Page 13 - My FlipBook

look of concern, her flattened smile and sympathetic eyes, only
pushed Mari’s ire. “That could have been prevented.”
“Yeah, well, if people cleaned up after themselves . . .” She
had officially raised her voice at this point. “I slid on a grape.
A grape. And I would have slid on it with a prosthesis.”
“That’s an idea,” Karen started. “Why don’t you offer a
course on how to dispose of trash correctly, and we don’t have
to spend potentially thousands of dollars on a prosthesis that
Mari has no desire to use.”
“But, Mari, you could look like everyone else,” Mrs. Fulston
stated, like it was some goal for her. “You could walk without
your crutches.”
“This is ridiculous.” Mari’s brain blurred with anger. “And
maybe illegal? Like, can they really do this?” She knuckled
tears of frustration. “I will never look like everyone else. I had
cancer, and my amputation saved my life.”
“Well, there is always the option of a self-contained class-
room. You wouldn’t have to change classes.”
This woman was delusional. This wasn’t a real suggestion.
Mari might as well stay home and go to school virtually.
“Mrs. Fulston, this is obviously about the school being
scared that we might sue because of the incident this morning,”
her dad said. Nicholas Manos did not suffer fools. His hands
were big and warm on Mari’s arm, a little dirt under his nails, as
he tried to comfort her. “We saw the video, and it is clear that
who you should really be discussing self-contained classrooms
with are the two boys who were fighting this morning.”
“What video?” Mrs. Fulston’s voice rose half an octave.
“We have taken care of the boys.”
“Please, if you don’t think students film these fights and

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