Chapters One Way To Graduate Chapter 2
Ripping a bite out of his third slice, Ethan was locked on his monitor.
He really wished he had the concentration to listen to some loud music as he played, just to drown out the party, but then again that was Ethan’s problem, wasn’t it? Focus. It was why he couldn’t get through his second year of architecture, why he had to come home, why he had to deal with his kid sister’s parties and irresponsibility.
“You show so much promise,” was what they always said, only for Ethan’s attention to wander halfway through a single lecture.
He eyed the other open window, minimized. AutoCad. His project to get back into school, or just an internship, his last ditch effort to show them how proficient he could be, if only he could focus. Ethan knew better than to open it now, the blaring music would only distract him again, so his eyes grew rapt with fighting the monsters on his screen.
Ethan tried his best to ignore the girly sounds of celebration outside his door as the fight got tougher in his little world behind the screen. He got tense as he played, his hand curling around the mouse and his simple office chair suddenly uncomfortable.
A small cutscene with dialogue interrupted the gameplay before this new enemy attacked. She was fast, and hit like a truck too! Ethan just needed to play it cool, keep his shield up and not get distracted. The enemy flapped her wings and rushed towards him! Now or never!
“YOU INVITED THE VEGETABLE?!”
A single voice cut through the pop music and broke Ethan’s hair-thin attention, drawing his eye towards the closed door in complete dumb surprise as the boss’ swords dealt a killing blow.
Glancing back at the screen, Ethan knew this run was over. His character respawned in the first level, at which point he muttered “nope” and closed the game, revealing his medium-density community design, which he quickly minimized again for the millionth time, almost muscle memory to avoid what he should be working on. He needed to breathe, maybe play something less stressful.
Ethan leaned back… then eyed the door again. ‘Vegetable.’ Had he heard that right? Maybe zoomers were being zoomers again. He didn’t know. Maybe ‘vegetable’ suddenly meant something else, like ‘fruit’ had kind of evaporated. Ethan sighed; he didn’t miss high school one bit. He was curious what was going on though, and at the very least he needed a drink.
He really didn’t want to be a creep, slipping out of his room so timidly, but then again having to deal with introductions, judgemental glances, and the general stress of trying to act aloof enough to impress a bunch of kids wasn’t really worth it. Sliding into the kitchen, it seemed the party was concentrated in the living room, a surprisingly responsible choice from Vicky. Then again, the sun was still beaming over the mountains. Plenty of time for this to get properly crazy.
An eye over his shoulder, Ethan opened the fridge to find all his beer missing, save for the cardboard. Eyeing a bottle of Orange Crush and swearing, he grabbed that instead and closed the—
“Hey Ethan.”
Fuck! He bit his tongue and smiled thinly at the small figure behind the fridge door. Suzie, his sister’s BFF was standing there, sipping one of his cans! How did she get there, how fast? Always loitering around Vicky, Suzie had this indescribably awkward presence, and a talent to get close to Ethan whenever possible.
“Oh. Hey. Party’s going well, I hope,” he offered politely.
“It can always get better. Why don’t you join? We could all hang out and chat and…” she started, but Ethan was suddenly hit by a glare of the sun, from a car or something, hitting him square in the eyes. He squinted towards the hall, spotting the silhouette of a stocky guy standing in the doorframe in front of… it looked like an equipment cart on the front porch.
“Why is the front door open?” he squinted.
Suzie followed Ethan’s line of sight, “Oh my god, that’s Nora. I can’t believe she actually came!”
The guy shifted, and sure enough, there was a face among the apparatus, and Ethan was embarrassed to finally recognize a very elaborate wheelchair there, with a desktop tray thing, and a computer, and straps and… it was a lot.
“We call her robot girl.” she added under her breath.
Ethan gave Suzie a sharp look.
“What?! It’s better than ‘the vegetable!’”
Ethan couldn’t disagree, suddenly remembering his sister whining about having to take care of “some stupid special needs idiot” at school to buff up her college applications. It had been through those thin walls, to Suzie or another friend, definitely not to him or their parents, or he would have remembered her being chewed out for being so insensitive.
Though, had he been any better at eighteen? Ethan couldn’t answer that question.
Shaking his head, he grabbed a glass.
The girl Ethan had noticed was actually on the verge of tears by the time her helper pushed past the jock.
“Hey asshole… she’s not deaf! You want her dad stomping your ass?” Vicky warned, getting up to Nora’s chair to grab her joystick somewhere behind, by the push bar.
Furious, embarrassed, deflated, Nora sat there, trapped, wishing for the millionth time that she had Vicky’s sharp tongue. The disheartened girl could plainly see all the words she had bottling up in her throat, spread across icons and buttons on her screen, just out of reach. The eyegaze was acting up, the pointer dashing all around so she couldn’t hover over what she wanted to say. Her teary eyes instead drilled into Cole, who wouldn’t look at her directly, instead focusing on Vicky, above, behind.
“Who the hell are you waving at?”
“Her mom! Who could also stomp your ass, lifting this one every day.”
Vicky’s defense tasted a bit sour to Nora, hurting her pride, but she knew she was a burden, so stomached the slight. Her cradling headrest keeping her tense neck pointed forward, Nora only heard her Mom start the engine and drive off. She was on her own now.
“Fuck, man, get out of the way!” Vicky spit at Cole. “I need to get her inside.”
And he did, with a disgusted glare which Nora returned, best she could, as her chair was pushed and driven over the threshold, albeit clumsily, and parked in the far corner of the living room. There were maybe twenty people already there in the house, music blaring, and they were all quiet, staring for an uncomfortably long moment.
Nora looked at the screen again, trying to blink away the tears and try again. Even if it were responding, Nora’s “voice” wasn’t really built for quick comebacks. Besides taking half a minute just to string a sentence together on the best of days, the tablet didn’t even allow saving swear words into buttons for quick-access. Sometimes Nora felt like such a child, being pushed around and cleaned up after, even as her tongue-tied mouth wanted to tell Cole to ‘fuck right off!’
Looking at the screen again, it was a bit better. Her cursor hovered over “Thank you” …before wandering away.
Damn it!
Still Nora kept her real voice silent; she didn’t like how people looked at her when she tried to speak. Sometimes it was too loud, other times embarrassingly deep or squealy; but never, not after years of speech therapy, never had it resembled intelligible words.
She tried the eyegaze again, almost usable.
Vicky picked up the cloth bib draped across her chest and wiped Nora’s chin, before crouching down beside her chair. “I’m sorry about Cole. Too many tackles to the head, you know how boys are! You ok? You came all prepared to have a good time?”
Nora looked up for ‘yes’ and her caretaker for the night smiled.
“Yeah, you look… cute! And I saw your changing bag hanging behind you. You’re not gonna make me pull a school nurse routine tonight, are you? Please? No messes?” Vicky intoned a bit too loud for Nora’s liking.
She frowned but not much of it showed on her shifting face.
Nora knew she was a burden… but that was a kind of mean way to say it. Still, the guest strapped into her chair looked down for ‘no’, and Vicky piped up, “Spectacular! So glad we are on the same page!”
The host of the party jumped to her feet and Nora could get a full view of the cute, shoulderless top and jean shorts she was wearing, the heels, simple gold accents too. It was altogether a pretty little ensemble that Nora unfortunately thought looked better on her friend than it ever would have on her twisted body.
Of course, Nora thought herself pretty enough; sandy blonde hair and big cute wire-frame glasses firmly hooked over her ears, but it was undeniable that she didn’t look like everyone else. Deformed slightly from the strange mix of spasticity and paralysis that her brain ordered up for her nervous system all day long; the lack of weight-bearing made Nora’s feet twist oddly; her joints (knees especially) didn’t bend all the way, too used to sitting in chairs; her muscle tone was irregular, her slim frame softer in some places of total atrophy and rock hard in others from endless searing tension; and her face was passably cute until she tried to use it. She thought her breasts were nice at least, perky and soft, and hopefully someone would like what they saw… someday…
Nora took relaxants, of course, along with a bevy of other medication, but growing up her whole life in a chair; Nora had to be realistic. She was cute, maybe pretty, but not shoulderless-crop-top-and-short-shorts pretty.
It was tough not to be jealous of Vicky. All her friends were here, and even though Nora had been invited, she had only passed by these people in the hall, sat across from them in classes, maybe exchanged a few words here and there when a teacher forced them to.
Sitting alone, Nora tried to enjoy the music, moving her arm up and down in time to the beat, but of course it just hit the tabletop and pulled at the security tether in random intervals, loudly, awkwardly, drawing attention.
Vicky looked at her “dancing” in a strange way Nora couldn’t interpret, and then walked off before she could ask for a drink.
“Yeah, I can’t believe robot girl actually came!” Suzie said yet again, the two of them joined by more girls, one of which Ethan was eyeing to possibly dilute the drink she was pounding. Someone had bought a keg. Messy.
“Mhmm.” Ethan muttered to entertain her, drowned out by the music. Suzie’s whole vibe didn’t sit well with him, and as often as he eyed the hallway back to his room, she tugged at his arm like a little girl who wanted a plush to hug. Deciding to be polite, he nodded and smiled at the inane conversation. He did not want to hurt her feelings, she was just young after all.
Eventually the topic turned back to Nora.
“Your sis is amazing, you know?” Suzie continued as Vicky burst past the douchebag-looking guy at the door and pushed the disabled girl in, settling her and her bulky wheelchair close to the music by the living room. “She’s such a good soul. Doing her best to help Nora out in class, making sure she doesn’t drool on her notebooks. Giving her a chance to be normal, even with everyone talking behind her back.”
Trying to ignore the ingratiating girl, Ethan’s eyes kept settling on Nora just sitting there in the corner, her arms… tied down? It didn’t look precisely out of place, with all the other bracing, but he wondered why anyone would ever do that, until her arm banged on her tabletop twice, somewhat in time with the music, and Ethan could see her whole body convulsed as she did, totally tense and uncoordinated, before settling back down.
Curious.
Ethan knew Suzie was speaking, and what’s more he knew he was staring impolitely, but in between polite nods he couldn’t pull his eyes away.
The girl’s face was clear of the acne of her classmates, yet slack-jawed, a twitching smile and roving jaw and tongue leaving it hard to read her expression. Yet Ethan looked from the straps and bars and braces and chair up to her eyes, and while they wandered a bit, they were clear, insecure, searching. She seemed to be alone in the living room, as the group had now been distracted by some guy’s dancing. It’s almost as if they had reformed their circle away from her, and Ethan suddenly noticed the kitchen, which had been empty when he was searching for a drink, was now loud and a bit crowded. Ethan looked back at Suzie, her baby blues on him as she flashed her most winning smile.
“You had it soooo lucky before they integrated the classes, Ethan, seriously!”
He couldn’t believe where their conversation had ended up, distracted as he was, and his stomach sort of twisted, unable to hold back the filter any longer.
“You know how cruel you’re being, don’t you?”
Suzie and the other two girls just froze, their dumb smiles fading fast, and Ethan left the kitchen towards the living room — or rather took two steps, before turning back to grab the pop and an extra glass from the cupboard.
Ethan strode into the living room, some of the high-schoolers giving him a few looks as he approached and crossed the seven degrees of ostracism around Nora’s wheelchair. He was not too sure if she had noticed, with her eyes roaming about, her head moving from side to side in the cradle that held it in place, and her open mouth twitching, drool dripping down her chin like Suzie had mentioned so callously. He honestly had no idea what the girl’s condition was yet, but from what he could surmise from Vicky and Suzie’s complaining, he just had to imagine there was a normal, 18-year-old graduate inside that distorted body.
“Hey! Glad you could make it.” Ethan said, trying not to speak down to the literally wheelchair-bound girl, but also trying not to sound like that one receptionist in every soulless company who was contractually obligated to speak to you. He shook himself out of his own head. “You want a drink? I got some orange soda, there’s also cola, and probably some stuff I’d get jail time for mentioning.” Ethan added with a chuckle.
Nora’s eyes became clear as day, looking right at him, and the tips of her open mouth tensed up in a clumsy smile.