The Ables Page 11

  What if he misunderstands us during the SuperSim and gets hurt?

  I shuddered. Granted, any of us could be hurt during the SuperSim, but it wasn’t quite the same with Donnie. I wasn’t sure he had the same measure of free will that we did. He was participating as an extension of his loyalty to us—not because he wanted to play superhero or even understood what it was. He just wanted to belong.

  I thought about how protective he was of us special ed kids at school—single-handedly keeping us bully-free. Would that same instinct, combined with the newly-discovered eagerness to please, cause Donnie to do something rash and get himself hurt in the SuperSim? It suddenly seemed like a very real possibility to me.

  But then again, I did have a tendency to over worry. I was always seeing trouble where it likely didn’t exist, which made it nearly impossible to tell the real dangers from the imaginary ones.

  Just as I was finally quieting my mind and starting to drift to sleep, Henry whispered, “I win.” And the unquenchable laughter started right up all over again.

  Chapter 9: The Sick Day

  Our team was still barred from competing. We’d filed our appeal paperwork with the school board—the first legal step we could take—but had yet to have our day before the school board to state our case. We held a few more get-togethers—strategy meetings, mostly—but it didn’t seem to be helping very much. I think it was tough for us to give practice our full attention when we all sort of carried a secret fear we would lose the appeal.

  Still, Bentley seemed confident in our chances of winning. But I wasn’t quite convinced. In truth, the hearing loomed large for me. Things usually had to be black and white for me to have any comfort, and our eligibility status for the SuperSim was anything but black and white. It was a muddled grey mess as far as I was concerned.

  Despite Bentley’s insistence that our rights were being infringed upon, I knew from Mrs. Crouch’s Custodial Studies class that custodian law superseded American laws. I feared the school would simply deny our appeal on the grounds of doing so for our own protection, and that would be the end of it.

  With the hearing now two days away, at least the worrying would soon come to an end.

  It was so heavy on my mind that I didn’t even notice that Donnie wasn’t in school that Monday. He’d seemed fine on Friday at Bentley’s sleepover—fine enough to spontaneously race around the house in his pajamas—but I guess he picked up a cold or something. But again, I didn’t even notice he was missing. My thoughts were consumed by the SuperSim and on our planned defense of our petition for reinstatement.

  My teachers blathered on about the usual stuff while I ran over contingency scenarios in my head. What if they deny our appeal without hearing our arguments? What if they hear our arguments but deny us anyway? What if all this meeting and training and practicing we’re doing leads to a big fat nothing?

  Looking back, it’s easy to see that I was far too anxious for a seventh-grader, and it wasn’t going to get any better with what awaited me in life.

  Bentley tried to reassure me at lunch. “Phillip, look: There’s no way they’re going to keep us from competing. It’s discrimination, plain and simple. It’s just the right thing to do—logically, morally, and legally.”

  “But that’s a regular human law, Bentley,” I argued for the hundredth time, “not a custodian law. There’s no guarantee that they’ll even care about anything else.”

  In my head, the school officials were ogres, evil little trolls that took pleasure in denying us disabled kids any social enjoyment just out of sheer meanness. They were not ogres, obviously. In fact, I’m quite sure they were legitimately concerned about our safety. But at the time, I couldn’t see them as anything other than another group of adults trying to keep a group of kids from having fun.

  “What’s the grounds for keeping us out, then?” Bentley challenged me, daring me to play the devil’s advocate—a role I played quite naturally, as it turned out.

  “Safety,” I said plainly, as though the mere word itself would end the debate. “They’re going to claim that we might get hurt.” This was more than speculation. This was fact. My father had tried briefly to get us to reconsider fighting the school board, no doubt at Mom’s request, and in doing so, told us a story.

  It seems the SuperSim had been, in one form or another, a staple of the custodian high school experience for generations, going back to the very beginning—the first SuperSims happened centuries before the first Olympic Games in Greece. Custodian parents had long considered it a responsibility to prepare the future generations of crime-fighters and do-gooders with a series of tests and trials.

  Until one kid ruined it all for everyone.

  A boy named Samuel Meyers, who was blessed with the ability to fly, had been killed during a Freepoint SuperSim back in the early 1980s. The town had been rocked to its core, Dad said, especially given that Samuel was a disabled kid. Dad wasn’t just regurgitating a story he’d been told. He was actually a student at the time and had even participated in that final SuperSim event.

  Samuel Meyers had been blind, like James and me, but was competing on a team with able-bodied kids. His teammates had been tagged by the adult “villains” and were out of the competition, leaving Samuel the only remaining member of his team. In a last-ditch effort to help his team win the simulation, he had chosen to try and fly a hostage out of the center of the fight to safety.

  It hadn’t ended well. He knew the area well, as any prepared blind person would, and shouldn’t have had any trouble flying the short distance to the simulation safe zone. Except for all the other people involved in the simulation. Samuel forgot about them. And a few of those other individuals also had the power of flight.

  So Samuel had unwittingly hurled himself and his rescued hostage into the body of a high school senior who had been hovering overhead surveying the battle and barking out commands for his own team. All three students went tumbling four stories to the ground below in a tangled flurry of arms and legs. Samuel and the other student had died from the injuries they received in the fall.

  The “hostage” had been an adult who had the power of indestructibility—which I guess is why they chose her to play a hostage in the SuperSim—and had survived the fall just fine, at least physically.

  The city officials and the board, crushed by the tragedy, had suspended the SuperSim indefinitely after that incident, and it hadn’t returned in over twenty years.

  “But more than that,” I continued, “any of these kids could get hurt because of us. They’re going to say we’re a danger to ourselves and to our fellow students if we compete in the SuperSim. You know the story same as I do, Bentley. You were there when my dad told it.” The news of our petition had spread through school rapidly, followed by the whispered retellings of the story of the blind boy who could fly and had caused both his own and another student’s death. There were probably some students sitting around us right now that didn’t think the special ed class ought to be competing.

  “I heard the story. But that was an accident, Phillip. An accident can happen to any kid, whether he’s disabled or not. Bottom line is … it’s not fair to keep us out, and we have to make them see that Wednesday night.”

  “So that’s our case, then? Just show up at the hearing and say it’s not fair and hope they change their minds? Should we roll around on the ground and throw a tantrum, too? Do you think that would help?” I was getting frustrated at Bentley’s persistent optimism, mostly because it conflicted horribly with my own growing pessimism.

  “Well, not in so many words, I guess … but, yeah. We’re going to show them how unfair it is through legal evidence and personal conviction. We’re going to overwhelm them with case law examples and hammer things home with the Americans with Disabilities Act.” He certainly sounded fully prepared. “And shoot,” he added, “if that doesn’t work, we’ll resort to some good old-fashioned begging. I’m certainly not above throwing a tantrum.”

  “Ha.”
I had to chuckle at that. “That’ll work for sure,” I said sarcastically before taking another emphatic bite of my sandwich.

  “How do you think I got that ping-pong table?” Bentley replied wryly.

  “I just want to have the whole thing over with already,” Henry chimed in. “If we’re out, then fine. I can go about being bitter and angry and then get back to my life. If we’re in, then we can carry on with our practices without feeling like the whole thing was a waste of time.”

  Henry wasn’t much for expending unnecessary effort, and I guess I wouldn’t be either if I were in a wheelchair. But mostly I think he just didn’t want to get his hopes up only to have them snuffed out, and I definitely could sympathize with that.

  “It’s not going to be a waste,” I argued. “We have to learn somehow, especially with what happened on the news the other night. If they really do want us to be safe, they’re going to have to let go of some of their fears and let us start learning how to use our powers.”

  I wanted to be a superhero more than anything. I felt like it finally gave me a purpose in life, one that I could be proud of. I wanted to contribute to this legacy and turn my previously boring life into something meaningful. As anxious as I was about the hearing, I wasn’t about to let a silly high school simulation stop me from pursuing that goal.

  “Maybe you’re not supposed to even have powers.” It was Chad’s voice, forever burned into my memory from the run-in on that first day of school. I almost never forget a voice. He was behind James and me—Henry, Freddie, and Bentley were on the other side of the table. I kept my head down and tried not to move. “Maybe you’re all a bunch of accidents—did you ever think of that?” He sounded bitter and angry and looking to pick a fight. I wondered how long he’d been standing there listening to our conversation.

  And that moment was actually the moment I realized that Donnie wasn’t in school that day. Because if he had been, Chad would never even have gotten this close to our table—let alone started harassing us. My stomach dropped with the realization that our gentle giant of a protector was absent.

  “Yeah,” Steve concurred. “You guys aren’t cut out for this hero stuff, and you know it. So why are you trying to ruin everyone else’s fun?”

  “Leave us alone,” Bentley muttered, clearly annoyed. He didn’t sound as scared as I felt. He just seemed inconvenienced. But I knew Chad and Steve weren’t going to miss their first opportunity to mess with us since the school year had begun. They wouldn’t go away that easily.

  “It’s you who should be leaving us alone, cripple!” Chad spat, with venom in his voice. “Because I’m pretty sure the last time they let disabled freaks like you compete in the SuperSim, you ended up killing one of us normal kids. And maybe I’m not so sure I’m ready to put my life at risk by competing with you goons.”

  “Then maybe you should just bow out, Chad,” Henry spat back, defiant as ever. “If you’re so worried, maybe you should just bow out and let the real heroes participate.”

  The silence was deafening as I waited for Chad’s next barb. And then, almost in a whisper, I heard his voice as he leaned his head down between James and me. “We’re the real heroes, chump.” He slapped the side of my head sharply. “You know how I know? How do I know, Steve?” His tone was even and calm, the way one might speak to a five-year-old when lecturing them.

  “Because both your legs work?” Steve cackled. “Because you can see?”

  “That’s right. Because God didn’t burden me with the kinds of imperfections he put on you guys. That’s how I know who the real heroes are. If you were supposed to be heroes, you’d be able to use your powers properly.” His calm manner of speaking only made his words sound more menacing.

  And suddenly, I felt myself standing, almost without my own permission. Between the memories of the smashed cell phone, the tension from the upcoming hearing, and this current verbal assault from Chad and Steve, I guess I snapped. “I’d like to see you outside of the no power zone, you big jerk, so I can show you just how well my powers work.” I wasn’t sure where the outburst came from because it was quite out of character for me. I was typically interested in avoiding conflict, not escalating it. But here I was, having risen up out of my seat to turn and face this idiot and fan his fire. I instantly regretted it.

  My display of bravado was incredibly short-lived. No sooner had I gotten my sentence out and risen to a full standing position than I felt a pulverizing blow to my stomach.

  Being punched in the stomach is something I wouldn’t wish on anyone. It’s awful. For the first few panicky seconds, it feels like you may never breathe again. Outside of Patrick, I’d never really been punched, and Patrick’s punches were hardly representative of the general public.

  But Chad had punched me quite thoroughly. It was a punch with a sense of purpose. It was as shocking as it was painful.

  It forced the air out of my lungs like a vacuum, leaving me gasping as I stumbled backward. My limbs flailed in panic as I started to fall. On my way down, I banged my head against the lunch table, and that must have been when I blacked out.

  ***

  I woke up almost immediately.

  It definitely seemed immediate to me, at least. No sooner had I felt my body slumping to the ground and my skull slamming into the table, I was awake. But I had actually been out for a good sixty seconds or so, according to Bentley.

  That was an odd thing to learn—that you’d lost an entire minute of your life in a blink. Just … gone. I would never get it back.

  There was quite a commotion in the cafeteria, as you might expect. Fights in a high school always draw a crowd. Unfortunately for my bloodthirsty peers, this fight had ended before anyone even knew it was happening—and that included me.

  “What happened?” I asked, a bit fuzzy on the details of how I ended up on the floor, though it was coming to me slowly.

  “You just got the crap beat out of you by Chad Burke, that’s what happened,” Henry said plainly, as though he was reading the world’s most boring newspaper article.

  “He punched me,” I remembered. I tried to sit up, but a large hand held me down.

  “Don’t move, son. Stay there.” It was a man’s voice.

  “Who’s that?”

  “Mr. Peterson.”

  Mr. Peterson was one of the senior teachers at the school. He must have been on lunch duty today.

  “Why can’t I move?” I asked, lying flat on my back, my arms stretched out alongside my body.

  “I just want the nurse to check you out first, okay?” Mr. Peterson sounded about forty, but there was a worn quality to his voice, as though he’d been through this kind of thing many times before. He wasn’t panicked nor was he completely calm. “What’s your name, son?”

  “Phillip Sallinger,” I answered.

  “What happened here?”

  “He just got the crap beat out of him by Chad Burke, that’s what happened.” It was Henry again, giving a slightly more excited line reading for Mr. Peterson than he had for me.

  “Did anyone else see this?”

  A chorus of replies followed in the affirmative. Evidently, there had been several witnesses to Chad’s sucker punch. Mr. Peterson stood up and started talking to some of the nearby students, getting their version of the story. I suddenly realized that Chad was going to be in some serious trouble over this, no matter who his father was. There was too much evidence against him. The thought brought a wide smile to my face.

  “What are you grinning at?” It was Bentley.

  “I just realized how lopsidedly I won that fight.” I grinned.

  Bentley sounded like he didn’t think he heard me correctly when he responded, “Right. You really kicked his ass, Phil.”

  “He’s delusional, Bentley. You know … cuckoo!” I could picture Henry drawing little circles with his finger by the side of his head as he said it.

  “I’m not delusional,” I stated. “Think about it. I may be lying on the floor of the cafeteria r
ight now with a painful stomach and a searing headache, but I still come out ahead.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “He just punched a blind kid in the stomach in front of a hundred witnesses. I mean, seriously, who punches a blind kid in the stomach? A coward, that’s who. That’s like shooting someone in the back in one of those Westerns. Nobody respects that. I don’t think he gains any brownie points with his classmates by picking on a kid that can’t see the fist coming. Plus, he’s going to get suspended or expelled or something. If you think about it that way, who really ends up the loser in this situation?”

  “You do,” Henry declared, somewhat stunned that I could see it any other way. “You’re lying on the ground with a stomach ache and a concussion, and he’s probably off getting high fives from his buddies.”

  “I don’t care about high fives, Henry.”

  “He’s got a point.” Bentley had finally come around.

  “It’s not like they can embarrass me any more than they did the first day of school.”

  “Yeah,” Henry countered. “Well, good luck getting him in any trouble, Phillip. His dad basically runs this whole custodian operation, you know.”

  “He can get his son out of smashing Phillip’s phone,” Bentley argued on my behalf, “but not this. This is too big, I think.”

  “Maybe,” Henry allowed. “But I’ll believe it when I see it.”

  “Me too,” I joked.

  “Ha!” It was James, excited to hear “blind humor” in the midst of a more serious situation. That kid had a way of staying out of a conversation until a random moment, usually after you’d forgotten he was around. I liked to think that he just didn’t care much about the little debates Bentley and Henry and I had and instead used the time to plan more strategies for his fledgling transport business and come up with new marketing slogans.