Free Sorta Like a Rock Star by Matthew Quick Page A

start needing all that therapy you don’t provide the children of your employees. Ty?”
    I take a step back. I survey the school board and catch a few sympathetic eyes. One large woman even nods at me and gives me a wink, like she is my mom or something and is proud. Cool, I think. We’re moving people tonight.
    Ty steps forward and says, “I have a dream. I dream that some day in the near future Childress Public High School will diversify the faculty and recognize Martin Luther King Day. I’m the only black kid in the school, and the only place I feel comfortable is in Mr. Franks’ room. If Mr. Franks lost his job, there would be no refuge left for me in this school, and I think I might have to start writing letters to the local papers about how hard it is to be black at Childress High School, a place that does absolutely nothing to celebrate my heritage. A place that inadvertently says to me every day that white is right. No black authors in the English curriculum. Coaches always asking me to join the basketball team. Mrs. Watts always trying to get me to sing Negro spirituals in her all-white choir. I’m sick of it, yo. The only thing I’ve ever done through CPHS in celebration of my heritage was to raise money for the United Negro College Fund, because a mind is a terrible thing to waste. I ran a charity Ping-Pong tournament last year and do you know who was the faculty member that helped me market and chaperone that tournament? Mr. Franks. He also made the biggest faculty donation too. Don’t fire Franks, or you’ll be sorry when MLK day rolls around and you don’t observe the holiday again! Because I’m speaking up this year if Franks gets cut.”
    Ty steps back, looks over at me, and I nod at him, which makes him smile, so I give him a wink, Donna style, and say, “Jared and Chad.”
    “I’m just a regular white kid—I love Franks and all, but you probably noticed that I’m carrying around my younger brother in a backpack,” Jared says. I worry that he is going to forget the Scarface line, but then he remembers and says, “So say hello to my little friend!”
    “Hello,” Chad says over Jared’s shoulder. “Maybe I would have driven my electronic wheelchair in here if the building was wheelchair accessible. But it’s not. Nor are the gym locker rooms, really. And Das Boot—my two-wheeled ride—don’t fit through the library aisles, so I can’t browse the books or anything like that. If I want to pick out a book to read, I have to be carried through the library, which is humiliating. No one—besides the kids in this room—really talks to me at school. I’m late for every class because I have to take the elevator and all the kids push the buttons on every floor when they walk by—ha-ha—so I have to wait forever. You people suck at accommodating the special-needs people of the world. But you know who makes me feel like I am wanted, every day? Mr. Franks. Yeah, we play video games, but you know what? In the video games I have normal legs and arms. I can run around and jump and walk in a virtual world that Franks sets up for me using his own equipment that he buys with his own money because you people do nothing to fund his program. Try not walking for seventeen years, and then tell me that video games are stupid. If Franks goes, there will be no more Xbox in school and therefore no place in the high school where I can socialize or interact normally with other teens doing something age appropriate.”
    “We don’t have Xbox at home,” Jared adds, and then the brothers step back.
    I give them each a nod and a wink when they look at me. My boys are rocking tonight. I’m so proud. “Ricky?”
    Donna hands Ricky a prepared statement, and tells him to read it, which he does. “My name is Ricky Roberts. I am the only Childress Public High School student diagnosed with autism, and I do not like the special education teachers very much. Also, school board member Mr. Pinkston’s son Alexander