Push Girl (21 page)

As soon as she clicked Play, music blasted through the speakers as various shots of me over the past week—in my chair at school, campaigning for Homecoming, working out my legs at PT—collaged across the screen. Then my name popped up.
KARA MOORE:
NOT
AN INSPIRATION.

I laughed so hard and so suddenly that I choked on it. “Awesome,” I said as it followed up with,
AT LEAST NOT IN THE WAY YOU THINK.

The video moved on to a series of pictures of me dancing, starting from when I was a little kid.

I smiled as the images of me in various sparkly costumes flashed across the screen, but seeing Mini Kara leaping through the air, no clue that her dancing time was so limited, sent little stabs of pain through my heart. “Where did you get these?”

“Your mom. She had a blast going through them and picking out her favorites.”

Knowing Mom, she probably acted like the trip down memory lane was fun while Amanda was there, but cried her eyes out the second she was alone with all these pictures and the past. When I lost dance, she lost her role as Dance Mom, and it turns out that was just as much a part of her identity as dancing was for me.

The dance montage moved into an accident montage, causing me to gasp in shock when a photo of the crash I had never seen before filled the screen. I’d looked at the accident photos only that one night, so it made sense that there might be pictures of it I hadn’t seen. I liked it that way, though. I wasn’t ready to have those living in my head.

Luckily, before I had too much time to dwell on the accident photos, the video moved on, now flashing quickly from clip to clip of my new active life, with music and a voiceover from the little interviews I’d done with Amanda playing over it all. “I want my life to be full of possibilities, not regret, you know?” my voice said over a shot of me sitting on the table at PT, the tech bending and straightening my knee. Amanda also worked in captions in colorful fonts and cool transitions between the clips. And over and over it emphasized that, yes, I was in a wheelchair. But that didn’t change the fact that I was a normal, active high school senior. I wasn’t strong or brave or an inspiration any more than anyone who got up and came to school every day was.

I was just me.

“It looks professional,” I told Amanda as she turned to me to see my reaction. “I knew you were talented at this stuff, but … wow.”

“This is just the first version so I can turn it in to Mr. Graham for credit tomorrow. After the election, I’m going to do a longer version that has all the Homecoming results included, too, and that’ll be the one I submit for the scholarship.”

I beamed up at my best friend. “You’re going to win for sure.”

“And you’re going to win Homecoming Queen for sure,” she said, leaning down and hugging me.

“You know, I might not. It’s just great that we raised money and have like fifteen members for Walk and Roll already.”

She elbowed me playfully. “You sound like one of those ‘It’s an honor just to be nominated’ people at the Oscars.”

“Well, it’s true. We’re doing something good. That’s what matters, right?”

“Right. But you can’t tell me that Mrs. Mendoza putting that crown on your head tomorrow wouldn’t feel amazing.”

It would. I knew it would. But I also knew that Mr. David had been right when he told me I would never win. The school would never vote me as Homecoming Queen, not like this. So there was no point in getting my hopes up only to be disappointed.

Anyone good at making videos? Last minute!

It was the subject on the first post on my disabilities message board, and I normally would have passed right over it in favor of someone’s PT update or success story, but Amanda’s video was fresh on my mind, so I tapped on it out of curiosity.

The post was a link to a contest for videos about overcoming adversity, sponsored by a local news channel. They put the videos on their Web site, viewers voted for their favorites, and the winner got featured on the news and won a five-hundred-dollar cash prize.

Wow. Five hundred dollars? We could really use that money to get Walk and Roll off the ground.

The post on the message board said,

Current entries are about dogs and/or babies. I think one of you WheelFriends can totally rock this contest if you can throw together a quick video.

Yes,
I thought as I read through the requirements.
Amanda’s video would be perfect for this
. But there was a deadline. The contest closed tonight at midnight, only an hour away, and Amanda’s video wasn’t even finished yet. No time for her to get it done. No time to even really talk to her about submitting it.

And wasn’t I always saying I wasn’t an inspiration? Would entering myself into a contest like this make me a complete hypocrite?

It’s not like her video would win, though. I mean, she did an amazing job on the technical stuff, but my story wasn’t all that life-changing. Would anyone even care?

I looked at the post on the message board again.
I think one of you WheelFriends can totally rock this contest.

Without letting myself think about it, I grabbed my laptop from the table next to my bed. I filled out the short entry form on the news station’s Web site, and I uploaded Amanda’s unfinished video from the disk she left in my computer. After I clicked Submit and pressed my laptop shut, I snuggled under my covers, closed my eyes, and I fell asleep easily for the first time in a month.

CHAPTER 20

It was about half an hour before the Homecoming assembly was going to start, and I’d be lying if I said that puking didn’t sound like a fabulous idea. I knew I looked put together on the outside—Mom had curled my hair and given me a perfect smoky eye and glossy lip this morning, and I wore a long, spaghetti-strapped hot pink sequined dress, tight all the way down to the ankles. But inside I felt like I could fall apart at any second.

All the queen candidates and our escorts assembled in the small room adjacent to the gym, where Student Government was putting the finishing touches on their balloon arches and students were starting to file in. I was doing my best to keep my nerves under control, but unfortunately, my shaky hands were a dead giveaway to what was going on inside my head.

“Don’t be nervous,” Jack said, leaning over to kiss my cheek. “You look amazing.” Jack was my escort for the assembly, and he looked adorable in his black suit and hot pink tie, which matched my dress perfectly. He looked like a model in his sleek suit, and I was impressed that he even took off his beanie and tamed his mess of blond waves for the occasion.

“You like my shoes?” After some research, I did end up getting new ones—a fierce pair of ankle-strapped black patent leather five-inch stilettos that I didn’t have to worry about wobbling in when I walked, wouldn’t give me blisters, and stayed on nice and snug.

“I like everything about you,” he said. He leaned down so his lips brushed ever-so-slightly against my ear, and he whispered, “And I’d show you just how much, if we weren’t standing right in front of my math teacher.”

Laughing calmed me down considerably, and for a second I managed to forget that I was about to parade myself around in front of the entire school. But reality slapped me in the face with an open hand when Jenny Roy, smug as ever in a tiny red strapless dress, strutted in with a suited-up Curt.

And they were holding hands.

I think my mouth might have fallen open at the sight of them, but I managed to close it before Jack noticed. I couldn’t stop the sinking feeling in my stomach, though. I’d known Jenny was after Curt, obviously. He’d been her main mission in life before I was even in the picture, but this was a new development.

And I’d gotten over Curt. Really, I had. Losing him was a different sort of loss than my legs, a misery that lived in a different part of my heart. I’d spent a lot of time crying and wondering what I could have done differently, how I could have changed to make him love me again. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that Curt had been really heartless. I shouldn’t have to
try
to make him love me again when I’d done nothing wrong. I’d loved him and trusted him and he’d completely betrayed me when I needed him the most. He was the one who’d done something wrong, not me, and I didn’t want or need someone like that in my life.

It took Jack showing me what I deserved to figure it out.

But even knowing all of that, it still stung like a swarm of angry bees to see Curt holding hands with Jenny. To see that she finally got what she wanted.

It would have been nice to avoid them, but that was impossible. Jenny headed in my direction the second she spotted me, like a heat-seeking missile of awful, and she dragged a terror-stricken Curt behind her.

“Hey, Pity Vote,” she said. “Did your little club end up raising any money? Or was it just a bunch of dirty napkins in your jar?”

I was about to continue on my Kill Her with Kindness campaign, which really seemed to annoy her more than sinking to her level did, but to my surprise, I didn’t have a chance. “Stop it, Jenny!” Curt snapped at her, dropping her hand. He still looked terror-stricken, but now his cheeks were pink with embarrassment, too. “Leave it alone.”

She rolled her eyes. “God, I was only—”

Curt cut her off. “Kara, can I talk to you a second? Alone?”

He wanted to talk? Now? Ha, this would be good. I nodded, and looked up at Jack, who was watching the whole exchange with an expression of utter disbelief. “I’ll just be a minute, okay?” I told him.

Jack glared at Curt, but he nodded anyway. “Jenny, I think you need to check in with Mrs. Mendoza,” he said. “Let’s go.” He reached over and grabbed Jenny’s bony arm, dragging her over to Mrs. Mendoza, who was scanning her clipboard and barking out orders.

“Look, Kara,” Curt said when we were Jenny-free. His eyes focused squarely on his shoes, and his voice shook. “I, um. I owe you an apology.”

I was about to say,
It’s okay. No big deal,
because Old Kara would have forgiven Curt anything. He could’ve purposely run over Logan with his truck, and I probably would have blamed my poor little dog. But I wasn’t Old Kara anymore; I was Kara 2.0. So I said, “Yeah, you do.”

This unexpected response from me made his head snap up, and we looked at each other, really looked at each other, for the first time since my accident. The eye contact sent a flutter through my belly, but it wasn’t a flutter of attraction or wanting. It was just familiarity. Nostalgia.

And it passed as quickly as it arrived, with disgust and anger taking its place. And these emotions took root.

“You never came to see me.” My blood pumped at full speed through my veins, but I managed to keep my voice even. “You never answered any of my texts. Then you were a total dick to me in front of everyone. And that’s how you break up with your girlfriend of almost a year? Public humiliation? That’s all I was worth to you?”

“I don’t know why I said what I said.” Curt had never looked so small to me. He seemed to be folding into himself, bracing himself against the truth of my words. “Or why I didn’t come see you in the hospital. I just … I panicked, okay? I was so freaked out and I didn’t know how to deal with you”—he waved his hand at my legs—“like this.”

The way he said it, it was like I was somehow no longer human to him. And if I’d been wondering if any residual feelings for Curt had been lurking anywhere inside me, that casual dismissal set fire to them and blew away the ashes.

“Like
what
?”

It was obvious this was difficult for him; his face looked pinched, like it did when he was almost done with a water polo game and his muscles were about to give out on him. But I wasn’t going to go easy on him. He owed me more than an apology; he owed me the truth, and I wanted to hear him say what he thought of me. Damaged. Broken.

“Hurt,” he said, his voice breaking. “I didn’t know how to handle seeing you so hurt. If we hadn’t fought, you wouldn’t have been in the car. I felt so guilty, and I was scared, so I freaked out and I hid. It was the totally wrong thing to do, and I am so, so sorry, Kara. I know you’ll probably never forgive me, and I don’t blame you. But I just had to—”

“If it had been you in the accident, Curt, I would have been there every day in the hospital. I would’ve never left your side.”

He covered his face with his shaky hands. “I know.”

How could I have spent so much time with him? How could I have thought he cared about me? How could I have cared about him?

“Well, thanks for your apology,” I said. “I appreciate it.” I wasn’t ready to forgive him yet, but I was definitely ready for this conversation to be over.

Curt took a deep breath, and it seemed to pull him back together. “So, you’re back with Jack, huh?” He let out a small, humorless laugh. “I should have seen that one coming.”

While I wanted to tell Curt how happy I was with Jack, how I finally felt like myself with him, something I never felt with Curt, and how Jack never forgot to pick me up, no matter how busy he was, I didn’t. He didn’t get to know that about me. He didn’t get to know anything about me anymore. So I just said, “Yeah.” Then, because I had to, “So, you and Jenny?”

He shrugged.

“Well, good luck to you guys.” I wanted to add that he was going to need it to deal with her, but I felt like the bigger person here, so I kept that one to myself. “I better go find Jack.”

And I turned my wheelchair around as quickly as I could, away from Curt, finally mastering that dramatic exit.

CHAPTER 21

I don’t know who decided to make these school assemblies so freaking long, but I wanted to find them and run their feet over with my chair. Cheerleaders cheering, class competition, drum line performance, introduction of the fall sports teams—it was all fun and games when you were sitting in the bleachers and the whole production was getting you out of second period, but it was torture to sit through when you were the very last thing on the agenda.