Ann Martin - Baby-Sitters Club 032

Thank goodness we don't have to sit with our classes during assemblies. The members of the BSC like to sit together, and we hardly have any other chances to do that at school because of Mal and Jessi. They're in an entirely different grade, so we don't even get to eat lunch together.

There's just one group at SMS that stays together always - in assemblies, at lunch-time, anytime. They don't even change rooms during the day. That's the class for handicapped students. A bunch of the kids in the class are retarded, and the others have different kinds of problems. Guess where the BSC sat during the assembly? Right behind the special class. The kids in that class took up exactly one row, plus three kids who sat in the aisles in wheelchairs.

Mary Anne had been wrong about the assembly. It wasn't about our dress code, the food fight, or student government. As a surprise, to celebrate something going on at school called Kids' Week, our principal had organized a program for us. For once, it was fun. First a really famous author talked to US about the books she writes. She had traveled all the way from Arizona just to come to SMS.

That made me feel sort of important. Then a songwriter sang a song he had composed about our school. Finally an artist called five teachers onto the stage and drew funny caricatures of them.

Did I pay attention to any of this? Barely. And why wasn't 1 paying attention? Not because the program was brain-numbing. For once, it was fascinating - but I couldn't pay attention because I was so busy watching the kids in the class in front of me.

At one end of the row were two of the kids in wheelchairs. (Their chairs were placed one in front of the other so as not to block the aisle and be a fire hazard.) The kid sitting in the front chair couldn't even hold herself up straight. She was strapped in everywhere - her arms strapped to the armrests, her feet to the footrests. Her head was even strapped to the back of the chair. And somehow, she managed to slump anyway. I'd seen her around school before. She tries to talk sometimes but she's harder to understand than our PA system. Her eyes don't focus on anything. She looks like she doesn't have a bone or a muscle in her body. Somebody once told me she has cerebral palsy.

The boy in back of her didn't need to be strapped in so much. He could sit up, but he was mostly paralyzed (I think). He couldn't even talk. Once I'd passed his class and looked in. I'd found out how he communicates. He holds a special stick in his mouth and uses it to tap out messages on a computer keyboard. Guess what. He can make pictures by holding a paintbrush or a pencil in his mouth. Claudia says his pictures are good, and she should know.

The first three kids in the row next to the ones in the wheelchairs were all retarded. They have Down's syndrome. I read about that in a book. Down's syndrome people have sort of slanted eyes and flattish faces, and are usually docile, affectionate, and friendly.

Next to them was a boy who was so hyperactive that on his other side sat a teacher's aid whose only job was to keep him still and quiet during the program. I'll tell you something. That kid was paying a lot more attention to the program than I was. That was what he was excited about. He kept pointing to the stage, or trying to jump up, or turning to the teacher and saying, "Oh, neat! Oh, neat!" The girl on the other side of the teacher was deaf and blind. The boy next to her was deaf. (How, I wondered, did the teachers teach so many different kinds of kids all in one classroom? The deaf boy probably wasn't retarded. The blind and deaf girl probably wasn't either, but 1 bet she learned a lot differently than the deaf boy did, and both of them must have been much more advanced than the retarded kids.) Anyway, it was the kid in the second to the last seat in the row - next to a teacher who was between him and the third kid in a wheel-chair - who really attracted my attention. Guess why. Because the boy reminded me so much of Susan. Every now and then he would clap his hands together for no apparent reason. (Nobody else was clapping when he was.) A couple of times he waved his right hand back and forth in front of his eyes. But what was most interesting to me was that sometimes he would stare off into space - and talk. Mostly, he spoke quietly, so I couldn't hear him, but a few times he spoke more loudly. Once he said, "How old are you?" and another time he said, "Stop it, Jerry." They were meaningless sentences (or else just out of context), but at least he was talking. That was impressive enough, but my jaw dropped wide open when he turned to his teacher and said, "Go home, please? Go home?" "No, Drew," replied the teacher patiently. "Not yet. Later." "No, now," said Drew. "Go home now." Drew could carry on a conversation! It was wonderful. I was certain he was autistic. But if Drew could talk, I thought, so could Susan. Furthermore, Drew did not attend some fancy away-from-home school. He had made more strides than Susan had, and he had probably made them right here in the Stoneybrook public schools. So why, why, why, did the Felders have to send Susan away? Why couldn't they do what Drew's family had done? Keep Susan at home - and let her learn in a familiar environment. Drew seemed to be way ahead of Susan. Maybe that was because he'd been kept at home.

I was still thinking about Drew and Susan, when Mary Anne elbowed me in the side.

"What?" I whispered. She was probably going to tell me to pay attention - which would irritate me. She is not a teacher.

"Kristy," she said. "Look." She pointed discreetly across the aisle.

There I saw two sixth-grade boys laughing hysterically at a third boy who had crossed his eyes and was letting his head roll around.

I couldn't believe it. They were making fun of the girl in the wheelchair. Why didn't someone stop them?

Then a girl next to them wadded up a little piece of notebook paper, rolled it around in her mouth, and threw the spitball across the aisle. It hit the hyperactive boy on the side of his face. It surprised him, and right then and there, he threw a tantrum. The teacher's aid had to take him out of the auditorium.

Luckily, another teacher had seen what the sixth-graders were up to, and they were taken out of the auditorium, too - to the principal's office, I hoped.

I felt so angry I wanted to scream at those kids. I wanted to shout, "Haven't you ever been teased? Hasn't anyone ever thrown a spitball at you? I hope someday someone finds out something you're sensitive about and blabs it to the whole school. I hope they publish it in the newspaper!" I was also upset. I had just seen a drawback to going to a handicapped class in a "regular" school. The "normal" kids could tease or laugh at the handicapped ones. That wouldn't hap-pend to Susan if her parents sent her away to school. But I still thought she should stay at home.

When the assembly was over I gathered up my courage, told my friends I'd see them later, and stepped up to the teacher of the handicapped kids.

"Excuse me," I said. "I know you're busy, but I was wondering a couple of things about your class." I thought the teacher might be aggravated with me for interrupting her when she had so much to do, but she looked pleased that I was interested.

I relaxed. "That boy," I whispered, trying to point without his seeing me. "Is he autistic?" "Yes," replied the teacher, looking surprised. "How did you know?" I told her a little about Susan. Then I asked a couple of questions about how she and the aid ran their classroom.

"Would you like to visit our room sometime?" she offered. "Maybe during a study hall? You'd be welcome." "Well . . . sure," I replied. "I would like that." At the end of school that day, during the mad rush of opening and closing lockers, Mary Anne and Dawn caught up with me just as I was closing my own locker.