“I don’t see any way to avoid the unfortunate fact that Cory simply didn’t attend enough of his classes in the first semester to get credit for them,” Mrs. Hanover decrees.
It’s as if a bomb has been dropped on us. A tidal wave of disappointment rises in my body. My mom looks like she’s been punched in the stomach. I want to start screaming but I know this is no time to lose it. Somehow I keep my mouth shut.
“Are you saying that you want Cory to repeat his junior year?” my mother asks, her voice shaking. “Entirely? Starting next fall?”
The magnitude of this thought is still sinking in. Not going back to school for several months, and then starting over in the same grade? It’s almost impossible to deal with.
It’s also almost impossible to understand why none of my “friends” at this meeting are saying anything to defend me, especially my English teacher, who really likes me. She looks as if she’s afraid to speak.
As I search from face to face, I see that the one with the most negative look is my history teacher. This doesn’t surprise me, since she never did have much patience with me. I don’t think she ever really understood that I can’t do all the work all the time or that I can’t help being somewhat disruptive in class.
“It’s absolutely necessary for Cory to move on,” my mother says directly at the new caseworker, confronting her and the whole unexpected premise of the meeting. “I don’t know how you can even be thinking about making him repeat junior year.”
As she forces herself to continue, I can see her gathering strength. “All of the psychologists agree that Cory needs a new start, and is ready for it. Going backward will only make him revert to where he was when he had to” — she stops short for a moment, then goes on — “when he had to take a leave of absence.” She’s choosing her words very carefully.
“Look, Mrs. Friedman,” my new caseworker says with a sudden pleasantness in her voice. “We’re all here because we want what’s in Cory’s best interest, and we certainly don’t want to set him up for failure. As I said, we don’t see how Cory can possibly complete the present term since he hasn’t really completed the last one.”
My mother is speechless.
“He’s missed too many days and too much class work. We have thought about this long and hard, and we’re in agreement that he doesn’t have a chance to succeed in spring semester because he hasn’t built the proper foundation for it.”
She looks around the room for support from everyone about my terrible crimes of the past, but she doesn’t find any. Her voice is still hanging in the air when she sits back in her chair.
“But since I’m the newest person in this,” she says, “maybe it would be appropriate to ask for thoughts from those other members of our staff who have worked with Cory . . . just to be fair.”
The room goes quiet again as all await her first selection.
“Let’s start with his experience in math class.”
My math teacher is a little nervous as she begins, and I have no idea what she’s going to say. She was always nice to me but not always happy with my performance.
“Cory has shown the potential to be good at mathematics,” she starts, “but frankly I don’t think at this point he’s been in my class enough to grasp a lot of the fundamentals of Algebra I. I tried to keep him up to speed, of course, and when he couldn’t attend class, I gave him assignments to do at home, but he didn’t turn most of them in.”
My mother is about to say something but decides not to.
“Given that, how would you assess his ability to do Algebra II in this next semester?” Mrs. Hanover asks bluntly.
My math teacher hesitates. “It would be very hard for him,” she finally admits. “I’d question the wisdom of letting him go to the next level.”
I don’t think she wanted to say it, but she did.
Mrs. Hanover shifts her attention to my favorite teacher.
“Let’s talk about English.”
My English teacher seems caught off guard but takes a breath and manages to smile at me kindly. She’s obviously uncomfortable.
“Cory has a wonderful mind,” she begins. “He’s one of my best writers and has a vivid imagination. But . . . he has missed a great many assignments . . . which isn’t to say he still couldn’t do well in the spring,” she adds as a hopeful afterthought. “English is a little different. His basic skills are in place, but . . .”
Her words trail off into silence.
“And what’s been the experience in history class?” Mrs. Hanover continues.
My heart starts pounding in my chest. My history teacher has been the hardest on me in the whole school. I don’t think she’s ever liked me. If I have an enemy in the room among the teachers, it’s her.
And what she says doesn’t surprise me.
“Quite frankly, I don’t even have enough work from Cory to say he really has taken first-semester history. He hasn’t turned in the majority of his assignments and didn’t take his midterm exams. I’m sorry to say that I couldn’t possibly pass him on the basis of the work he’s completed. He would be cheated of the learning that didn’t occur.”
What’s best for Cory. Question the wisdom of continuing. Cheated of learning.
All the things they’re saying are just polite ways of telling us they’re not going to help me. Why don’t they just come out and say they don’t want to give me a chance, don’t even want to listen to our side of things?
In a while, when Mrs. Hanover finishes with the teachers, she thumbs through a stack of papers in front of her. “There are also, of course, the issues of state educational standards that have to be met. According to Cory’s record, he hasn’t attended school for enough days to meet the requirement for last term. Technically, the physical education he’s missed is enough to set him back by itself.”
This seems like a totally random problem to me. The state is very big on gym classes these days, but everyone knows that a lot of the time, nothing much goes on there.
“To be truthful, a good deal of this decision is out of our hands, even though, as I’ve said, our guiding principle has been to help Cory in any way we can. I think we all agree on that.”
Some of the people in the room nod their heads.
Yep, let’s help Cory. Let’s hold him back.
“So, as you can see, according to the rules, we really have no choice but to require that Cory repeat his junior year. We’re sorry, really we are.”
Even though this decision has been obvious from the start, I feel a rush of heat. Lucky for me, my mother’s hand is around my wrist, grasping it tightly so I can’t get up and blow any chance I might have of changing their minds. If I have any chance at all, which I don’t.
Mom and I exchange glances, and she has to be thinking what I am: This will destroy everything just when I’m getting better. I have to move forward, not backward. I have to get my life going again, get through high school, and move on.
“Just give me a chance,” she whispers to me calmly, but I can see that she’s anything but calm on the inside. I know my mother.
“What it all boils down to,” the guidance counselor says when it’s his turn to speak, “is that we don’t see how Cory can possibly make up what he missed in the fall semester while he’s taking on new work in the current term. Up to now there’s been some . . . difficulty just keeping up with the regular work — not that he hasn’t tried,” he adds in a feeble attempt to be kind. “Plus, let’s be honest, there’s very little time left in the term. It would be a lot to ask of anyone.”
“Not for me,” I blurt out before I can check myself.
Mom throws me a cautionary look, and I go quiet.
That seems to be the end of the speeches. After a lull, everyone turns to my mother to listen politely to anything she could possibly have to say, to get it over with and then leave. Up until now Mom has let them get more and more negative without arguing, but I know that she won’t leave without a fight.
But it takes m
e off guard when I look at her and see that the unexpected gang-up seems to have been too much, even for her. Her eyes are brimming with tears.
And that’s when I can’t take it anymore. Suddenly the issue is no longer what’s going to happen to me.
“How can you do this to my mother?” I stand up. “Look what you’re doing to her. You’ve made her cry.”
Her grip on my wrist tightens, really tightens.
“Don’t worry, Mom,” I tell her softly. “It isn’t worth it. I’ll do anything they want me to. I can do it if I have to.”
For a long moment, my mother sits there, collecting herself. I can see she’s exhausted, not just from this but from a lifetime of helping me survive an endless number of crises. At last she’s come to one that she doesn’t have a chance of solving. This is the end of the line, the end of her energy, and I can’t blame her for giving up. Too much pain. Too much work. Too many years.
I scan the room again. In the end, not a single teacher has really stepped up to fight the decision that’s already been made.
Chapter 69
FOR WHAT SEEMS LIKE A LONG TIME, the group is silent, as if a blanket has been thrown over the room. Then my mother clears her throat and takes a deep breath. It startles me to see that she’s undergone a change from just a few minutes earlier.
In place of tears I can see composure, and something more. As I’ve said before, since the day my head started shaking, Mom has given up her own publishing business, her studies in music, her vacations, and pretty much her life to help me. But one good thing has come out of it. All the time she’s invested in me has made her very smart, not only about my situation but also about dealing with doctors, hospitals, and entire school systems. In a way, she’s been getting ready for this moment for a long, long time.
When she starts to speak, she’s totally in command. And she’s my guardian angel all over again.
“Last semester was the hardest Cory has ever had,” she begins. “You all know that. His Tourette’s and OCD were so out of control he couldn’t get to school as much as he’d wanted. He was on a shortened day and was put in the most basic classes just so that he could try to get through junior year.
“There was a time early on when it got too hard for him to walk, and he came to school in a wheelchair just so he wouldn’t miss his work. Believe me, that wasn’t easy for him. He used to play football and . . .”
She falters briefly but gathers herself again quickly. My mom just won’t quit.
“Cory fought harder than you can imagine to stay in this school, and when that wasn’t enough, he took a leave of absence to rehabilitate himself. You know where he went and what he did. Wilderness camp. Sleeping in the snow and freezing cold for a month. And he did it, and came out a survivor. All his counselors agreed on that.”
A few heads bob up and down in support. At least they’re still listening.
“After that he went to one of the best and hardest OCD hospitals in the world, and he started to turn his life around, a day at a time. It was amazing, and also heroic. And now you’re telling him that all this, all his efforts, are just going to be thrown away? That they don’t count for anything?”
She lets the thought settle in. Her energy and passion are building by the second.
“If you make Cory repeat junior year, you’ll be hurting him so much more than helping, and it will cancel out the unbelievable efforts he’s made. It will stop his progress cold.”
My history teacher starts to lift her hand off the table as if to object, but it’s tentative, like she’s a student herself, unsure of an answer.
Mom continues without acknowledging her. “But I know you have to go on what he needs to learn. And the rules. So let’s talk about the learning he’s done that you may not have thought about. Let’s talk about that hospital he was in, the Wellington Neurological Center. Do you know that a substantial part of every single day was spent on classroom time, in all subjects? Cory was a star student while he was there. Is that anywhere in your records? It’s in ours.”
She plucks some loose pages from a file and drops them on the table. A couple of the teachers look surprised. This is definitely new information that they’re not ready to deal with.
“You all know how innately intelligent Cory is, and about his auditory gift. Whatever he hears in classes, he retains. I know that he’s picked up as much knowledge just from sitting in class as most kids do taking notes and doing lessons. Did he miss some things? Yes. Do other kids miss some things?”
She lets the challenge hang in the air. No one interrupts with a rebuttal.
“The Devorough School that Cory went to is an advanced college prep school with a highly accelerated schedule. He was there for only about a month, but I know he learned a lot more than a month’s worth of history. And the same goes for chemistry. As a matter of fact, he’s already had a good bit of Chemistry II,” she adds, training her eyes on Mrs. Hanover, “even when he didn’t have the basics of Chemistry I. How? By working seven days a week and staying up late at night studying until he caught up to everyone else. He could do that with algebra, too — in fact, he already started at the Devorough School with some work in Algebra II.”
I’m not sure, but I think I can sense a shift of mood in the room. Everybody, even Mrs. Hanover, is listening hard.
“Did you know that Cory has also done work in areas other students haven’t even been exposed to? Last summer, while his friends were playing ball and hanging around, Cory took a seventy-hour course on Web site design. It dealt with designing home pages on the Internet. And this wasn’t just any course — it was a course for college-level students and professionals. Cory was the youngest one there by far.
“At first they thought he was too young to attend. But in the end, he not only earned their certificate, he was asked to come back to lecture on Internet marketing because of what he knew that they didn’t. I understand that he could have been given some credits for that here in high school, but we never asked for them. Now we’re asking!”
The guidance counselor perks up at this. He’s always encouraged students to learn things outside of school as a way to earn extra credit. This is exactly the kind of stuff he talks about.
“The same goes for the thousands of hours — and I mean thousands — he’s spent becoming an expert on the computer at home, studying marketing, taking dozens of courses from experts, publishing articles on Internet marketing, starting five small Internet businesses all by himself. I didn’t think to ask for credit for that, but I know credit is given for all kinds of extracurricular learning. I have friends in town who’ve gotten it for their kids . . . with letters of recommendation from some of you.”
It’s amazing to watch and listen to my mother. I never thought about how all the things I’ve learned on the computer could relate to a high school education, and hearing it all at once, I think it sounds pretty impressive. Even so, my history teacher still isn’t making eye contact with my mother and me. She’s a tough one.
But Mom has already picked up on her stubbornness. “History? Well, that’s not as easy to defend, except I’ll tell you this: Cory may not know exactly when the Battle of Waterloo occurred, but his father and I talk about current events all the time. He probably knows as much about what’s going on in the world today as any of the other students. And not just the facts but why things are happening — the concepts. I guess in this area you could call that homeschooling.”
“That’s all well and good,” the history teacher interrupts, “but there are specific lessons that have to be completed. Assignments to be done that weren’t.”
“Yes, I understand that,” my mother answers, “and I’m glad you brought it up. As far as all the assignments he’s missed, not only in history but in math and English, I want you to see what I found in his backpack at the end of last term.”
Mom opens a large manila folder and takes out a stack of papers more than an inch thick.
“These are all homework assig
nments Cory did on the nights he was able to work. All subjects. It took him a long time to do each of them, and in the end he was exhausted. But no matter how many times I reminded him to turn them in the next day, he usually didn’t remember.”
“May I?” the history teacher asks suspiciously.
My mother pushes them over to her without comment.
“There are close to sixty assignments here, including fifteen just in history. He did the work; he just didn’t get the credit. There was no one at school to remind him to hand them in.”
The history teacher inspects the papers and has nothing to say about this latest shocker. Clearly she’s starting to lose the basis of her argument.
“But he still didn’t take the tests, the midterms,” she says anyway.
There is no answer for this. “That’s true,” my mother admits. Then she continues, “Now, someone mentioned physical education before. So let’s talk about eight-mile hikes in deep snow every day for weeks at wilderness camp. What about working on survival skills in twenty-below temperatures? What about losing sixty pounds and quitting smoking and getting incredibly healthy? What have your other students done in physical-education classes this year? How many of them can even come close to Cory’s record in gym class?”
With her questions still echoing in the air, she finally takes a moment to catch her breath. We’ve been in the room for less than an hour, but it’s one of the longest meetings of my life.
“Let’s be honest,” she says, her voice suddenly more relaxed but still serious. “You all know that this isn’t about only rules or the number of hours Cory has physically sat in classes. You have enough reason to help him keep going if you want to. That’s what it really comes down to. Taking what he has been able to do here so far, thinking about all the amazing things he’s achieved out of school, and helping him to build on them, helping him to keep going, like you always have before. You’ve always been on his side. Most of you have been wonderful to him. Why turn your backs on him now?”
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