The Ables Read online

  But I wouldn’t have that problem.

  I turned to Bentley and Henry, who were on my right. “Okay guys, whom are we gonna get?”

  Bentley simply asked, “What?”

  “Whom should we get on our team?”

  There was a pause as we reached the doorway, and I felt the SuperSim registration packet placed in my hand by whoever was passing them out. My entire life, I’ve just been taking whatever people hand me on my way in and out of places without really knowing who they are or what I’m accepting. It could be nuclear launch codes or a map to buried treasure, but I’d still just take it and hand it over to Mom when I got home.

  “Oh, I don’t know. How about Chad Burke?” He was being a smart aleck.

  “Ha ha, Bentley. Very funny.” I wasn’t amused. “Seriously, we can only have seven; do we even know that many kids?”

  This time it was Henry who responded. “Let me ask you something.” He started out calm but quickly ramped things up with an emphatic, “Are you crazy?!”

  “What?”

  “Why in the world would you think we should enter this thing?” He sounded so exasperated. “We wouldn’t stand a chance!”

  “Why not?” I didn’t understand his reaction at all. Didn’t every one of us want to play superhero?

  Henry practically shouted, “Look at us! We’re disabled, Phillip! I’m in a freaking wheelchair, man, and you can’t see. We don’t stand a chance against able-bodied kids. Why would I want to embarrass myself by coming in last at a superhero contest?”

  Bentley tried to play the mediator. “I think what Henry’s trying to say—” He paused, realizing it was a tough job. “—is that you’re crazy, Phillip. And we would get our butts kicked.”

  “Why? I don’t get it, guys. We can do anything these other kids can do.”

  Henry chimed in again. “Except walk, see, or stand still.” Henry was a real downer sometimes, even though it was obvious he didn’t always mean to be. He was just blunt. Sometimes, he was also pessimistic, which created a combination that didn’t always save room for people’s feelings.

  “I can’t see, but you can. You can’t walk, but I can. Haven’t you been listening to anything Mrs. Crouch has been saying? We can work together to overcome our disadvantages.”

  “Disabilities,” Henry corrected me. “And you sound like a coach giving a pep talk before the big game in some terrible cheesy movie.”

  I ignored him and decided to concentrate on Bentley. “Bentley, you talk all the time about your little inventions.” It was true. He had told us about the hours he spent tinkering and building things in his workshop, even though most of them never worked. The only one he talked about specifically was the remote control that he fit with a thumb scanner so it wouldn’t work if you didn’t scan yourself first. He programmed the device to accept the thumbprint for everyone in his entire family except his older brothers.

  “What if you can get a couple working that might help us in the competition?”

  “I don’t know, Phillip.”

  I suspected he was just being modest and that he had some pretty amazing gadgets and gizmos down in that basement, but I was suddenly distracted by a small revelation. “We could get Donnie—everyone’s scared of Donnie.”

  Nothing. I thought I heard Henry smack his forehead, but with all the ruckus in the hallway, there was no way to be sure.

  “We can add James—hey, where’s James?”

  “I’m right here,” James replied. He’d been there the whole time, just keeping quiet.

  “James can transport, guys. And he knows this city like nobody else, don’t you, James?”

  “I can take us anywhere in town you want to go.” He was giving his standard businessman speech more than he was actually showing interest in participating in the contest. He loved talking about how excellent his transport services were. He was quite the self-promoter.

  “That’s right. Anywhere in the city,” I said, agreeing with him. “And with all my practicing, I can move certain items up to twenty or thirty feet already. Donnie’s huge and intimidating. Bentley has gadgets.” I was on a roll, building my case.

  “Henry can read the villains’ minds. Freddie is freaking indestructible, guys!” I paused before the conclusion. “If we can get one more kid … someone with super strength or eye-beams of some sort … guys, we can do this. And even if we fail, it’s not like we look bad. They already think we’re losers. But if we show up … if we do well, even a little bit … maybe we win some respect.”

  We had reached the classroom. Everyone filed in without saying anything. I took my seat, optimistic that I had gotten through to them, that they would see this as the opportunity that it was instead of labeling it a landmine. I had never seen myself as a motivational speaker until now. I decided to let them stew for a few moments and started making mental notes of things to say to further support my argument.

  But that didn’t last very long.

  Mrs. Crouch came into the room, and before she made it to her desk, she’d crushed my dreams.

  “Before any of you go getting your hopes up, you should know that special education students have been ruled ineligible for the SuperSim competition for your own safety and protection.”

  I let out an audible gasp of shock. “That’s not fair,” I began, ready to argue my case all over again.

  But she shut me down. “Very few things are, Mr. Sallinger,” she said with a tone that clearly indicated I could talk myself blue in the face, and it would be in vain. As she went around the room collecting the registration packets from us, I could practically feel Henry giving me an I-told-you-so look.

  I spent all of the morning’s lessons slouched in my desk, arms crossed, pouting in defeated silence.

  Chapter 7: Exposed

  That evening after dinner, everyone was in the living room. Dad was in his easy chair, watching the national news and reading some work papers. Mom was doing a crossword puzzle, moving back and forth in her rocker. Patrick was on the couch with me, fiddling around with a handheld video game.

  I sat with an open comic book in my lap, which I ignored, and contemplated how unfair it was that the school wouldn’t let disabled kids participate in the SuperSim. I thought it was pretty wrong and wanted to say so, but I couldn’t talk about it until Pat got sent to bed. I thought about picking a fight with him to get him in trouble so he would be sent to his room as punishment but decided against it. He got sent to his room enough on his own, so it would probably happen anyway, and there was always the risk of getting caught being the instigator.

  I had been distracted the entire day by the SuperSim issue. I couldn’t recall a single thing that Mrs. Crouch had talked about. I’d barely said a word at lunch. I was just depressed that I wasn’t going to be able to participate. Another carrot dangled before me, only to be yanked away. You have a super power—oh yeah, you can barely use it. Also … there’s an awesome superhero competition—but you’re too fragile to compete.

  Ultimately, it wasn’t the school I was upset with, though. It was my friends. I couldn’t figure out why they were so scared. I mean, I knew we’d be underdogs and all that, but I didn’t see any harm in trying. They did. And I felt a little betrayed.

  The woman on the news started talking about an attempted bank robbery. I heard my father’s newspaper rustle and could tell that he’d started watching the news story with his full attention. I wondered if he knew about that bank robbery. The anchor mentioned that the robbers used C4, which any twelve-year-old kid who watches movies can tell you is explosive stuff. It sounded like the kind of thing an evil mastermind might plan and perpetrate. Dad could very well have been there, for all I knew, as part of the team that foiled the crime.

  I longed for the day when Patrick was in the loop so we could talk openly at home about our powers.

  The news story ended and a new one about Congress began. Some kind of scandal.

  I was about to learn what kind of scandal when the phone
rang, distracting me. Dad closed the leg rest on the easy chair, stood, and went to get the phone.

  “Hello, Sallingers.” It was his standard phone greeting, even if the caller ID revealed that the caller was someone he knew. “Why, yes, hang on one moment, will you?” I heard Dad walking back toward us and assumed the call was for Mom. Instead, I felt a tapping on my right shoulder.

  I turned around to hear my dad say, “It’s for you, son.” It was the first phone call I’d ever received since we’d moved to Freepoint. I hadn’t received many phone calls before we moved here either, frankly.

  Who could be calling me?

  As Dad handed me the phone, I lifted it to my ear and said a cautious, “Hello?”

  “This is what I think we should do …”

  I was instantly relieved. “Oh, hi, Bentley.”

  “We need to file an appeal.” He was all business, with no time for pleasantries.

  “A what?” I was still waiting for a hello.

  “An appeal with the school board. That’s the proper procedure.” He was pretty excited and talking rather quickly. “If they won’t let us compete, then that’s illegal discrimination, and we can challenge the school’s decision to bar us on the basis of the Americans with Disabilities Act.”

  Finally! He had come around. I was about to respond when I suddenly remembered my brother. “Hang on a second.” I turned toward my dad. “I’m going to go take this in my bedroom, okay?”

  “Sure, son.”

  I held the phone to my chest and made my way out of the living room, past the kitchen, and into my bedroom. I closed the door and returned to the conversation. “I thought you were against the SuperSim!”

  Bentley explained, “I was. But I was just being scared. It’s one thing to think about being a custodian some day in the future, but it’s another thing entirely to actually go try to be one in only five weeks.”

  “So what changed your mind, then?”

  “Your speech about working together, but not because it inspired me emotionally or anything. Because it really was pretty cheesy. But the logic of it just makes too much sense. You’re right. Our powers and abilities can complement each other and make up for our disabilities. We’re not any more or less able to stop crime. We just have to work twice as hard as anyone else to get ready.”

  “Well, okay, then.” I was beaming.

  “That … and the fact that they told me I can’t. I hate it when people tell me that I can’t do something, Phillip. It makes me want to do it anyway and then shove it in their faces for doubting me.”

  “Do you really think we stand a chance with an appeal?” I was happy to have him on board, but I was skeptical of his plan’s chances for success. It seemed a little extreme.

  “Sure, why not? It’s against the law to discriminate against disabled people just because of their disability. They have to let us participate.”

  “Can’t you just ask your father to say something to someone? Isn’t he, like, a bigwig on the board?”

  “I asked him already,” Bentley spat out in disgust. “He said his hands are tied … that it’s not his decision. That a man in his position can’t appear to be taking sides just because of his son. Buncha’ crap, if you ask me. He’d do it for Brad or Terry. But it’s exactly what I expected him to say.”

  I sensed that this wasn’t the first issue Bentley and his father had disagreed on. Judging by his tone, there seemed to be a history there.

  “But we’re just kids. Are we even allowed to file a school board appeal?” I honestly didn’t know.

  He sounded pretty sure, responding with a hearty, “Oh yeah. There’s no age requirement. It’s totally possible.”

  “How do you know?” It was an honest question.

  “I just spent the last hour learning about the Freepoint school system.”

  Now, when a normal person says something like that, what they really mean is that they skimmed the important stuff and gained a cursory knowledge of a huge subject in sixty minutes’ time. What Bentley meant, though, was that he’d just gained in one hour the experience and knowledge of someone who’d spent years learning on the job. He probably now knew more about the Freepoint school board bylaws than the president himself. That’s just how his mind worked. He was a sponge for knowledge.

  “In an hour?!” I’d seen evidence of his super-learning abilities before in class, but this was something on a new level, and I was a little bit amazed.

  “I got the basic gist, yeah. It’s pretty simple. We file the paperwork with the proper office, and then the rest is easy. There are bylaws prohibiting the school from discriminating against students for any reason. I think we can make a pretty strong argument for our appeal by citing that rule.”

  “Your brain is amazing, Bentley, you know that? What I wouldn’t give to be able to snap my fingers and gain enough knowledge to pass all the tests I’ll ever see in school for the rest of my life.”

  “It’s not all it’s cracked up to be.” He said it casually, with just a hint of sadness.

  “Well, I hate to break it to you, but it’s still just you and me. And we should probably make sure we can find a couple other guys to join our team to get to the four-person minimum before we go filing appeals and stuff.”

  “Henry’s in. I called him before I called you.”

  “What?!” I was incredulous. There was no way this was true. Henry had been adamant.

  “Yeah, for real. He’s in. I knew we’d need at least four people, so I didn’t want to get your hopes up if I couldn’t convince Henry. He said he’d been thinking all day about how cool it would be to actually fight crime. I believe his exact words were ‘I’m already a fat kid in a wheelchair, what’s a little more humiliation going to hurt me?’”

  I was stunned. Henry wasn’t exactly known for being persuaded to change his mind. But I wasn’t ready to rejoice just yet.

  “We still need more. Three’s not enough, Bentley.”

  “So, then we get James, like you said. He seems pretty eager to please, and the teleportation will come in handy too. Or Freak-Out Fred; he’s a pretty cool guy.”

  Bentley seemed to have it all figured out. And somehow, I was now the only one holding us back. But I wasn’t about to wear that hat for long. “Then let’s do it. What are we waiting for?”

  “Okay. Monday, we’ll start planning. We’re going to need practice and planning sessions, though, Phillip. Lots. Most of us are still pretty raw with our abilities.”

  He was right, of course. I had gotten so wrapped up in the competition itself that I hadn’t stopped to think about all the training we lacked. Even without disabilities, we were still babes in the world of

  super powers.

  “Right,” I agreed. “Maybe we can all sleep over at someone’s house—not mine, though. My brother’s still not in the loop. I’ve almost told him on accident, like, six times. There’s no way a whole group of kids hanging out here practicing powers is going to go unnoticed.”

  “We’ll do it at my place. Or Henry’s. No sweat. But we have to start soon. Most of these kids have a head start on us just because they’re not handicapped. We’re going to have to work twice as hard as they do to prepare—if not more.” I could hear the excitement and determination in his voice. I’d created a monster.

  “Okay. Maybe we can get together next weekend for our first group session?”

  “Yeah, if not sooner. We only have five weeks.”

  I paused, suddenly apprehensive. “What if they don’t let us compete, Bentley? What if we practice and rehearse and do all this work and they still won’t let us play?” It seemed plausible to me that this scenario could happen, and I guess my life experiences had turned me into a bit of a pessimist in these kinds of situations.

  “They will, Phillip. Don’t worry. Justice is on our side.” He sounded so confident that my fears were nearly erased. I don’t know if you’ve ever known someone like Bentley—someone smarter than everyone else in your life put toget
her—but if you have, then you know how comforting their tone of certainty can be. “Besides … if they don’t … screw ‘em. We’ll compete anyway.” I already liked the original Bentley a great deal. But this new and improved Bentley—the one oozing confidence and bravado—was even better. Looking back, I’m reasonably sure that this is the moment I determined that Bentley would be a friend for life.

  “Okay, then.”

  “Okay, then. See you Monday?”

  “Yeah, see you Monday,” I replied. The line went dead.

  I leaned with my back against the bedroom door for a moment, taking it all in. Even earlier in the day, in the midst of trying to convince the guys to compete in the SuperSim, I hadn’t actually thought much about the simulation as a real thing. It was abstract … some cool new thing on the horizon that I hoped to see someday. The way Christmas feels in July. But now that my friends had actually changed their minds to the point of even showing enthusiasm, well … the SuperSim was real now. It was going to happen. And it was a heavy moment for me. My first chance at acting like a real superhero was only weeks away, and those five weeks felt like about thirty seconds.

  I returned to the living room, sat back down, and picked up the comic book I had been pretending to read, even less able to concentrate on it now than I had been before. I read and then re-read the first frame of the comic several times, sliding my fingers over the tiny bumps on the page. I tried to dive into the story and leave the real world behind for a bit, but my memory wouldn’t let me. I kept rolling over the conversation with Bentley in my head, still somewhat shocked at his 180-degree change of heart.

  “Who was that on the phone, honey?” It was my mother, who always seemed to care as much about my social life as my father did about my homework and grades.