“Miracles happen. Even for someone who’s dyslexic.” He took his coffee and walked away.
Dammit.
Chapter Six
Dyslexia. Dys meaninglack of. Lexicon meaninglanguage.
Ross stared at the handwritten name on the Pony Expresso coffee cup, and with it came the familiar feeling of frustration and shame. He tossed it into his office’s trash can.
In a different period of human history, before writing was an ordinary skill, Ross would have been no different than any other laborer, farmer, or peasant. But in the modern era of texting, the internet, and books, Rosswasdifferent. For a long time, he lacked the skill and, therefore, spent much of his life avoiding it. This was as easy as dodging raindrops during a monsoon.
He learned about a town in New Zealand while watching a documentary late one night. It held the record for having the longest name in the world:Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu. The part of the documentary which stuck with him was when the film crew asked random people to pronounce the name typed on a piece of paper. The subjects laughed at themselves stuttering, stumbling, and attempting to pronounce the town’s name until it was nothing but a collection of random sounds without any connection to the real thing. It was during this moment when it clicked for Ross. This was precisely what reading was like for him.
Ross had been diagnosed with thedyseidetictype of dyslexia when he was twenty years old. He was relieved to learn there was a real reason reading and spelling was difficult for him. His brain’s difficulty in visualizing and recognizing words wasn’t him being lazy or lacking intelligence.
Soon after his diagnosis, he made a commitment and for weeks had practiced spelling the nameTaumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu. He may be dyslexic and tripped over words such asfromandthat,but there would be one fucking word he’d be able to replicate better than most non-dyslexics.
Try harder, Ross.He had said this phrase to himself as much as the various adults in his academic life had said it to him. The implication being, if he gave more effort and brainpower to his task, he would, at some point, achieve success. All he wanted was to stop living in a dense fog of words and disappointment. This never became truer than when Mia became his tutor.
Ross had knowledge of the dimpled nerd-girl before they’d been paired together to spend countless hours going over his school work. It was a frequent occurrence for her to be trotted to the front of school assemblies to receive one award or another. At some point, he stopped paying attention to these award ceremonies because they rarely pertained to him. To him, assemblies were nothing but a welcomed reprieve from the stress in the classroom.
Throughout his school life, he had received a single accolade. The nameRoss Manasseechoed within the walls of his grade-school auditorium. He marched to the front, smiled, and waved at his grandpa, who sat in the stands and marked the momentous occasion with a flash from an old digital camera.
His teacher had handed him a black-and-white printed page and exclaimed, “Congratulations, Ross. Good job, buddy!” He marveled at the green, fuzzy caterpillar sticker his teacher had placed at the top right corner of the paper. This was the singular thing of interest for Ross, but he knew what the award was for. Perfect attendance in first grade. His small rib cage expanded with pride, knowing his grandfather was proud as he beamed a smile in his direction.
In third grade, he was called on to read a passage from a book. Ross dragged himself from his chair and made the long, arduous trek to the whiteboard, a sense of dread building in his stomach. As he fixed his eyes upon the page, he shifted his weight from one leg to the other.
“Come on, Ross. We don’t have all day,” Mr. Hayes said.
“A…h-ho…home—”
“House,” the teacher corrected. “It’sA house. NotA home. Try harder, Ross. Focus.”
He couldn’t finish the short paragraph without Mr. Hayes issuing more corrections as he went along. The rest of the students tittered around him in amusement, and Ross’s cheeks grew hot with embarrassment. The small Placerville classroom could have been struck with an earthquake, a fissure opening in the Earth at the exact spot where he stood, and it would have been a godsend.
“Alright, settle down,” Mr. Hayes interrupted, scolding the class. “Jeez, we’re going to be here all day. Why don’t you take a seat, pal. We’ll give someone else a chance.”
Ross trudged to his desk, glad his moment of punishment was at an end, but he had been overwhelmed with a feeling of shame. He spread his arms across the surface of his desk and sank his face into one bony, undeveloped bicep.
“Mr. Manasse, I hope you’re not napping back there. You’re not even following along in the book with the rest of the class. I don’t want to have another discussion with your grandfather about this. You need to focus.”
This was how a typical school year went for Ross. Each year became harder and harder to get by even with his creative ways of getting out of public readings or his attempts to be invisible inside the classroom. In return, his teachers invented new ways to suggest laziness or sighed their disappointment at his stubbornness to try. And this happened when they still cared and believed there was some potential in him. When the adults gave up on him, there was nothing but silence.
The school counselor reached out to his grandfather, telling him something needed to change, or Ross would be held back.
“I don’t care! I’m not doing it!” Ross had shouted, slamming his backpack into the seat of a dining room chair.
“Ross,” his grandfather said in a quiet, gentle voice, his shoulders hunched from his work.
“No, I’m not doing it. I’ll try harder. Okay? Please don’t make me do this.” A smart girl discovering his embarrassing truth was the unseen height of degradation. Mia would laugh at him, which was the worst fate of all.
But, despite his fears, that hadn’t happened. Mia had been kind. Her desire to help him seemed genuine. On top of this, she wanted to be his friend, and Ross wanted the same.
There was at least one person out there who hadn’t given up on him.
Until she did.
Chapter Seven
