on Roy’s arm and that calms him a little. He looks at Alex and
Alex shakes his head slightly. Still angry, Roy re-seats himself.
“No, I can’t
walk,” Alex replies, those eyes fixed intently on me.
I try to steer
this interview into a non-threatening direction. “What’s it like, not to walk?”
“Shut up,
bitch!” Israel says loudly. He can’t seem to speak in any tone other than loud.
He draws more attention to me than I want. Then Jorge says, “Shut up, bitch,”
and sounds eerily like Israel. I shiver again.
“It’s okay,
Izzy,” Alex says. I think he’s probably been asked that question a lot because
he just sighs and looks up at me from his wheelchair. “What’s it like to walk? I never have so I don’t know.”
That answer
floors me and I have no response.
“See?” Alex goes
on. “Normal is different for everybody. Maybe you could print that and the kids
around here might stop talking s**t about us and calling me Roller Boy all the
time. We got feelings same as all of you, and we’re not losers like everybody
says. Roy could fix anything in this school that breaks down. And Java could
kick ass on the football team ‘cept people keep calling him a dummy. He’s not.
Not of us are. We’re just born different.”
I’m trying to
write down every word because it’s all so amazing and so unlike what I thought
these kids were like. I guess I thought they were dumb because that’s what I
always heard. I realize that this is the first time I ever interacted with
them. Alex stops talking and I stop writing. The others are staring at me and I
feel like I should say something, but don’t know what. Then it hits me.
“Could I try out
your wheelchair?”
“The f**k?”
Israel says even louder. The “F-word” seems to be his favorite.
Alex looks at me
with open-mouthed surprise and I realize I didn’t ask the question very well.
“I, uh, I just thought I could write a better story about what it’s like to be crippled
if I sat in your chair and, you know, wheeled around a little.”
Roy leaps to his
feet again. “Get lost. We’re not freaks and Alex ain’t crippled! He can do
anything you can and more!”
Jasmine giggles
beside me and I nudge her, trying to salvage this interview.
“It’s okay,
Roy,” Alex says quietly. “Let her try.”
“Alex! She’s
just messing with you.”
“No, I’m not,
really,” I answer quickly. “I just want to feel what it would be like to sit
all the time.”
Roy’s angry look
makes me realize I said the wrong thing again. I’m really wishing Ms. Jacobs
hadn’t given me this assignment. Alex touches Roy’s arm again in a calming way
and pushes himself up and out of his wheelchair onto the bench so easily I
think I gasped. His arms and upper body look pretty buff, but he moved so
easily I’m shocked.
“Go ahead,” he
says. “Try it out.”
I feel all of
them mad-dogging me as I step forward and uncertainly sit in the chair. I try
to push forward, but my feet on the ground get in my way.
“Your feet go on
the footrest,” Alex says and points to it.
I look down and
see where he’s pointing and place my feet there. Then I start wheeling around.
It’s fun, I find myself thinking, almost like riding in a Go-Kart. Jasmine
snaps some pictures of me in the chair and of the SPED kids watching me.
“How is it?” Jasmine
asks.
Before I can
stop myself, I say, “It’s fun.”
I spin around
and head back toward her. Other kids standing nearby laugh and point.
“Let me try,”
Jasmine says.
I hop out of the
chair and she plops into it. Wheeling herself around in circles, she makes like
she’s going to run into another kid standing off to the side. The kid lurches
back and Jasmine laughs. All the students standing around laugh and point to
Alex and his friends. I hear one of them say, “Hey, it’s Roller Girl.”
“This is so
cool,” Jasmine gushes, and I catch Alex’s facial expression when she does. He
looks like someone punched him. Those blue eyes look so hurt I almost feel like
crying. I hurry to Jasmine.
“Give him back
the chair.”
Reluctantly, she
steps out of it and I wheel the chair back to Alex. He gives me a look that
pierces my heart and I realize how hurtful what we just did is to him. He
slides himself deftly into the chair and pulls his feet onto the footrest.
Roy steps up to
me. He’s really mad. “Had enough fun? Get the f**k outta here and leave us
alone.”
I step back as
all of them stand up to mad-dog me. Even the Vietnamese kid stops playing his
game to glower. I exchange a nervous glance with Jasmine, who hurriedly snaps a
few pictures.
“I, uh, well,
thanks for talking to me,” I say uncertainly. “I’m, well, sorry about your
teacher and all.”
Jasmine grabs my
arm to pull me away. I can’t help but look into Alex’s blue eyes one last time.
He looks so hurt, more than he did when I first got here. I understand these
kids now more than I ever did before. They feel pain and sadness just like we
do, and they deserve the same respect.
“I’m sorry,
Alex, about the chair thing. See ya around.”
Alex doesn’t
answer, so I turn to follow Jasmine away into the crowd. The other kids are still
laughing.
Note: This is
how I wrote up the article, but Ms. Jacobs decided not to run it. She felt it
would embarrass Alex and his friends, and then she spent an entire period
teaching us proper ways to ask difficult questions during an interview. I know
I blew it, but at least I now understand that the kids we call Special Ed are
just as human as I am, and I plan to treat them that way from now on.
A Dose of Brimstone (Van Helsing Organization #2)
Noree Cosper loves writing about magic in the modern world. While
growing up in Texas she constantly searched for mystical elements in the
mundane. She buried her nose in both fiction and books about Wicca,
Religion, and Mythology. Everyday became an adventure as she joined a
group of role-players, acting out her fantasies of vampires, demons, and
monsters living in the world. She embraced her nerdom wholeheartedly. Noree grew, but never left her love for fantasy and horror. Her
dreams pushed her and her hand itched to write the visions she saw. So,
with her fingers on the keys, she did what her heart had been telling
her to do since childhood. She wrote.
