The Birth of Super Crip Read Free Page B

Scott
asked, repeating himself.
     
    “Next week, I think,” Red said, realizing he hadn’t
heard his brother the first time. He looked at Scott, wanting to
tell him about the strange sensation he’d experienced during his
confrontation with Chuck. They usually told each other everything.
But his gut told him not to. He would just laugh, Red thought. Or
blow it off. He wasn’t sure what to tell him anyway.
     
    “What’re you in such deep thought for all of a
sudden?” Scott asked.
     
    “I’m not,” Red said, knowing he couldn’t get a lie
past Scott but going with it. “I don’t know, it’s not like the shot
did anything else for me.”
     
    “It certainly didn’t make you any smarter.”
     
    “Uh-duh, you write that one?”
     
    Scott got up and pretended to throw the ball at him,
only to let go of it as he extended his arms and catch it before
the ball dropped to the floor. Red’s head snapped back a little and
he put his hand up to block the ball.
     
    “Two for flinching,” Scott said, punching his brother
in the arm twice as he left the room.
     
    “That’s a real skill to make a person with cerebral
palsy flinch, asshole,” Red called after his brother, tossing an
eraser at him in the hallway as they both laughed.
     

 
     
     
    Chapter 5
     
    Red rolled over and finally turned the clock on the
end table back toward him. The bright red numbers seemed to taunt
him with the knowledge that it was 2:37 in the morning. There was
no more denying that he couldn’t sleep. He turned the clock to face
the wall again, hoping the extra bit of darkness would help.
     
    His mom had taken another turn at interrogating him
about what she kept calling “the fight” before he went to bed. Do
they all really think I had a fight with a football player? Red
thought. Especially one where he ended up on the floor?
     
    Folding his pillow in half, he laid on his back. It
was impossible. I didn’t touch Chuck, he thought. He would have
kicked the crap out of me.
     
    Now he knew he was lying to himself. Nobody was going
to beat up one of the kids with disabilities. Even the “dirts”
wouldn’t beat up one of us, he thought. Red had known it on some
level his whole life. Wrestling with his brothers when they were
younger, he’d catch his father giving the other three a look that
they all understood. You can handle him. Smack him around a little
if he gets a few in on you. But don’t hurt him.
     
    It wasn’t quite the same in school. All the kids in
the mainstreaming program had been picked on. Dirts, who had earned
their nickname because they always seemed to wear the same clothes
and were constantly getting sent to the office for wising off in
class or getting into fights, often made kids with disabilities
their targets. They would mumble as they walked past Red to mock
his speech, or kick his desk chair in during class if they happened
to sit behind him, or make sarcastic comments about the kids with
disabilities to their friends loudly enough for Red and the others
to hear. Some would give him the finger just to see him give it
back, as if he were a monkey in a zoo.
     
    But Red always knew he could come back at them just
enough. Tell them to screw off. Compliment the dirts on their
streak of wearing a black T-shirt under an open flannel with jeans
and boots, which they wore regardless of how hot or cold it was
outside. They weren’t really going to do anything. Not to one of
the kids with a disability. It was an unwritten rule even among the
kids who were sent to the office every other day.
     
    Red suddenly remembered putting a freshman against a
locker the previous year. The kid would stick his foot under the
wheel of Red’s wheelchair and yell as if Red couldn’t control his
chair. The first couple times Red actually apologized. But when it
kept happening day after day, he caught on. It was one of the
dumbest ways he’d ever had a kid try to pick on him. Apparently,
the laughter from the kid’s