Ryan White - My Own Story (20 page)

Something else I liked was that Linda Otto, the producer from Landsburg, came out to Indiana from Los Angeles to meet us. No one else did. We sat with Linda around our kitchen table, talking about what our movie might be like. I liked knowing that Mom and Andrea would get some money because of me—I’m a practical person. But I was fairly amazed that a movie producer was sitting right there in front of me, much less interested in me.

“We want to show what you
really
went through in Kokomo, not just the court hearings,” Linda explained. “We’ll tell the story from your point of view.”

That sounded like a neat idea, but I had to ask, “Why would anyone want to make a movie about
me,
anyway? You really think people will watch it?”

Linda told me she thought it was very important to stand up for children’s rights. She said she’d picked filmmaking as the way to do it, because you could reach so many people. She tried to make movies that would help kids. When
Adam
was shown on TV, there was a roll call of missing kids at the end, and an 800 number you could call if you had seen any of them. Linda said that over a hundred missing children were found after that—even though poor Adam had ended up dead.

Lots of times, though, producers in Hollywood want to make a certain movie, but it never works out. They just can’t find a script that’s good enough, or hire the actors they want. Or they do make the film, but they can’t make a deal with a network to show it on television. Linda said to me, “I promise you, Ryan. I’ll get this movie done.”

I hoped it would happen, but I tried not to get too excited. Meanwhile, I had another visitor—totally unexpected this time. One afternoon Mom called down to me. I was in our basement family room, watching TV, as usual. I saw
Who’s the Boss?
as often as it was on. It was a chance to catch Alyssa Milano, and besides, Linda Otto was hoping that Judith Light would play Mom in our movie. “Ryan,” she said, “there’s a girl here to see you.”

A girl? I thought Mom must mean a reporter. I climbed the stairs half-heartedly. I wasn’t thrilled about talking to some other magazine or newspaper who’d probably end up claiming I was dying. Whoever they were, I planned on giving them five minutes—no more. Instead, there was a girl with long blonde hair standing in our living room with Mom, smiling at me. She was about my height and my age—too young to be a reporter.

“Hi, Ryan,” she said. She had a nice smile and a small, sweet voice. “I’m Jill Stewart. I live two doors down from you.”

A new neighbor dropping in! It seemed like years and years since
that
had happened. I’d spent so much time by myself, watching other people talk on TV, I was rusty when it came to conversations with anyone who wasn’t family. My mouth almost creaked when I spoke, and I squeaked, as usual.

“Hi,” I managed to say.

“I’m president of the student body at Hamilton Heights High,” Jill added. That meant she must be one of the most popular kids there. Jill was a senior, but she was only a year older than I was. She explained, “I wanted to invite you to our school. Now you’ll know someone when you come your first day.”

Jill said that Hamilton Heights had already stepped up their AIDS education program in case I enrolled. “No one is planning on treating you badly,” she told me. “We just want to be normal.”

“I’ll second that,” I said.

Jill came back again with her father and mother, a nurse. A few days later, Wendy Baker, a friend of Jill’s from Hamilton Heights, knocked on our door too. They made a good pair—Jill had fair hair and Wendy’s was dark. Wendy was a junior and my age. She lived over on the other side of the lake. Later, after we got to be close friends and visited each other a lot, Wendy told me that she had been really nervous when we first met.

“Why?” I asked her.

Sometimes I make people nervous because I look so young. I stopped growing when I was twelve, thanks to AIDS. Luckily the hoarse rasp in my voice makes me
sound
my age, at least. When I see that someone who’s just been introduced is jumpy around me, I stay calm and wait for them to settle down too.

“Well,” Wendy said, “I thought you might want to be left alone. And besides,” she added, “you were better looking than on TV.”

I laughed. That second part was certainly good to hear.

“The last thing I need is people running away from me,” I said. “I was really glad you stopped by.”

Wendy and Jill brought me photos of all the teachers at Hamilton Heights, so I’d recognize them when I got to classes. The girls called me every week just to say hi, and brought some of their other friends over to meet me and tell me about what would go on at school. By the time school started, I would know about fifteen of the six hundred and fifty kids there.

“What those girls have done!” Mom exclaimed. She was getting to be very good friends with the Stewarts and the Bakers. “These kids are
glad
they’ll be going to school with you. They think you’re a hero!”

With all this encouragement, I wasn’t surprised that I did begin to get better, just as I thought I would, plus I finally started on AZT. I was definitely looking forward to school. Mr. Cook and Mr. Dillon asked me to come two weeks late. “We want to make sure everyone at school is educated and prepared,” Jill explained to me. “So we’re dropping everything for a crash course on AIDS.”

Ryan plays pool at a neighbor’s in Cicero with, left to right: Andrea, Wendy Baker, and Jill Stewart.

Hamilton Heights had called the State Board of Health, Dr. Myers’ office, and asked them to send some experts on AIDS who could talk to teachers and students about how you can and can’t catch it. In the beginning everyone was at least a little bit afraid, deep down inside. So there were lectures, tapes, and films for teachers first, and then for students. And in any class, students and teachers could have spontaneous discussions. Someone might mention that I was coming, and pretty soon everyone would jump in and bring up whatever they weren’t sure about. A student might ask something like, “Well, what
is
AIDS, anyway?” There was no such thing as a stupid question. Nobody ever replied, “I can’t believe you don’t know! How dumb can you get?” Instead, people who did know passed it on.

After all this, students who were still confused or frightened could ask for a private appointment with Mr. Cook or a guidance counselor to get the straight scoop. If they were too sheepish to sit down and talk face to face, they could still ask questions by stuffing anonymous notes into a special locker. The experts posted the answers on a separate bulletin board. Jill told me that by the second week, many of the unsigned questions read, “How can we help Ryan?”

Once the kids and teachers were in gear, the school took its AIDS education campaign out into the community. They told the press what they were doing and they sent speakers to church meetings. The school board held a meeting that was open to the public, and one of the state’s AIDS experts answered parents’ questions.

A few parents told the school board, “I don’t know whether I want my children in this school now. I may not let them go.” But the school’s idea of starting with the students worked. Kids told their parents they understood AIDS wasn’t contagious, they weren’t scared of me, and they wanted to be in school. One family asked their kid to stay home, and the kid said no!

My first day of school finally rolled around, and I rose to the challenge. Mom drove me to Hamilton Heights, which is in the next little town, Arcadia, about fifteen minutes from Cicero. As we came in the driveway and up to the main door, I saw some reporters out front and heard kids’ voices calling, “There he is! Here he comes!”

Uh, oh, I thought. I’ve been here before. Nothing’s going to change much.

But the school made the press stay back behind a low cement barrier, so they couldn’t follow me inside. Wendy and Jill and some other student government officers met me right at the door, and helped me find all my classes. I’d kept to myself for so long, it was like being on another planet. When I walked into classrooms or the cafeteria, several kids called out at once, “Hey, Ryan! Sit with me!”

In my science class a slim, pretty, dark-haired girl around my height asked me to be her lab partner. She told me her name was Heather McNew, and she came from a big family—five boys and three girls. Heather is number five. Her family’s house is the oldest in the county. Before the Civil War, it had been a stop on the underground railroad, a place where runaway slaves could hide safely. Heather said her family had a wood-burning stove and patchwork quilts on the wall, along with her track ribbons. She invited me to come visit them.

I guess I’m not in Kokomo anymore, I thought. My lab partner there was so upset when she was assigned to me that her parents started the separate school. Here everyone seemed to know who I was, and wanted to say hello. The school janitor gave me something he’d written, called “Ryan’s Poem”:

We are sorry for your fight
But for every day that you are here
We can see a little light

As I left after my first day, a reporter asked me, “How do you like
this
school?”

“Oh, I think I’m going to like it here,” I said. He must have noticed I was beaming. I’d been welcomed with open arms. I felt like I had hundreds of friends. It seemed like everyone said to themselves, “What if you were standing in
his
shoes? How would
you
feel?”

“In my wildest dreams I never thought it would be this easy!” Mom exclaimed when I got home. “I’m very proud we live here.”

Things were so good all of a sudden. I had a regular teenage life, and other teenagers were part of it. Jill Stewart drove me to school in the mornings. She met me first, and then we went to pick up some other kids. By the time we got to school, the whole group was cracking jokes together. The first time, Jill and I didn’t know each other all that well yet, and we were both nervous. It was worse for Jill: She was driving. She went right through a stop sign and we nearly crashed into a school bus. I let out a yell. That probably terrified Jill more than ever.

Sometimes I asked my new friends to help me stay as much like everyone else as possible. Once a news photographer wanted pictures of me walking into Hamilton Heights. I didn’t want to be the center of attention, so I asked Jill and Wendy and a couple of other kids to walk in with me. The pictures turned out great, with the bunch of us cutting up in the corridors.

Another time, a TV producer showed up at school and announced to Mr. Dillon that he had come to interview me. Mr. Dillon called Mom. As usual she said, “Well, it’s up to Ryan, what he wants to do.” Mr. Dillon came looking for me, and told me about the producer who wanted to talk to me.

“Mr. Dillon,” I asked, “do I have to?”

“It’s up to you, Ryan,” Mr. Dillon answered.

“Then could you tell him I don’t want to?” I asked.

“Of course I will,” Mr. Dillon told me. He said later that the producer’s jaw had dropped over my message. He was totally amazed. He said, “Does Ryan understand that this is for national broadcast?”

“I don’t think you understand,” Mr. Dillon replied. “Ryan doesn’t care what it’s for. He doesn’t want to be interviewed.”

Whew. It was so great to be around other people who thought that what I wanted was quite normal. On most weekends there was a game at school and then a dance afterward. At first I was too shy to go. Between being sick and studying at home, I was out of touch with high school life. I wasn’t sure I’d know how to act, and I didn’t want to look silly. My social muscles needed exercise.

I did go visit Heather—quite a lot, in fact. I felt really comfortable with her and her family—no one had trouble with me at all. Heather’s youngest brother, Sam, who has Down’s Syndrome, was only three when I met him. I love Sam a lot. Once he threw a small truck—the kind I used to collect—and hit me on the side of the head. Everyone gasped. I guess they were afraid I’d start bleeding. But I just laughed, and so did Sam. It was no big deal.

Heather and I talked on the phone every day. I went to her track meets, and we passed notes back and forth in class when things got boring. I sent her sweet nothings like, “This class blows it out the rear!” I finally had a best friend—several, actually. I signed up to work on the yearbook, and at midterm my grades were mostly B’s—though English was still my weak spot. I did really well in algebra. The first test I took, I got an A. I was real excited. Some kids don’t care how they do, or pretend they don’t. I cared! I wanted to do well. Next stop, the honor roll. When my school career started looking that good, Mom sat me down for a serious talk.

“It’s Andrea’s turn now,” she said. Andrea was in junior high, and would start Hamilton Heights with me in a year.

“I have to even things out,” Mom went on. “This next year is going to be your sister’s. I want to help her get back into roller skating.”

“Sure,” I said. “That’s only fair.”

My family had thought I’d survive only a few months. But here we were, almost three years later. I was doing well. I had a chronic cough, but big deal. Now and again I felt extra worn out and had to stay quiet, or I came down with thrush in my mouth again, and had to whisper because it hurt to talk. Still, no one had to look after me twenty-four hours a day anymore.