Qualify (8 page)

“But—” Gracie turns to him, “don’t you think that will mean some points taken off or something? They will probably reduce your score for bad form and posture!”

“Says who?” I press her hand again, with sudden relief. “That’s a great idea! It’s definitely better than not trying at all, and way better than falling off because you try too hard to balance like you’re a snowboarding pow pro, ‘tearing it up’ and ‘shredding the gnar.’”

Gracie finds enough energy to roll her eyes at me.

While we are saying all this stuff to keep the nerves down, people up in the front of the line are already up on stage. The Principal asks their name, grade level, school of origin. An assistant teacher reaches in a box to pick up a blank token, which is basically a round colorless plastic button with a chip, and it gets scanned with a special encoder machine to transfer the student ID and test score data. Then the girl student—an unfamiliar middle school seventh grader—gets the button.

This girl is up first, and she looks just as terrified as Gracie. Her hands are shaking as she attaches the token button to her shirt. She then stands there and stares down at the hoverboard. She takes a deep breath and puts her foot up on the surface of the board. The board wobbles, and immediately the girl gives a small shriek.

“Steady, honey, you’re doing fine,” a sympathetic woman teacher says. “Just put your other foot up there and relax, take a few breaths, and don’t look down.”

The girl takes a few seconds, then puts her other foot on the board and balances with both hands. “Go!” she says in a thin raspy voice that carries all the way across the very silent auditorium.

The hoverboard begins to float forward. The girl squeezes her eyes, utters another shriek, then a few stifled noises, and then fixes herself in the posture stiffly. She is floating eight feet over the floor mats, her hands balancing outward like airplane wings, but she manages to remain standing. “Descend!” Again, her tiny voice sounds. The board obeys and begins the incline.

The girl suddenly wobbles and exclaims, “Stop!” The board freezes in the air, in the middle of its gradual descent. She is suspended halfway between the floor and the stage, flailing her hands wildly. And in the absolute silence she begins to cry.

The auditorium is silent as the grave. I stare with transfixed sympathy, and see the equally emotional faces of those around me—students, teachers, security guards, everyone.

A few seconds later the girl steadies herself somehow, stops the sniffles and with another determined breath says, “Go!” The board resumes moving, and this time she says “Descend!” in a more steady voice.

When almost on the mats, she says, “Level!” and continues floating silently to the end of the line. “Stop!” She steps off and stands in one spot, dazed. She looks around. “Um, what do I say now?”

“Reverse, Rise, Return . . .” someone whispers.

“Reverse, Rise, Return!” the seventh grader repeats in a voice of relief. The hoverboard rises and floats away while the girl heads to the back desk toward Ligerat Faroi. The Atlantean nods at her and scans her token, as everyone watches.

Oh, to be her at this point!
I think with envy.
To just be done with it!

“See, that wasn’t so bad,” George whispers to Gracie. “Look at her, she’s a bigger wimp than you. . . . You can do it!”

Meanwhile the next kid is already up in the front of the stage, his ID token scanned. The moment the board arrives, he hops on with a practiced snowboarder stance and with a grin makes a shaka hand sign, then says, “Go!” In moments he sails past the stage, descends smoothly, levels off, and then jumps off at the stop. As the board returns, the kid stares after it with admiration and says, “That was sick! I want that board.” He is then ID-scanned at the desk in the back.

“Okay, this is looking more and more like it’s gonna take forever,” mumbles Gordie.

Suddenly everyone is itching to advance, to get it over with. We move forward a few steps and wait, and watch teens of all ages and from all the schools get onto the board. Some are terrified, others absolutely loving it. Most are more or less in-between, cautious, but grimly determined, since after all, it’s
Qualify or die
.

It gets sad however, a few times. A few of the younger kids, both girls and boys, and even a few of the older ones, balk completely as they stand next to the board. Two end up bawling, and just shake their heads negatively and refuse to get up on the hoverboard, even after a teacher comes to hug them and takes them off to the back of the stage to try to speak to them quietly. One girl is unable to put her second foot up. She just stands there, and then a teacher says, “why don’t you take a few minutes, try again later?”

And the next name gets called.

I watch the whole thing, as I slowly inch closer to my turn. Gracie is very quiet and subdued, and she keeps grabbing my hand, then letting go.

“Oh man! Oh no! Look!” George’s bud Eddie says, and we all stare as Archer Richards, an older boy from our school, my year, suddenly slips and ends up hanging off the board with both hands. . . .

Just wow.

Archer is hanging by his hands then arms, hugging the board, and he cries out, “Stop!” The board freezes eight feet up in the air, just a few feet away from the stage. All Archer needs to do is just let go and he’ll be standing on the mat. It’s only a few inches to the floor from where he is hanging.

But somehow Archer Richards knows. If he lets go now, he fails the stupid hoverboard test.

And so everyone holds their breath and watches as Archer grunts and switches his grip with both hands, and then suddenly he pulls himself up and lies on his stomach on top of the board.

There are whispers of relief.

Archer lies there for a few seconds. He’s a short, stocky guy with powerful arms that look like he works out regularly, and obviously it has helped. He then carefully stands up and resumes the movement of the board, finishing his pass without further mishap. When he gets off, everyone claps and hoots. And apparently the Atlantean in the back has noticed too, and looks well pleased as he scans Archer’s token.

“I bet that guy just Qualified,” says Gordie, as we take another few steps closer to the stage.

And then, a few minutes later, just as it looks like it can’t get any more heartbreaking, I look up on stage and there’s a kid in a wheelchair.

Chapter 4

“O
h, no, just
no!
” Gracie mutters, staring with great big eyes at the student in the wheelchair, who has been somehow lifted up onto the stage. It’s a dark-haired boy I’ve never seen before, probably from another school, and he looks frail.

“Poor guy. . . .” George frowns. “This must really blow for him.”

“It’s really unfair.” I stare, while a weird numbing sense fills me. Regret or pity, or I don’t know what. Maybe this is what resigned despair feels like. Whatever it is, it makes my gut cold.

The auditorium has once again grown really quiet.

Principal Marksen stands looking at the disabled boy, and for the first time his tough face has cracked and he looks really uncomfortable.

A woman teacher comes up to the wheelchair, leans forward gently and speaks something to the boy. After a pause the boy nods. The teacher then reaches into the box and hands a blank token to the Principal who frowns, then encodes the ID data.

The Principal leans down and hands the token to the boy.

The kid looks up, and I watch his skinny neck move, and the tightening of his lips. He takes the button and pins it to the front of his sweatshirt.

The teacher then pushes the wheelchair closer to the hoverboard.

I hold my breath as the boy lifts himself off the wheelchair with his hands and arms, and then drags himself along the floor. Then he pulls himself up with unexpected strength, lifting his body onto the hoverboard, lies there on his stomach for a few seconds, then manually pulls up his legs, adjusting them to lie along the length of the board.

“Wow! No way!” Gordie opens his mouth.

Everyone else is making noise too.

“Go!” says the kid without the use of his legs. His voice is calm, he is holding on with both hands, while lying on his stomach, and the board sails forward over the stage. He soon moves into a smooth descent and finishes at the end of the run with a confident “Stop!”

Here, he lifts himself onto the linoleum near the edge of the mat, and ends in a sitting position on the floor. He commands the board to return.

As the board is flying back, the teacher who had assisted him on the stage has picked up the wheelchair and is hurrying it down the stairs with the help of someone, and then pushing it through the auditorium in a hurry.

As the kid waits for the chair to be brought to him, the Atlantean in the back leaves his desk and approaches the student. Ligerat stops before the seated boy and shakes his hand. He then scans his token and for the first time there is a smile on his weirdly Egyptian face.

The auditorium erupts in applause, and it’s pretty much a standing ovation. A few of the teachers and even the students are wiping their eyes.

“Wow! That was sick! Amazing! Man, that kid, what he did—just wow!”

George turns to look at Gracie. “Now you have no excuse whatsoever, Gee Four. If that poor kid in a wheelchair can do it, so can you! That was awesome!”

But Gracie does not need to be convinced. She is holding her head up and she is suddenly calm. “I know,” she says. “I
can
do it.”

“Exactly,” I say. “We can all do this thing.”

And just for a moment I believe it.
Thanks, kid in a wheelchair. I might not have done it without you.

As I think it, I’m not even kidding.

A
bout forty minutes later, we make it to the front of the stage, at long last. Holy moly. That’s what Dad says when things are weird, and now I repeat it in my head, like a calming mantra. “Holy moly.” We leave our bags below in a pile, right near the corner where the stage stairs are, as all the other students have been doing before going up. We’ll come back for them after this is over.

So far, we’ve seen it all. The good, the bad, and the seriously pitiful. My friend Ann Finnbar up there, standing up awkwardly but okay, as she manages to ride the board without any problem. A whole bunch of my classmates winging it, one way or another. The popular in-crowd bullies Mark and Chris and Jenny mostly doing well and staying on. But no sign of Logan Sangre—I’m guessing he’s still in line somewhere behind us. And then there are students of all ages freaking out over the hoverboard, and a few even manage to fall off the board onto the mat below. No one gets hurt, thank goodness.

And now, here we are.

Eddie is right before George, and he takes his turn in a mediocre way. He stays up, and that’s pretty much what counts.

When the board returns, George, who is getting his ID token scanned by Principal Marksen, is up next. He turns to look at us as we stand near the front, waiting, and he smiles and winks.

George then gets up on the hoverboard and rides it, balancing decently considering he’s never ridden any kind of board before in his life, and flailing his hands only once in the middle of the auditorium. He makes it to the end safely, and I let myself breathe in relief.

Gordie is next. Okay, my younger brother is just nuts. I watch him put on the token pin, then smile and step on the board, testing its give with his foot with a kind of dazed loony pleasure. He mutters something unintelligible, then puts his other foot up and balances. He says, “Go!” and as the board moves, lets out a woot of excitement, while I put my hand to my mouth and Gracie lets her jaw drop.

We watch Gordie sail all the way across the auditorium, and make it safely and amazingly to the end. He jumps off, and turns to wave at us from a distance, as though he’s just taken an amusement park ride.

“That boy is crazy,” I say with a smile. “Eh, Gracie? Our little bro is nuts!”

But now the board has returned, and Gracie turns to me and suddenly she is serious and wide-eyed again.

“You can do it, easy!” I squeeze her hand, and nod at her. My lips are mouthing “wheelchair kid” and I watch her nod at me. Then my sister steps to the front of the stage.

I ball up my hands and hold my breath again, as Gracie gets her token.

She pauses next to the hoverboard. From where I’m standing I can only see her back and her long dirty-blond hair, and can just imagine her face. . . .

She places one foot on the board, testing it. Then she brings up the other foot, and she is balancing. Arms are flailing. She steps off, losing her balance.

Oh damn.

Gracie tries again. She steps onto the board and again, flails. Seconds tick. Everyone is watching her.

And then Gracie slowly gets down in a crouch, and places one leg flat down on the charcoal grey hoverboard surface. Then she puts her other leg, knee first. She reaches with both hands and grips the board along the edges on both sides.