had a track and several basketball courts, one of which was in use for an informal scrimmage. Every guy playing was on wheels.
“There’s more than basketball happening,” she’d pointed out. “See how smoothly they handle their chairs? One handed, two handed…they become one with them. You can hate and resist the equipment that gives you options, Rory, like your chair. Or it can become your best friend.”
“Stupid. That’s just stupid.” But his attention had reluctantly remained on the basketball players, the way they did wheelies in the chair, taking the casters off the ground as they spun, their center of balance flawless.
Or not so much. When one player toppled, something that, at that point, had terrified Rory, the guy swore, but it was a good-natured oath. No different from a guy going up toe-to-toe with another guy at the hoop and getting knocked on his ass. One guy nudged his chair back over to him, and the player pulled himself back in it on his own. In less than a minute, they were back to playing, no muss, no fuss.
A couple days later he was asking her what kinds of exercises would get him out on the court with them.
He knew why those early days were coming up in his head right now. A lot of the things going through Daralyn’s head he could see so clearly because he’d been there.
A comfort zone was bliss. It was also stagnation. The death of hope.
He stopped at a table where a kid who looked like he hadn’t been long out of high school was reading. He had a shock of red hair, a silver cuff earring and wore mostly black. “Hey, where’d you get the Funyuns?” Rory asked.
“Over there.” The kid waved to his left without looking up. “Vending machine next to the restroom. But stay away from the protein bars. They’ve been in there since the fall of the Roman Empire, and they taste like it.”
“Who are you kidding? That’s the way all protein bars taste.”
The kid grinned and looked up with bright blue eyes. He did a double take. “Oh. Yeah.”
Rory ignored the full stop and eyed him critically, the well-developed biceps and shoulders. “Where do you work out?”
“Wherever I can. Right now at a buddy’s garage.” The guy was now looking past the chair, studying Rory right back. “How about you?”
“Home gym, but I’ve got a personal trainer, Red, down at—”
“Martin’s Gym.” The kid whistled. “Yeah, I did a couple sessions with him. He’s tough.”
“Don’t I know it. I was walking before I started going to him.”
The young man blanched. At Rory’s grin, he chuckled and held out a fist for a bump. “Good one. I’m Brandt. Hey, I’ll split the Funyuns with you. Half the fat…”
After Brandt headed off for his class, Rory settled in with his paperwork, spreading it out on the table. But before he started on that, he texted Daralyn a dozen emojis that looked like red roses.
A few minutes later, she returned a smiley face, a heart, and a knight on horseback, with a lance. He had to admit that made him feel pretty damn good, and not just because it showed him the most important thing, that she was doing okay.
When the doors started opening about ninety minutes later, signaling the end of the first class, he had her lunch box out and waiting. He saw her emerge, find him, and her already encouragingly happy expression brightened. She started talking to him about ten feet away.
“Did you know that the Constitution came from a document signed almost a thousand years ago? The Magna Carta…”
Since she’d never obtained a high school diploma, getting her general credits to qualify for that was her first step in community college. He’d graduated middle of his class, an indifferent student. Even his friends who were much better students had seen school as a social outlet and the means to get into a good college. The adult students here, working their classes in between work and kids, were climbing a ladder to better opportunities.
How many of them had ever set all that aside long enough to be as delighted as Daralyn was, simply for the chance to sit in a classroom and learn?
Was it the sadism of fate that had put a woman with her intelligence in such a terrible position for most of her childhood? Or had it been a gift of mercy that helped her survive? Who better understood just how amazing flying was, than a bird