A Step Toward Falling (8 page)

“Will you wait for me?” I tell Richard.

I realize he's been telling me something and I haven't been listening. My brain is spinning. I'm planning what to say. “Yeah, whatever,” Richard says.

I start toward Lucas and call his name. The bell has just rung and the hall is emptying out. “Could I talk to you for a second, Lucas?”

His friends all stop and look at me. “Yeah, sure,” Lucas says, nodding for them to go on. One of the boys has two backpacks, meaning one of them must belong to Lucas. “See you there,” he says to Lucas.

“I just wanted to say I'm sorry about this.” I point to his knee. “Really, really sorry.”

“Yeah, thanks.”

“If you need a ride to class, I'm happy to give you one.”

Leaning on his crutches, Lucas shakes his head. “Oh shit—I forgot about class.” I feel bad, like some minion of hell, reminding him of another reason his life sucks right now. “Yeah, I guess I do need a ride.”

“If you give me your address, I'll pick you up.” He gives me a funny look. “Or maybe not. You shouldn't have to go this week. If anyone has a decent excuse to skip, you do.”

“No, that's okay. I'll go. If I skip, it'll just add time at the end, right?” He writes his address on a corner of paper and tears it out.

“I really am sorry,” I say, taking the piece of paper. “Everyone says you had a great game before it happened.”

One corner of his mouth goes up in a half smirk. “You weren't there?”

“I couldn't make it.”

I'm surprised by the way he's looking at me, eyes narrowed as if he's trying to figure out what I'm really saying. “Plus maybe football games suck now?”

I laugh at the surprise of him saying this. “Yeah . . .” I wave my hand.

He looks around the hall like he doesn't want anyone to overhear this. “I had a hard time getting my head in the game. It was shitty.”

The bell rings and he steps back. The moment is gone. Whatever we almost admitted to each other—we still feel bad, haunted even, by what happened to Belinda—isn't possible to say.

“I should go,” he says, inching forward. “It takes me twenty minutes to get anywhere.”

“Sure,” I say. “I'll see you Wednesday night.”

When I look back up the hall to where I left Richard, he's talking to a tall guy I've smiled at a few times but didn't think I knew until I realize—it's Hugh Weston. He's much taller these days, like over six feet, and dresses better than he used to. Richard is staring at him, wearing an expression I've never seen before, like he's getting ready to laugh hard at whatever Hugh says. It's sweet, actually. Hugh looks nice. I don't want Richard to think I don't support him. I walk over with a friendly hand raised in a
wave. “Hi, you guys. Hi, Hugh.”

Hugh looks so surprised at my remembering his name, he blushes and looks down at his feet. “Hi,” he whispers. He clears his throat. “Emily, right?”

“Right.”

“Mr. Hartung, ninth grade?” He smiles.

Even though I remember this, too, I'm surprised he does.

“Yeah,” I say and laugh. “So I should get going—I'll see you in calc, okay, Richard?”

“Yeah, okay,” he says. Though he could have used this as an excuse to leave his conversation with Hugh, he doesn't. “I'll see you in a few minutes.”

When Richard gets to class late—with a teacher who counts tardies—I feel bad enough to write him a note:
Hugh seems really nice. Everything OK?

Ten minutes later, I get back:
Very OK. We're seeing a movie on Saturday.

Okay, wait a minute. He and I usually do something on Saturdays.

“So you asked him out?” I ask as soon as we're alone in the hall after class.

“Yes. It's a movie we both want to see. He said great, he'd love to go.”

“Does he know it's a date?”

Obviously I've only annoyed Richard all over again. “We didn't use that word specifically, but it's a movie on a Saturday night. It seems self-evident, doesn't it?”

I don't know anymore. Suddenly it seems like
everything is changing in ways I don't understand. “Okay,” I say.

I
THINK
M
R.
F
IRTH WANTS
me to go back to school. It's a feeling I get during some of the boring scenes with Lizzy traveling to see her friend Charlotte. He's not even on screen and it's like he's whispering in my ear,
You shouldn't stay home forever either.

Then I hear him actually say it. I really do.

Nan says I have an overactive imagination. She used to worry about me when I played in rooms by myself and used different voices for all the different characters in the stories I was acting out. She and Mom used to fight about it. “She needs to interact with people more!” Nan would say. “She shouldn't be alone all the time!”

And Mom would say, “She is who she is. Why can't we just let her be happy?”

Nan liked to remind Mom that I have a lot of potential. When I was a baby, I had lots of seizures and no one knew how I would turn out. One doctor said I would probably never learn to read. He turned out to be very wrong because I can read. I can also type and alphabetize and sort mail which has been my job for two years at school. I thought this would be my job forever, until Ms. Kretzer told me no, that I'll only do it until the end of this year
because she has to give other kids a chance to do it, too.

She didn't even have to tell me, I know which other kids she means. Anthony and Douglas. They are in my class. They both have Down syndrome which is much different than what I have and we are nothing at all alike. It made me so upset to imagine Anthony or Douglas doing my job that I went home that day and cried for a long time. Anthony wears thick glasses and always has food on his face or his shirt. It's hard to imagine how he would sort mail without getting food on it. Douglas is very silly and not at all focused. They'll mix recycling bins or not sort the white paper from the colored. They'll talk while they deliver mail which I never do. I know that people are very busy at work and shouldn't be disturbed.

The night after she told me, I wrote a letter to Ms. Kretzer explaining why I should get to keep my job forever.

Anthony and Douglas canNOT alphabetize. They are also stubborn. If they aren't in the mood to do something, they don't do it. I'm not saying this to be mean but just so you know—they don't strive hard.

I wrote her letters like this every day until finally she told me I had to stop writing her letters. She was sorry, she said, but she had no choice. This was school, not the real world, and even if I could do a better job than them, she had to think about other students, not just me.

“You'll only be in school for the rest of this year, Belinda. They've got three more years,” she told me.

That's when I got a little scared. It was the first time I realized that when I don't go to school, I won't have anything else to do either. I have been trying to find a job but everyone says the same thing: it's hard for everyone, not just me. Nan has put my name on waiting lists at three different employment agencies. I tell them I can alphabetize and sort mail and they say they only have a few jobs like that and many applicants for them. They say if I want to wipe tables and sweep a school cafeteria, they might be able to find something like that. Nan says no that's janitorial work and that's beneath me. “She should be in an office doing mail delivery,” Nan told the agency lady. “That's what she loves.”

The woman looked a little annoyed at Nan. “I have to tell you, for every nice office job like that, we have a wait list of about two hundred people with disabilities who want that job.”

I tried to picture two hundred people waiting to do my mail delivery job. I hadn't realized how lucky I was. This summer, Nan didn't give up easily. She kept making calls, trying to get me a summer internship in an office where I wouldn't get paid any money but everyone could see what a good worker I am and how nice I am, too. She never found anything. Eventually she had to give up.

“After you graduate we'll keep our ears and eyes open,” Nan said over the summer. “We'll find something for you, sweetheart. You're a good worker. You deserve to have a job.”

Now she doesn't say this anymore.

Now she thinks I should stay home forever where I can sit on her sofa and be safe and never go back to school or anywhere else. “What was school doing for her anyway?” Nan says to Mom. “All they did was make her work for free at a job she wasn't going to be able to keep.”

I don't like hearing Nan say that, but she's also right. I never did get paid.

Now I watch a close-up of Mr. Firth looking out over his moors. His lips don't move, but I hear him say,
You should go back. Finish school and finish your job.

I'm sure he's saying it. I hear it perfectly.

“NAN!” I scream. “HE'S TALKING TO ME!”

Nan gets scared and runs in, all red in the face. “What is it, baby??”

“Mr. Firth is talking to me!” Right after I say it, I know I shouldn't have. I remember everything she's said about how he can't see me and how he might not even read my letters even though he answered that one. I know I've made a mistake. Nan will get worried. She might say I should go back to the hospital. I don't want to do that, I really don't.

“Nothing,” I say, staring at the TV set like it said the thing about Mr. Firth.

“Who was talking to you, Belinda?”

For an old person, Nan's hearing is still pretty good. “No one was. I don't know why I said that. Let's just forget it, okay?”

Nan squints at me like she's not going to forget it, which I know is true. She's got her eye on me. After she
leaves the room, I close my eyes to see if he'll talk to me again. I want to hear him say it again.
You should go back. Finish school and your job.

I don't hear him say it again but that's okay.

That night for dinner, it's rotisserie chicken, broccoli, and rice. Salt is my favorite spice; I put it on everything. Before I take a bite I tell Nan and Mom that I want to go back to school.

“Really?”
Mom says. She looks so surprised that she sits up straighter.

“Absolutely not,” Nan says. “We've already decided this.” She looks at Mom. “We've had this conversation, Lauren.”

“I didn't,” I say. “I never had this conversation.”

“Your mother and I feel very strongly about this. You were not safe at school; they were not able to protect you.”

Mom looks down at her plate. I wish she would say something but she doesn't so I say, “I was safe except for that one time!”

Nan shuts her eyes and breathes through her nose.

“I have to go back. I have a job to do!”

“It's not a
real
job, Belinda. You know that.”

“It is too! I know I can't keep it, but it's a real job.”

I see Mom peek at me. She wants me to stand up to Nan. Just because she won't do it doesn't mean I can't. “They need me! Mr. Johnson said so! He said, I don't know what we'll do without you next year, Belinda. He said that!”

“He was being nice, sweetheart. Everyone loves you
very much, but that doesn't mean things have changed at school. I'm not just talking about the one incident. They never accommodated you in one of their plays. You were never included in any regular classes. You weren't safe because none of the other kids knew you well enough to be your friend. They couldn't look out for you or protect you. I know that boy isn't there anymore, but the problems still are.”

I hate Nan for saying this. It makes me want to cry.

“Nothing will have changed, Belinda. That's all I'm saying.”

Maybe she's right, I think. This was my last year to be in a play and I still didn't get cast. Mr. Bergman said he was really sorry this time, that he wanted it to work out before I graduated, but there were more budget cuts and he just didn't have the money. That won't change.

People looking at me in the hallway won't change either. Maybe they'll know what happened with Mitchell Breski and stare at me more. That would be terrible.

I don't have many friends at school. The ones I have are mostly adults. Usually I'm okay if adults are around, but if they're not, I might have a panic attack walking down the hallway. I haven't had one in a long time but I did the first year I got to high school. I had to sit down in the middle of the hallway because I didn't know where I was going. That was the first time I talked to Mr. Johnson. I thought he was a janitor because he had a walkie-talkie on his belt. Then he asked if I'd like to come to his office with him and it turned out he was the principal.

That could happen again, only this time I'd know Mr. Johnson, of course.

Still, Nan's right. Nothing big will have changed. Mr. Johnson might like me but that doesn't mean I can act in a play. Then I see something surprising: Mom is looking right at me. Her eyes aren't glazed over or red from crying. She's telling me something with them. She's shaking her head. She's trying to say:
Don't listen to Nan.

Later, after I'm in bed and my lights are out, Mom comes into my room and sits on my bed. When I was little, I couldn't fall asleep unless someone lay down with me in bed. She and Nan used to take turns, but she did it more. “It's the only thing I
can
do,” she used to say to Nan.

Now it's been so long that it feels funny at first and then I remember how much I like it. One of her arms lies across my stomach. She nuzzles into my shoulder so I can feel her breath.

“You should go back to school if you want to,” she whispers. “Is that what you want?”