Firefly catching and releasing must be exhausting, because Penny snuggled into Mom’s lap and fell asleep long before Mom finished her glass of lemonade. Butterscotch snoozed by my feet. I hyped myself up. Okay, now is the time to talk about camp.
“What a perfect evening!” Mom said, twirling one of Penny’s curls—her hair is crazy curly like mine. Above the glow of the lightning bugs, the first stars were beginning to speckle the sky. I nodded in agreement.
“Glad school’s out?”
I tilted my head just a little. She knew how school was for me.
I like most of my teachers and classes. I love being a part of all that whirling turmoil—most of the time. But even though I have an aide who helps me with things like taking notes and eating lunch, school can be… a bit much.
Not many kids pay attention to the girl trying to get through the halls in her electric wheelchair. They rush past me, their backpacks sometimes whomping right into me as they call out to friends, check their phones, and hurry through the crowds. It’s almost like they don’t even see me. It’s strange—so many kids surround me, and yet I’m usually all alone.
That’s why I love being at Mrs. V’s—she always sees me. But it’s also kinda why I want to go to camp. I bet if I went to a camp with kids like me… well, I wonder how different that would feel!
Every single day since I was born, somebody has fed me and bathed me and read to me and helped me do every single detail of my life. So lately I started wondering—when do I get to do things for myself? Will I ever be a person who runs her own life? I mean, I know I’ll always need some kind of help, but when do I get to be me?
So that’s what I’m thinking… that maybe at camp, especially if it’s one that specializes in kids like me, I can just be Melody Brooks for a few days. Whoa! That would be amazing!
Plus, if Molly and Claire and Rose can go to camp, then why can’t I? I might need extra help, but I sure don’t need fins—duh! I was all set to launch my plan.
I’d searched for just the right place for me. I’d spent several afternoons digging through camping websites and reading those brochures Mr. Francisco helped me order.
Trouble was, most of the camps that I thought looked ideal for me and were within driving distance—because, let’s be honest, there was no way Mom and Dad would let me get on a plane alone—were no longer accepting applications. Except for this one called Camp Green Glades.
I’d read the brochure and checked the website something like seventy-three times now. Yeah, I’m a stalker! In every picture, the kids—in wheelchairs and on crutches or walkers—are constantly cheesing. Can they all really be that happy? But somehow, I felt good about this camp.
I glanced over at Mom—for sure she wasn’t expecting this! I took my time and tapped out, “I want to go to camp!!!” I hit the exclamation point several times. I put Elvira’s speaker on its loudest level.
“Uh, camp?” she asked, gulping down the rest of her lemonade.
I nodded several times. “Yes, camp. I found one at the library.”
“You did? Camp?” she asked again, as if I’d asked to go to the moon. “But, honey, it’s probably too late to apply now. It’s already the middle of June.”
“I already checked. They have a few openings.”
Mom raised an eyebrow. “Vee, was this your idea?”
Mrs. V shook her head, her own eyebrows raised. “Camp! Well, this is a surprise! And nope, I had no idea she was looking into this.”
“So, can I go?” I tapped, wondering if all these raised eyebrows were a good thing or not.
“Uh, show me the website,” Mom said, still exchanging glances with Mrs. V. But she wanted to see, which wasn’t a “no” yet.
I’d never really done anything all on my own like this. It felt pretty awesome. And I was totally prepared! I had the camp’s website link saved, so I just had to click on it. And there was Camp Green Glades, full of smiling-faced kids with a variety of what some people call “special” needs. Mom and Mrs. V pored over the website, crowding so close to me, I was getting hot.
They read every detail, and read them again, in case, I guess, they’d missed anything the first time. The camp was here in Ohio, not too far away, and most importantly, it had only two or three openings left. That meant we better hurry.
They oohed over the pretty sunsets and forest paths and the sparkling lake. They smiled at the kids in wheelchairs and on walkers sitting around campfires. There were campers on a boat, in a swimming pool, and even on horses!
I looked at the images for like the seventy-fourth time. I still could hardly believe such a place could exist for me. Not one person looked scared or abandoned. But I guess nobody takes pictures of kids falling off a cliff or drowning in a lake and then slaps that on their website.
And hello… were my mom and Mrs. V trying to drive me crazy? Because now they were reading it out loud—gah!
“The Green Glades Therapeutic Recreational Camp has been a support for campers with special needs and their families for twenty-five years,” Mrs. V read to my mother.
“Twenty-five years,” my mother mused.
Special needs, I was thinking. I don’t like that term. It sounds so… so… vague. It’s like people without special needs decided that if they made the term vague enough, it wouldn’t hurt anybody’s feelings. But when you’re the person the term is used for, it makes you feel less than yourself. It makes me feel less than myself. Yeah, I’m special. And yes, I have needs. But don’t make that my label.