The Year We Fell Down (2 page)

I looked, and felt my face flush. Because looking at the cast meant allowing my eyes to travel down his body. The end of my slow scan revealed one very muscular leg. The other was encased in white plaster.

“Isn’t it a beauty?” His voice had a masculine roughness which put a quiver in my chest. “I broke it in two places.” He extended a hand to my father. “I’m Adam Hartley.”

“Ouch, Mr. Hartley,” my father said, shaking his hand. “Frank Callahan.”

Adam Hartley looked down at his own leg. “Well, Mr. Callahan, you should see the other guy.” My father’s face stiffened. But then my new neighbor’s face broke into another giant grin. “Don’t worry, sir. Your daughter isn’t living next door to a brawler. Actually, I fell.”

The look of relief on my dad’s face was so priceless that it broke my drooly spell, and I laughed. My gorgeous new neighbor extended a hand to me, which I had to roll forward to shake. “Well played,” I said. “I’m Corey Callahan.”

“Nice to meet you,” he began, his large hand gripping mine. His light brown eyes loomed in front of me, and I noticed that their irises had a darker ring around each one. The way he leaned down to shake my hand made me feel self-conscious. And was it hot in here?

Then the moment was broken by a shrill female voice erupting from inside his room. “Hartleeeey! I need you to hang this photograph, so you won’t forget me while I’m in France. But I can’t decide which wall!”

Hartley rolled his eyes just a little bit. “So make three more of them, baby,” he called. “Then you’ll have it covered.”

My father grinned, handing Hartley his crutch.

“Honey?” came the voice again. “Have you seen my mascara?”

“You don’t need it, gorgeous!” he called, tucking both crutches under his arms.

“Hartley! Help me look.”

“Yeah, that never works,” he said with a wink. Then he tipped his head toward the open door to his room. “Good to meet you. I have to solve the great makeup crisis.”

He disappeared as my mother emerged from my room, her face a tight line. “Are you
sure
there’s nothing else we can do for you?” she asked, fear in her eyes.

Be nice
, I coached myself.
The baby-proofing is finally over
. “Thanks for all your help,” I said. “But I think I’m all set.”

My mother’s eyes misted. “Take good care of yourself, baby,” she said, her voice scratchy. She leaned over and hugged me, crushing my head to her chest.

“I will, Mom,” I said, the words muffled.

With a deep breath, she seemed to pull herself together. “Call if you need us.” She pushed open the dormitory’s outside door.

“…But if you don’t call for a few days, we won’t panic,” my father added. Then he gave me a quick salute before the door fell closed behind him. And then they were gone.

My sigh was nothing but relief.

A half-hour later, Dana and I set off for the barbecue. She bounced across the street, and I wheeled along beside her. At Harkness College, students were split into twelve Houses. It was just like Hogwarts, only bigger, and without the sorting hat. Dana and I were assigned to Beaumont House, where we would live from sophomore year on. But all First Years lived together in the buildings ringing the enormous Freshman Court.

All the First Years except for us.

At least our dormitory was just across the street. My brother had told me that McHerrin was used for a jumble of purposes — it housed students whose houses were undergoing renovation, or foreign students visiting just for a term.

And apparently, McHerrin was where they put gimps like me.

Dana and I passed through a set of marble gates and headed toward the scent of barbecued chicken. This was Freshman Court, where each building was more elegant and antique than the last. They all sported steep stone steps stretching up to carved wooden doors. I couldn’t help but ogle their ornate facades like a tourist. This was Harkness College — the stone gargoyles, the three centuries of history. It was gorgeous, if not handicapped-accessible.

“I just wanted to tell you I’m sorry that we’re not living in Fresh Court with the rest of our class,” I said, using my brother’s slang for the first year dorms. “It’s kind of unfair that you’re stuck in McHerrin with me.”

“Corey, stop apologizing!” Dana insisted. “We’re going to meet lots of people. And we have such a great room. I’m not worried.”

Together, we approached the center of the lawn, where a tent was set up. The strains of someone’s guitar floated on the warm September air, while the smell of charcoal wafted past our noses.

I never dreamed I’d show up for college in a wheelchair. Some people say that after a life-threatening event, they learn to enjoy life more. That they stop taking everything for granted.

Sometimes I felt like punching those people.

But today I understood. The September sun was warm, and my roommate was as friendly in person as she was over email. And I was breathing. So I had better learn to appreciate it.

Chapter Two:
Look Mom, No Stairs!

—
Corey

The next morning was the first day of classes. Armed with my special copy of the The Harkness Accessible Campus Map, I rolled through the sunshine toward the math department. As advertised, the building had a perfectly adequate wheelchair ramp and wide doors on its western side.

So Calculus 105 was accessible, if not exciting.

After that, it was off to Economics 101, a class my father had suggested. “I always wished I knew more about money,” he’d confessed, in a rare moment of regret. “I asked your brother to give econ a try, and he liked it. I’d like you to give it a try, too.” This was a powerful negotiating tactic, seeing as I’d played the Big Brother card for my own selfish purposes. My knockout punch in the fraught discussion of where I should go to college this year had been: “Damien went to Harkness, I’m going too.” Neither of my parents had been able to look their disabled daughter in the eye and argue with that.

They’d caved, and so to please my father, I signed up for a semester’s worth of microeconomics. Whatever that was. The upshot was that my Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings — with Calculus and then econ — were going to be awfully dull.

The economics lecture hall was big and old, with ancient oak seats in tight rows. There was no obvious wheelchair parking spot, so I reversed myself into position against the back wall, next to a couple of old mismatched chairs.

A minute later, someone dropped heavily into the chair next to me. A glance to my right revealed a tanned, muscular forearm stowing a pair of wooden crutches.

It seemed that my hot neighbor had arrived.

My little feathered hope fairy woke up and whispered into my ear.
Economics just got better
.

With a groan, Hartley kicked his backpack out in front of him on the wood floor, and then wrestled the heel of his broken leg on top of it. Then he tipped his head back against the paneled wall behind us and said, “Shoot me, Callahan. Why did I sign up for a class so far away from McHerrin?”

“You could always call the gimpmobile,” I suggested.

Turning his chin, those chocolaty brown eyes caught me in their tractor beam. “Sorry?”

For a second there, I almost forgot what I’d been saying. The gimpmobile. Right. “There’s a van.” I handed him my accessible map. “You call this number ahead of time, and they’ll pick you up for class.”

“Who knew?” Hartley frowned at the map. “Is that what you do?”

“Honestly? I’d rather paste a bright red L to my forehead than call the van.” I made the universal sign for “loser” with my fingers, and Hartley snorted with laughter. His dimple appeared, and I had to fight off the urge to reach over and put my thumb over it.

Just then, a skinny girl with straight dark hair and giant glasses slid into the seat on the other side of Hartley.

“Excuse me,” he said, turning to her. “This section is reserved for gimps.”

She looked up at him, eyes huge, and then bolted from her chair like a frightened rabbit. I watched her run down the aisle and slide into another seat.

“Well,
I
knew you were kidding,” I said.

“Right?” Hartley gave me another smile so warm and devilish that I could not look away. Then he slapped a notebook onto his lap just as a professor began tapping the microphone on the lectern.

Professor Rumpel looked to be about 109 years old, give or take a decade. “Class,” he began. “It really is true what they say about economics. The answer to any test question is ‘supply and demand.’” The old man let out a breathy gust of air into the microphone.

Hartley leaned closer to me and whispered, “I think that was supposed to be a joke.”

The proximity made my face feel hot. “We are in serious trouble,” I whispered back.

But really, I was referring to me.

Hartley’s cell phone rang as class ended, so I gave him a friendly wave and rolled out of the lecture hall alone. Then, after consulting my trusty gimp map, I headed toward the biggest dining hall on campus. Harkness Commons had been built in the 1930s to accommodate the entire college at once. Slowly, I wheeled into the crowded, cavernous space. Before me stretched over one hundred wooden tables. After swiping my ID at the door, I had to watch the flow of bodies inside to determine where to go next.

Students flowed past me toward one wall of the room. So I wound my wheelchair through the tables toward what looked like a line. Drifting forward while trying to read a chalkboard, I accidentally bumped the person in line in front of me. She spun around quickly, a look of irritation on her face until she looked down and realized what had hit her. “Sorry!” she said quickly.

I felt my face flush. “I’m sorry,” I echoed. And why was she sorry, anyway? I’m the dope who ran into her.

This was one of the strange truths about driving a wheelchair. Nine out of ten times, anyone I bumped — or maybe even flattened — would apologize. It made no sense at all, and somehow it also pissed me off.

I found the end of the line. But then I noticed that everyone else in line had collected a tray already, and silverware. So I steered myself out of line, found the trays and cutlery, and then added myself to the end again. Waiting in line in my chair put me at eye-level with other people’s rear ends. It was the same way the world had looked when I was seven years old.

—
Hartley

I swear to God, the guy who made my sandwich could not have moved slower if he had both wrists tied together. I stood there, my ankle throbbing, my good leg shaking. It didn’t help that I’d skipped breakfast. By the time he handed the plate over, I thought I might pass out.

“Thanks,” I said. I took the plate in my right hand, and then jammed my right crutch under my armpit. I tried to walk away like that, without gripping the crutch handle. My balance off, I swayed, and then had to lean against the service counter just to stay vertical. My crutch fell to the floor with a bang.

Fail
. The only saving grace was that the sandwich didn’t jump ship, too.

“Hey gimp!” a voice called from behind me.

I turned around, but it took me a minute to find Corey, because I was looking for someone my own height. After an awkward second, I looked and spotted her. “Callahan,” I said. “Did you see that suave maneuver?”

With a smile, she took the plate out of my hand and set it on her tray. “Don’t kill yourself in the name of a…” she looked at the plate. “Turkey club. I’ll carry it for you if you can give me a second.”

“Thanks,” I sighed. I hopped aside, and waited while the same under-motivated sandwich guy made her lunch.

Several hours later (I might be exaggerating), our tray contained two sandwiches, chips, cookies, my glasses of milk and her diet soda. “I think I see a free table over there, in the next zip code,” I muttered, crutching forward. Corey wheeled our booty to the table, where I yanked one of the heavy wooden chairs out of the way to make a parking spot for her.

Then I collapsed into a chair. “Jesus, Mary and mother of God.” I rested my forehead against the heels of my hands. “That only took about seven times as long as it’s supposed to.”

Corey handed me my plate. “It’s a new injury, isn’t it?” she asked, picking up her sandwich.

“Is it that obvious? I did it a week ago at hockey preseason training camp.”

“Hockey, huh?” A strange look crossed her face.

“Sort of. See, I didn’t break it playing hockey, because that would at least make sense. I broke the leg falling off a climbing wall.”

Her jaw dropped. “Did the ropes break?”

Not exactly
. “There may not have been ropes. Also, it may have been two in the morning.” I winced, because it’s no fun telling a pretty girl how big an idiot you are. “Also, I may have been drunk.”

“Ouch. So you can’t even tell people that you’re the victim of a poke check gone wrong?”

I raised an eyebrow at her. “Are you a hockey fan, Callahan?”

“Kind of.” She fidgeted with a potato chip. “My father is a high-school hockey coach,” she said. “And my brother Damien was the senior wing on your team last year.”