Page 38 of You Spin Me

“I don’t know if anyone knows what this feels like, unless you have my”—spit it out, Jess, you did it once already tonight—“my disability. I have a learning disability.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean my brain doesn’t work normally.”

“I have a hard time believing that. You quote Shakespeare left and right.”

“Cal, I didn’t learn to read until I was practically injunior high. For most of elementary school, I was in remedial classes. Teachers thought I was slow. My classmates had harsher names for me. Remember how we talked about kids being cruel?”

“Yeah.”

“Kids called me stupid in so many different ways that I believed them.”

“Obviously, they were the stupid ones. I mean, you went to college, right?”

“Yeah, after I finally got a diagnosis. Dyslexia. I wasn’t dumb; my brain just processes things differently. But that didn’t happen for years. Even after I’d learned some workarounds, I was behind. I had to explain it to new teachers every year. It was always so embarrassing. So, since I got out of school, I don’t tell people.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t want their pity. Or their accommodations. I have strategies now, and it’s really not anyone’s business.”

“Makes sense.”

“Unfortunately, sometimes I get thrown for a loop. Then everything falls apart. Like tonight.”

And I’m back in that horrible moment, my heart trying to claw its way out of my chest.

“You don’t have to tell me, princess.”

Ithinkhe’s trying to get me to smile with the nickname, but tonight, more than ever before, I wish I could see his face. One of the ways I coped as a kid was learning to quickly suss out who was a potential bully and who was a potential ally. A flicker in the eyes or the set of a mouth often told me what I needed to know.

Then I remember our conversation last night. Something he said pokes its way into my skittery thoughts. “Um, that thing you said about the static in your head? When you did that interview? It’s kind of like that. When I have to read something new with other people watching, I get a staticky sound and the words literally move around on the page. That happened tonight. The director wanted us to try an exercise to shake things up, ‘try an experiment,’ he said, like it was no big deal. He wanted me and Jack to switch roles, for me to read Bruce’s lines and he would read Prudence’s. And it wouldn’t have been a big deal—it probably would’ve been fun—for anyone who can read like a normal person.”

Tears fill my throat, but they’re not sad tears. They’re angry.

“Ihatenot being normal.”

“Believe me, I know.”

“But you can’t know. In that moment, every taunt I’d ever heard filled my brain, so loud and so mean and so true. Not only could I not read, I couldn’t breathe—I couldn’t stand. I melted into a blob on the floor.” I’m too loud, I know, but what I couldn’t say earlier needs to get out of me. “Like a weak, stupid, brainless, backward, moronic dummy.”

“You forgot chowderhead.“

His words knock me back for a moment, but then I hear the smile behind them. And I laugh. “And dunderhead.”

“What about dope?”

“I like dolt better.” Another laugh scrapes past my tight jaw. “Obviously, nobody called me any names tonight. Everyone was all worried and caring.”

“Which is sometimes worse?”

“Yes.Exactly. I almost pretended I was sick, but I didn’t want to lose the rehearsal time. And I figured, what the hell, they probably already think I’m a freak at this point. So I told them how my brain is broken. And then Miles—the director—made everyone else say something embarrassing about themselves so we’d be even.”

“Did that help?”

Suddenly I’m giggling, remembering Jack’s story about how he got lost on the way to his own wedding. “It actually kind of did.”

“Then what happened?”

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