She said, “Yes, sir, most of the time.”
“Okay, you can go outside, get some fresh air, and I’ll call you in.”
Instead of obeying him — because she didn’t feel like following any more instructions — Grace went into the kitchen where Bobby sat slumped in his special belted-in chair and Ramona was trying to feed Amber pieces of egg and Amber was shaking her head and whining, “No, no, no.”
“What’s up, Grace?”
“Can I have some juice, Mrs. Stage?”
“Help yourself.”
Bobby made a noise and resumed drinking one of those milk shakes Ramona poured for him into small cups because he wasn’t strong enough to hold a big cup.
“That’s right,” Ramona told him, as if she were talking to a baby, “it is delicious.”
Bobby slurped. Amber said, “No, no, no.”
Grace poured herself some juice and hung around near the sink and looked out at the desert but really didn’t focus on it.
Thinking, as she had a thousand times: Special needs, she’s like the others, gets more money for it.
Followed by the question that bothered her: What’s my special need?
Bobby snorted and sputtered and coughed and Ramona rushed over and slapped his back softly until he stopped. Amber started to cry and Ramona said, “One moment, darling.”
Grace had wondered for a while about what made Bobby weak and have trouble breathing but knew better than to ask Ramona about something that wasn’t her business. Instead, she snuck into his room one afternoon when Ramona was downstairs trying to feed him a snack milk shake and had a look at some of the medicine Ramona was giving him. The words on the labels didn’t tell her anything and she already knew about the oxygen tank next to his bed — a bed with side rails, so he wouldn’t fall out. But she did notice a piece of paper on the dresser and it had one of those snake symbols doctors used.
The first line read, County Dependent Medical Status Report: Robert Evan Canova.
The second line began, This twelve-year-old Caucasian with multiple congenital anomalies...
Grace heard Ramona coming up the stairs and scooted to her own room. Later that day, she opened the big dictionary and looked up “congenital” and “anomalies” and figured it out: Bobby had been born with problems. That really didn’t tell her much but she supposed that was all she’d be able to learn.
Malcolm Bluestone came into the kitchen. “There you are. Ready?”
Ramona looked at him, her eyebrows climbing, like she wanted to be in on the secret.
Dr. Bluestone didn’t notice, was looking only at Grace and holding his huge arm out, motioning her back to the living room.
Finishing her juice, she washed and dried the glass and followed him.
He said, “Vitamin C, good for you.”
Back at the testing table, he said, “First off, you did extremely well — amazingly well, actually.”
He waited. “Astonishingly well.”
Grace said, “Good.”
“Put it this way, Grace, if we were testing a thousand kids, you’d probably get the highest score of anyone.”
Again, he waited.
Grace nodded.
“May I ask how you feel about that?”
“Fine.”
“Well, you should feel fine. You got an amazing — more than that, your abilities are uniform. That means you did great on everything. Sometimes people do very well on one part but not so well on another part. Nothing wrong with that. But you excelled on everything. I hope you feel proud of that.”
“Proud” was a word whose definition Grace understood. But it meant nothing to her.
She said, “Sure.”
Malcolm’s soft brown eyes narrowed. “Let me put this another way: You’re almost nine years old but on some of the subtests — on most of them, actually — you knew as much as a fourteen- or a fifteen-year-old. In some cases, even a seventeen-year-old. I mean your vocabulary is fabulous.”
He smiled. “I have a tendency to over-explain because most of the children I deal with need that. So I’m going to have to watch myself with you. Like defining ‘uniform’ when you know exactly what it means.”
Without thinking, Grace let the words shoot out. “Having the same form, manner, or degree.”
Malcolm smiled. “You read the dictionary.”
Grace felt her stomach tighten up. How had he figured her out so easily? Now he’d think she was weird, put that in a county status report.
Or maybe being weird would help her, keep her as a special-needs ward, so Mrs. Stage could keep getting extra money and Grace could stay here.
He said, “That’s fantastic, Grace, that’s a great way to build up vocabulary, learn the structure of language, philology, etymology — where words come from, how they’re built. I used to do the same thing myself. Back when I was a bored kid, and let me tell you, that was most of the time because let’s face it, for people like us — not that I’m as smart as you — life can get downright tedious if we’re forced to go slow. And that’s what I’m going to help you with. You’re a race car, not a bicycle.”
Grace felt her stomach loosen.
“I mean that, Grace. You deserve to be considered on your own terms.”
A week later he brought her new curriculum materials. A week after that, he said, “How’d you like it?”
“Good.”
“Listen, would you mind if I tested you again — just a few questions on the material in the packet. So I can know where we take things.”
“Okay.”
Ten questions later, he was grinning. “Well, it’s obviously time to move on.”
Five days later, Ramona brought a box into Grace’s room and said, “From the professor, looks like he thinks you’re pretty smart.”
Drawing out a textbook, she said, “This is college science, young lady. How’d you learn enough to get to this level?”
Grace said, “I read.”
Ramona shrugged. “Guess that explains it.”
Three boxes later, he showed up again and said, “How’s everything going?”
Grace was out by the fence around the green pool, thinking about swimming, not sure if getting all slimy was worth it.
She said, “Fine.”
“I’m not going to test you on the curriculum, Grace, not for a while. You tell me you know it, that’s good enough.”
“I don’t know everything.”
His laugh was deep and rumbly like it came from deep inside him. “No one does, that would be the worst thing, no?”
“Knowing everything?” That sounded like the best thing.
“Having nothing more to learn, Grace. I mean for people like us, learning is everything.”
Almost every time he visited, he said that. Like us. Like he and Grace were members of a club. Like he also had special needs.
She said, “Yes, sir.”
His look said he knew she was just saying it without meaning it. But he didn’t get angry, his eyes got even softer. “Listen, I’ve got a favor to ask you. Could I test you some more? Not about the curriculum, different types of tests.”
“Okay.”
“You don’t want to know anything about the tests?”
“You don’t give shots,” said Grace. “You can’t hurt me.”
His head drew back and he roared with laughter. When he finally settled, he said, “Yes, that’s true, these definitely won’t hurt. But they’re a little different, there’s no right or wrong, I’ll be showing you pictures, asking you to make up stories. You okay with that?”
“What kind of stories?”
“Anything you want.”