The Ables (17 page)

“They are, Mr. Tucker,” my father answered on our behalf. No student was permitted to petition the school board without an adult sponsor; otherwise, kids would be overrunning the board meetings with all kinds of ridiculous challenges about gum-chewing rules and the like.

“And you might be …” Mr. Tucker said, implying that he expected my father to take it from there.

“John Sallinger, sir. My son, Phillip, is one of the petitioners.”

“Very good, then, Mr. Sallinger.” There was a bit of a pause, and I heard him shuffling some papers around. “You wouldn’t happen to be related to Thomas Sallinger, would you?”

“He was my father, sir, yes,” Dad responded. It was weird hearing my grandfather called by his name. It shouldn’t have been; I had never met him. But Mom and Dad had always simply referred to him as “your grandfather” when they had talked about him, which had been rare.

“Well, how ‘bout that,” the old man remarked, amused. “You know, I was a classmate of your father’s.”

“Is that right?” My dad was fantastic in these types of situations. He could have a polite conversation with anyone, in any situation, at any time. He was a talker. “I didn’t know that,” he said. But he did know, because he’d told me so on the drive to the hearing. “Your grandfather was a classmate of the school board president, did you know that?” he’d asked. He was only lying to be polite by claiming ignorance.

“Yeah, oh yeah. We had some pretty great adventures when we were in school, your father and I.” He seemed genuinely tickled. Another brief pause. “It was tragic what happened.”

Dad said nothing.

“But,” Mr. Tucker continued, “he was a great man, your pops. A great, great man.”

“Thank you, sir,” he replied.

“Now, let’s get back to the business at hand, shall we? Are the petitioners ready to give their opening statement?”

Opening statement?

The size of the crowd wasn’t the only miscalculation Bentley had made, as we quickly learned the hard way that the school board no longer followed the old by-laws to the letter. I felt sick to my stomach almost instantly.

Opening statement?! We didn’t know there was an opening statement? Didn’t I ask Bentley specifically about this?

My mind flew into action trying to wrestle up some quick solution to this new dilemma.
What could we say? How should we begin?
I could feel myself getting flush. I wondered if the others were freaking out as much as I was. Tiny beads of sweat began to form at the top of my forehead, and for a second I wondered if I was about to faint. Our best and only chance to gain reinstatement was going down in flames because we hadn’t bothered to come up with an opening statement. I silently screamed inside my thoughts—which I’m sure Henry heard.

And then Bentley saved the day again. Like a white knight charging in from out of nowhere to vanquish our foe, Bentley answered Mr. Tucker with confidence.

“Yes, sir. We are ready.”

Wait … what?!

You see, Bentley had trouble shutting his mind off. He had trouble sleeping, which was an affliction I was familiar with as of late. And when he couldn’t dream, he worked. He read and wrote and studied and created and invented, all just trying to occupy his overactive brain functions. The only problem he had with his powers, really, was that he couldn’t seem to turn them off when he needed to.

And on a recent evening leading up to the hearing, as an exercise in formulating his arguments, Bentley had drafted an opening statement. He sat up late at night in his basement workshop and wrote one—several, actually—until he had perfected it. I just wish he’d told me about it before the hearing; he could have saved me a heart attack.

I slumped back into my chair with a sigh so loud the court stenographer probably added it to the transcript. It was hardly the last time Bentley would save my bacon.

He cleared his throat and then read a statement that surprised me with its eloquence. Words that were brand new to me but which had stewed in Bentley’s soul for days poured forth like some kind of poetry. “Ladies and gentlemen of the Freepoint School Board. My name is Bentley Crittendon. I and my fellow petitioners are students at Freepoint High School and members of the special education class. We’re each of us gifted with powers, just as nearly everyone in this room is. One of us can read minds. Another can grow several stories tall in an instant.” He snapped his fingers for emphasis as he said it. “One of us is telekinetic!”

I don’t even think he was reading it; he had it memorized.

“Yet each of us also has a disability. Blindness for some. Mobility issues for others, like me. But make no mistake: we are hindered only by our determination and bound only by imagination.” He sounded like a grown-up—like a really smart grown-up.

“Now we have collectively been barred from participation in the SuperSim competition, despite our status as active students in the school and despite our supernatural abilities. Our teachers and our principal will tell you they have made this decision in the best interest of our own safety. And, to their credit, I believe them. I believe they want to protect us and keep us from harm and are doing so with the best of intentions. However, there is no mathematical evidence to support the theory that disabled heroes are more prone to injury in action.”

That was news to me, but if Bentley was quoting it in this setting, then that meant it was true. He wasn’t just being dramatic. I bet he had the sources to back it up.

“In point of fact, ladies and gentlemen of the board, we have even seen some interesting developments in our abilities when working together to overcome our physical disadvantages. I’m not sure any of us here tonight can truly know the limits of what we’re capable of together.”

He was talking about the previous night and his suggestion that Henry should be able to send things into other peoples’ brains as well as receive things from them. I wasn’t sure why he said it since we actually hadn’t seen any interesting developments whatsoever in that regard.
Is he just being argumentative, or are his convictions just that strong?

“But the real truth—the real sad, hard truth—is that no matter what the intentions are, there is only one reason that we are not allowed to participate, and it’s the fact that we’re disabled.”

He cleared his throat again and continued, gaining a bit of speed and volume as he came to the finish. “If I didn’t have ataxic cerebral palsy, I wouldn’t be in the special education class, and I would be free to compete. If Phillip could see, he wouldn’t need to be here to petition for a chance to compete. Our disabilities are the root cause for the decision to keep us out of the simulation. And while I may not be able to stand up straight without a cane, I sure can think straight. Discrimination on the sole basis of a disability is not only illegal, it’s illogical, immoral, and unfair! Thank you.”

Before he could sit down a great roar went up from the crowd in attendance. They stood and applauded—some hollering and cheering. It was a little overwhelming. I got goose bumps. Whatever their convictions had been upon entering, the people were won over by the articulate and intelligent young Mr. Crittendon. I was beaming, and I’m sure Bentley was as well. I heard a cry of support from Henry, signaling that maybe he’d come out of his funk a bit. The whole team was clapping and yelling right along with the parents and townspeople. Bentley had rejuvenated our spirits with his rousing speech, and a wave of hope crashed over me.

If only the hearing had ended right there. If only President Tucker had been just as moved as the spectators. He might have granted the petition and ended the meeting on the spot. And Bentley would have ridden out of the town hall on the shoulders of adoring fans—mine included.

But it didn’t end right there. And when it continued, the hearing took an abrupt turn for the worse. As it turned out, President Tucker wasn’t quite as moved by the dramatic reading of a twelve-year-old kid as you might have expected.

When the audience finally quieted down, he took a few moments to let the silence get uncomfortable before responding. “Well, young Mr. Crittendon, that was a whale of a tale, now, wasn’t it? I commend you on your oratorical abilities, which are so clearly advanced beyond your years. You are quite the little spitfire, aren’t you?”

There was a smattering of nervous laughter. Tucker’s slow and consistent manner of speaking made it difficult to know the difference between sincerity and sarcasm.

“Unfortunately, my son, the school board answers only to the citizens of this fine city and to the governing board of super-powered individuals—known simply as ‘the board’ to you, no doubt, and the same board on which your father serves, I believe.”

“Even if we wanted to,” he said in mock-innocence that even I could detect, “we would not be permitted to bring matters of US national law into consideration in these proceedings. We are only permitted to interpret the laws that govern super-powered individuals, and those laws supersede all else. As such, your claim of discrimination on the basis of disability will not be a consideration for this board.”

A round of mild boos went up from the crowd, as those who had been won over by Bentley’s speech showed the school board their disappointment with this decision. But President Tucker cut them off straight away.

“I am not going to spend all evening babysitting those of you in the gallery. If you cannot be trusted to remain quiet and polite throughout this hearing, I will have you all removed.”

The pin-drop silence of the entire room was all the proof he needed to know they had gotten the message. This was President Tucker’s room, and he was very much in charge. I wondered what his powers were and if they commanded respect the way his mere presence did in this building.

“Very well, then. Now, removing the illegality of the matter from the discussion, we are left to consider whether the prohibition of these young people from the simulation events on the grounds of safety constitutes a breach of our moral code as a society. We will be solely focused on the concept of fairness. Is it fair to prevent these children from participating? Is it fair to the other students to potentially heighten the danger of the event by allowing these young people to compete even without full control of their abilities? These are the questions we will concentrate on for the remainder of this hearing.”

“Mr. President, if I might, I’d like to suggest that—”

Tucker interrupted my father without giving him a chance to complete his sentence. “I do believe, Mr. Sallinger, that while adult sponsors are, in fact, required in order for a petition to be filed, there is nothing in our laws of procedure that permit you to argue the case on the behalf of your students. Don’t make the mistake of thinking my affection for your father can be used to undermine these proceedings.”

It was dismissive and rude—no matter how sweet the tone of voice delivering the message—the verbal equivalent of a slap in the face. He was telling my father to shut up and stay out of it, and it was so obvious that I wondered why he bothered coating the words in sugar.

I felt a touch of betrayal. The best argument we had going in our favor—that barring us from competition constituted a breach of our legal rights—had just been tossed out the window on a technicality. We’d barely gotten underway and the wind was already gone from our sails.

I was also insulted by the president’s rather casual implication that our mere participation made the SuperSim more dangerous for the other kids. Like it was already a given fact that disabled people equaled danger.

The deck seemed stacked against us.

What followed was a series of questions from the board so bland and harmless that it seemed designed, at least in part, as a mere façade. It was as though they were pretending to go through the motions so it wouldn’t look like they’d already made up their minds—which they clearly had. Like a seasoned boxer, they began to pummel us repeatedly with banality.

One of them would say something like, “What is your super power?” And then another would say, “And what is the nature of your disability?” And finally a third board member would ask, “How does your disability limit the use of your powers?” And that would be it … next student, please.

On down the roster they went this way, starting with the row of team members behind us. One by one, the board members repeated the same boring questions—phrased the exact same way—in a coordinated attack designed to wear us down. It was like Chinese water torture … madness via repetition. There was no deviation in their line of questioning, no opening given to any of us to expound on our answers or explain our positions.

By the time they got to Henry, even the crowd was growing restless. I was waiting for President Tucker to dole out another reprimand to them, but instead he said simply, “And what is your power, Mr. Gardner?”

“I can read minds.” Most of the other kids—like Freddie and James—had nervously given short but courteous answers like this one. But most of the others had also stopped at that point, whereas Henry was not content to follow the rules, even if they were largely unwritten. “And it’s not remotely affected by my disability,” he added defiantly. It was his own personal little display of stubbornness to tack that last part onto the end there in a bit of civil protest. A show of defiance to what a sham this hearing had turned out to be. “I can do everything that any other mind-reader can do.”

“Except walk,” Tucker said patronizingly, not missing a beat.

“Who cares if I can walk or not,” Henry said sharply in retort, losing his cool a bit, if you ask me.

“Well, I do, young man,” the old man said, his words dripping with sarcasm. “I’m concerned about an event of danger wherein you are unable to escape in time due to your mobility constraints. I am concerned only with the matter of your safety and the safety of those around you.”

“I’m faster in this wheelchair than most humans using just their own legs,” my friend shot back quietly but plenty loud enough to have been heard. And it was true. Henry was one with his wheelchair and had pretty much mastered its use. I had no doubt he was as mobile as any kid his age, short of confronting a staircase.