Push Girl: A Novel

by Chelsie Hill

  When I was ready.

  After a quick break and some stretches, the girls got into a familiar formation. They were going to practice our lyrical routine for the fall recital.

  I couldn’t hear the music from the hallway, but I didn’t need to. I knew every note by heart, just like I knew every move of this routine down to my bones. As the girls started to move across the floor, I found my hands absently moving along to the routine, as I would do anytime I heard this music out in the real world. I wasn’t doing the arm movements full out or anything. My arms stayed right in the region of my lap, just following the flowy arm movements of the girls as they traveled across the floor with the music. But when they reached up an arm to the sky, my hand moved up to my face. They spread their arms open wide, and my hands followed suit.

  Then came the big leap sequence. I’d been so lost in the music in my head and the moves my body knew without thinking, I didn’t really register that it was coming up. But there they all were, leaping across the floor. And while I could follow along with my hands, I couldn’t lift my foot to mimic their leaps. I couldn’t make my body do what it naturally wanted to do. Dance with the girls, as I had my entire life.

  I could feel the music in my soul, but I couldn’t make my body follow along. My hands moved to the routine, but my feet remained in the footrests of my wheelchair, completely useless.

  I knew I wouldn’t be able to dance. The doctor told me that when I woke up in the hospital. And I knew I couldn’t walk, obviously. But it was like all of that was being deflected by some kind of force field of denial in my mind. It didn’t become hardened reality until this point, when I sat in the hallway of my dance studio, my home away from home for the past twelve years, and watched my friends dance this routine that I could do in my sleep while I was stuck in this chair with my useless legs.

  I didn’t even realize I was crying until the tears dripped into my mouth. I ran my entire hand over my face to wipe them away, but they kept streaming. And as soon as I realized how much I was crying, I started to panic a bit. I couldn’t let anyone see me like this. I couldn’t talk to any of these girls. What did I have to talk to them about, besides dance? What did we have in common if that was taken away? And how could I even fake casual conversation with these tears?

  After wiping my wet hands on my jeans, I pushed myself back down the hallway as quickly as I could, praying that Susan was still at Starbucks so I wouldn’t have to explain my sobbing as I hurried from the lobby. Thankfully, the receptionist desk was still empty. I wheeled myself around so I could back myself out the door without anyone knowing I was there, but right as I was about to push my chair into the door, it swung open.

  Crap. Susan. I took a deep breath and tried to pull myself together for the small talk and pity party I was about to endure. But it wasn’t Susan who said my name when the door swung open.

  It was Jack.

  “Oh, good,” Jack said. “You are here.” He let the door swing shut as he walked around my chair to see me, but he stopped short once he got a look at my face. “Oh my God, Kara. What happened? What’s wrong?”

  The look of genuine worry on his face made me lose any control I’d managed to gain over my whirlwind of emotions in the last few minutes, and the tears came again, fast and furious this time. I was ugly crying in the lobby of my former dance studio while my ex-boyfriend was looking on with equal parts concern and terror.

  “Kara,” he said over and over while I cried about the reality of never being able to dance again. “Kara, it’s okay. It’s okay.” He kneeled down in front of me and leaned over, gathering me into a loose hug. “Whatever it is, it will be okay.”

  I wasn’t usually a crier, and I couldn’t think of a time I’d ever cried like this in front of Jack. Even our breakup was totally tear-free. Well, the part where I’d told him we shouldn’t be together anymore was, anyway. Once he left my house, I’d curled up on my bed with Logan and sobbed into his fur. The breakup had been my decision, but that didn’t mean it hadn’t upset me.

  After a few minutes of ugly crying into Jack’s shoulder, I managed to get myself together before snot started running out of my nose without my knowledge. I used my palms to wipe my face again, and he hopped up and grabbed a box of tissues from Susan’s desk.

  “Here,” he said. “Take all of these.” He pulled tissue after tissue from the box and dropped them into my lap until all you could see was a mountain of white. I looked from his panicked expression to the pile of tissues on my lap and lost it. I just started laughing at how ridiculous this whole situation was, desperate and gasping laughs, and I couldn’t stop for a good minute.

  When I finally got myself together, I wiped off my face and asked him, “What are you doing here?”

  “What?” He looked around as if he had forgotten where he was and what he was doing. “Oh. Oh, yeah! We’re here to surprise you.”

  “You’re … what?”

  “Amanda and I stopped by your house to surprise you. But your dad said you were shopping with your mom. So we found her at the grocery store, but she said you were here. So now that we finally homed in on your location and this has become the most complicated surprise ever, we’re kidnapping you. Your mom knows you’re with us, so don’t worry about her. You ready for this? You ready to get kidnapped?”

  I don’t know what was more surprising to me. That I was apparently being kidnapped, or that the two people I’d been pushing away the most before the accident were the ones who were going out of their way to be there for me now that I was Broken Kara. Tears sprang up in my eyes again, but this time I managed to control them.

  Instead of giving in to the tears, I nodded. And I tried to smile, but I wasn’t sure if it worked.

  “Great,” Jack said, and he was able to smile for real. “Amanda and I figured you could use a little fun after the week you’ve had. And it looks like we were totally right.” He walked over to the door and held it open as I wheeled myself out, my lap still full of unused tissues.

  As soon as we came through the door and into the parking lot, Amanda jumped out of the passenger seat of Jack’s Civic. I watched as her face went from excitement to shock and confusion when she got a good look at Mount St. Tissue on my lap and my puffy cry face.

  “Are you okay?” she asked, creeping slowly toward me. Like I might burst into tears again at any second if she crossed an invisible boundary.

  I nodded. “I just had a moment in there. Watching everyone dance, and—”

  “Well, it looks like we got here just in time, then, huh?” One thing I always liked about Amanda—she could really tell when there was something I didn’t want to talk about, and she changed the subject immediately. I’d never realized what an important quality that was in a friend until this exact minute, because there was no way I could handle hashing this out without crying again.

  “So, what are we doing?” I tried again to smile, and it felt much more convincing now than it had a minute ago in the studio lobby.

  Amanda and Jack, who had now moved over to the car to open the back end to stow my chair, both smiled back at me. “We’re taking you out to do some normal stuff,” Jack said as he moved some boxes around in the back of the Civic. “Hope you’re ready for an awesome day of normal.”

  Normal. That word again. But the way he said it didn’t make me shudder.

  Amanda picked up the big pile of tissues on my lap and gathered it into a ball, tossing it into the trash can outside the studio door. “You won’t be needing these,” she said. “Now, let’s go.”

  “Thanks, guys. This sounds amazing.”

  And it really did. At that moment, nothing in the world could have possibly sounded better than normal.

  CHAPTER 12

  “So, where are we going?”

  Jack pulled his Civic out of the parking lot once I’d gotten settled in the front seat. Using the meager contents of my purse and Jack’s rearview mirror, I tried my best to get my face back in order after my sob sesh, but
that didn’t distract me from wondering where these two were taking me.

  “What did we used to spend all of our Saturdays doing?” Amanda leaned forward from the backseat, her head popping out in the space between me and Jack, her eyes practically bulging out of her head with expectation.

  “Well…” How did Amanda and I spend our time back when we were inseparable? It had been a while, honestly, since my weekends morphed into being dedicated to Curt and hanging out with his friends. “After I got home from the studio, we’d always go to the mall, and—”

  “Bingo!” she said, smacking my arm playfully.

  “We’re going to the mall?” I arched my eyebrow in Jack’s direction. “You hate the mall.”

  “Hey, now,” he said, not taking his eyes off the road. “There is a lot of fun to be had at the mall.”

  “Yeah, for girls.” I couldn’t help but laugh at the image of Jack taking part in the Kara and Amanda Mall Crawl that used to happen every weekend.

  “You need to stop it with your sexist propaganda, Kara Moore.” Jack wagged his finger in my direction with a smile but quickly returned his hand to the wheel. “You’re totally stereotyping me. I can be manly while having fun at the mall.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Watch me.”

  “I can’t wait for this,” Amanda said, laughing and smacking Jack on the shoulder.

  Ten minutes later we arrived in the mall parking lot. After a week of driving to school, we had all become experts at getting me and my chair in and out of the car, and the three of us arrived at the mall entrance within minutes.

  But I hesitated outside the automatic mall doors, running my hands back and forth over my wheels without pushing them forward. It was sweet of Amanda and Jack to bring me here, but after a week of being stared at like a science experiment, a deep sense of dread pumped through my veins at the thought of having to go through it on the weekend, too. I had to go to school; I had no choice about that. But I didn’t have to subject myself to stares here.

  Jack must have sensed my trepidation, because he stopped and raised an eyebrow at me. “You okay?”

  How could I explain the prickly feeling of wrongness that erupted up and down my arms? The exhaustion of being the subject of nonstop stares? The sympathetic head tilt?

  “Everyone looks at me,” I said quietly.

  “Don’t flatter yourself,” he said. “They’re just staring at me. They can’t keep their eyes off this. You know how it is.” He took off his beanie, ran his hand through his tangled mess of blond curls, and winked.

  I laughed at him, and the prickly feeling, the sense of dread, it eased just a little bit.

  “You guys coming, or what?” Amanda yelled from between the automatic doors.

  “Are we coming?” Jack asked me. His voice was soft and caring; he was really giving me a choice here.

  I didn’t want to disappoint him, not after everything he and Amanda had done to cheer me up. And I couldn’t spend my life in my house. If people were going to stare, let them stare. I couldn’t let them keep me from going out in public.

  “We are,” I said, pushing myself forward. “Let’s do this.”

  “So,” Jack said as the automatic mall doors shut behind us. “What’s the first thing you girls would usually do on Mall Saturdays?”

  Amanda and I shared a look and smiled. “Ice cream,” we said in unison.

  Jack laughed. “You thought ice cream was going to be too girly for me? It’s like you don’t know me at all. I thought you were going to say bra shopping or something.” He shook his head. “And there are over eighteen hundred different flavors of ice cream, with many of them being extremely manly. Like bacon ice cream. That’s downright masculine.”

  The first snag of the afternoon popped up when we followed our normal route to the food court and I realized that I always took the escalator to get up there. In fact, Amanda had already stepped on it and was moving upward before she realized why we weren’t behind her. “Oh, crap,” she said. “I’m sorry, Kara. I didn’t—”

  “It’s fine,” I said. And it was. She really did look sorry as she started walking down the escalator that was trying its hardest to pull her up, but I laughed and waved her off. “Just go.”

  “We’ll take the elevator,” Jack said. “We’ll meet you up there. Save us a seat or something.”

  “Where is the elevator?” I asked as we turned ourselves around.

  “In the middle, I think?” He waved his hand absently toward the center of the mall. “I’ve actually never taken it. This will be an adventure.”

  The elevator was a bit of a journey from the escalator at the very end. “So many new things to get used to,” I mumbled as we waited for the doors to slide open. “A million extra steps I have to go through now. It’s ridiculous.”

  “It’s not a big deal,” Jack said as he tapped out a beat on the back of my chair. “It’s good exercise. For both of us. Can you even imagine the arms you’re going to have after just a few months of pushing yourself around? You’re going to look incredible. Well, you already do, but you know…”

  I blushed at his compliment, and I pushed myself through the doors as quickly as I could once they slid open. I didn’t want him to get the wrong idea.

  By the time we made it back across the mall to the food court, we found Amanda sitting at a table with a huge paper bowl from the ice cream place in the middle of it, three spoons sticking out the top.

  “I cleared the chairs on that side of the table away so you could just roll right up.” She waved her hand to the chair-free side of the table opposite her. She looked so proud of herself for thinking of it. It was nice she was trying to make up for the escalator incident, but I hoped that she wouldn’t make such a big production of it every time.

  “Thanks,” I said as I scooted my chair under the table. “What’s all this?”

  “Well, I was going to get us each an ice cream, but they were having this deal for a banana split that had four scoops and you know what a sucker I am for a deal. But, sorry, Jack. No bacon.”

  One look at the huge banana split on the table in front of us sent my internal calorie counter spinning off the charts. It’s not like I was obsessed with my weight or anything, but as a dancer, it’s something I’d always been super aware of. And now that I couldn’t dance, I couldn’t really exercise as I always had. Pushing myself in my chair was obviously working my arms, like Jack said. Just like my dad had a running list of things he never thought about before, I guess I did, too. Would the rest of my body change with the loss of my legs?

  But looking at the faces of my friends, I decided that would be something I could worry about tomorrow. Today, guilt-free banana split. Screw you, calories.

  Once we finished the ice cream, Amanda laid out the plans for the rest of the day. “So, I was thinking, my favorite boss is working today, which means free movies for us. So movie first—”

  “Come on! It’s like you guys aren’t even trying to make this hard on me,” Jack broke in.

  “—and then we can go try on shoes. Kara, your Toms are cute and all, but I think we should get something a little more fun on your feet. And I need to get some shoes for the Homecoming Dance.” She paused. “I, uh, don’t know if you’re planning on—”

  “Nope. Hell no. Not going.” Homecoming posters had been popping up around school, and every one I saw was like a stab in the eyeballs. No Curt meant no date, which meant no Homecoming; I didn’t want to be reminded of what I didn’t have any more than I needed to be.

  “But you can still try on some shoes, right? I mean, you still…?”

  At hardly over five feet tall, and dating a guy who was pushing six feet, I’d become obsessed with super-high heels in the past year. I didn’t wear them to school or anything, but on dates with Curt, they had been awesome. They made my short legs look miles long, and they shortened the distance from my face to Curt’s considerably. A pair of sky-high heels wouldn’t keep me from feeling short anymo
re, but they could still be fun, right? And more than being fun, my heels might give me that boost of confidence they always brought to any outfit. They made me feel powerful and strong, like I could stand eye-to-eye and toe-to-toe with anyone.

  But slip-on canvas shoes had been my staple since coming home from the hospital, just for ease and practicality. I wasn’t even sure if I could wear those big ol’ shoes anymore, to be honest. They were chunky and heavy, and I wouldn’t be able to feel if they were staying on my feet or not. They might slide right off my foot and I wouldn’t even know until I rolled over them with my chair.

  I’d have to go home and do some research on this shoe situation.

  “Yes, Amanda. I still like shoes.” I poked Jack’s arm with my plastic spoon. “So, can we find the sappiest romantic comedy ever, just to make sure Jack here gets the full experience?”

  Jack shook his head. “As long as I don’t have to try on heels later, I’m good.”

  “No, but you’re helping us pick some out. You said you wanted the full experience.” Amanda hopped up from her seat. “I’ll go over to the theater to check the movie times and make sure my boss is cool with letting us in. Don’t run off, okay?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I was sort of planning on making a break for it.”

  “Har har,” she said. “BRB.”

  I turned to Jack to ask him what movies were even out right now, since it was something I hadn’t been paying attention to at all, but as soon as I saw him obsessively cleaning a small area of the table with a napkin, I knew something was up. Jack only got OCD when he was worried about something big.

  “Uh-oh.” I grabbed the napkin from his hand. “What’s on your mind, Mr. Clean?”

  “Um,” Jack said, making eye contact for a second before looking past me. “There’s something I need to tell you.”