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“Yeah, I get that. Luckily, she’s pretty, so that kind of makes up for it.” I get up and go over to the table against the far wall. I open the small fridge and take out two bottles of water, grab two of the oat bars from the box next to it, and bring them back.
“I’m not hungry,” he says.
“Okay.” I leave the bar next to him. “I’m starving though.” I open mine and have a big bite. Finn watches me for a moment, then picks his up and opens it. I hide a smile as he takes a bite and sighs.
“How was school today?” I ask.
“All right. I came top in the class in a test we had in computer studies.”
“Well that’s pretty smart of you.”
“It’sdull as. It’s all about spreadsheets. I want to do programming.”
“Yeah, I get that, but spreadsheets are a big part of it. I couldn’t do my job without them.”
“Were you top of your class at school?”
“Sometimes. When I went to high school, I met my best mate, Damon, and he was smart, too, so sometimes I came top, and sometimes he did.”
“My best mate’s called Robbie. He likes computers, as well. We’re going to run a company together like you do with your friends.”
“Good idea. It helps to have someone to bounce ideas off.”
His blue eyes, so like his mother’s, survey me with puzzlement. “You don’t make fun of me like other grownups do. Most of them say I’m too young to decide what I want to do now.”
“Damon and I were twelve when we agreed we were going to run our own companies. It’s good to know where you’re going.”
“Does he work here?”
“No, he runs a company in Wellington with his brothers, but he comes down to help me out with software issues sometimes. He was the one who helped integrate the gaming software with THOR’s program.”
“I’d like to meet him.”
“I’ll introduce you the next time he comes down.”
Finn eats the last bit of his oat bar, then picks at the wrapper. “I don’t want to be disabled. I want to be able to do stuff. Important stuff.”
“Well, being disabled doesn’t mean you can’t do amazing things.”
“Don’t patronite me.”
“The word is patronize, and I’m not. Have you heard of Stephen Hawking?”
“Was he an astronomer?”
“He was a theoretical physicist and a cosmologist. He predicted that black holes emit radiation. Nobody believed him at first, but eventually his findings were said to be a breakthrough in theoretical physics. He had ALS. Do you know what that is?”
“No.”
“It’s Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, a neuromuscular disorder. It causes muscle weakness and muscle wasting, and problems with swallowing and speaking. Stephen Hawking was confined to a wheelchair, and he had to communicate through a speech-generating device using a muscle in his cheek. But despite all that, he married—twice—and had three children, and he wrote a book calledA Brief History of Timethat was on a bestseller list for 237 weeks.”
Finn’s cheeks have reddened. “I didn’t know,” he murmurs, dropping his gaze.
“You’ve gone through a life-changing incident,” I say. “I can’t imagine how hard it is for you to come here and have to push through the pain and work the muscles that won’t do what you want them to. It’s your life, Finn. Not your mum’s, and not mine. If it’s too hard, and if you want to give up, that’s your prerogative. But I’ll be disappointed if I hear you using your accident as an excuse for not achieving great things at school.”
“I won’t give up,” he whispers.
“All right.”
