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She wasn’t trying to figure me out, or worse, fix me.
“They called my parents in, and all they did was talk about me. About how I don’t try hard enough. About how—” I looked at her—this part I hadn’t shared before, not with anybody. “About how I need to accept accommodations.”
She frowned, and I looked away. “Accommodations?”
“Do you remember the first day you found me here, in your thinking spot?”
She nodded.
“That was the day I found out I’m dyslexic.”
Her shoulders dropped slightly. “Oh.”
I felt myself getting angry. “I can’t. . .read great. I look at the words and they’re all jumbled up. No matter how hard I concentrate, it’s like the letters jump around.”
She sat and listened.
“They tested me for it a few years ago, in elementary school, but they said I was fine. Just an underachiever. Maybe I needed glasses. Maybe I needed to apply myself more.”
I heard what they weren’t saying. I couldn’t grasp the lessons in school. I didn’t read well. My spelling was bad.
I wasn’t smart.
“Since then, it’s been harder and harder for me to keep up,” I said. “Except in woodshop. I get A’s in that class.”
Her eyes drifted over to the birdhouse I made last semester. She hung it in one of the trees down here by the pond. She’d actually been impressed by it; so much so that she named it, and I got to use the wood burner kit at school to etch it on the front.
Home Tweet Home. Hilarious.
But that was Emmy. Quietly funny.
Nobody had ever been impressed by something I’d done before. I wasn’t used to it. Usually, all I did was let people down.
“Is there a reason you don’t want the accommodations?” she asked.
I shrugged. “Don’t need everyone knowing how dumb I am.”
She frowned. “You’re not dumb, Owen.”
“There are about ten teachers at school who would disagree with you.”
I’d spent most of my childhood and all of my adolescence convinced I wasn’t smart. This diagnosis didn’t change that. If anything, it made it worse.
She angled her body toward me and waited for me to look at her. When I did, I saw her expression was serious. “So, you learn differently than other people. That doesn’t make you dumb.”
I shook my head and looked away. “It doesn’t matter. I’m going to have to repeat eleventh grade. I’ll be lucky if I graduate.”
Her brow knit together, and she chewed on her lower lip. “Do you trust me?”
I felt my forehead pull in confusion. “Why?”
“Maybe I can help,” she said.
“What, like tutor the dumb kid?”
She smacked me across the arm.
“Ow! Hey!”
