Out of My Mind (12 page)

Mrs. V returns to me and helps me change the original welcome message from the very mechanical-sounding
“Welcome to Medi-Talker”
to Trish’s voice saying,
“Hi! I’m Melody. Talk to me!”
I can’t wait to take it to school and introduce
my
new computer to everybody there. I wonder what Rose will say.

By now both Mom and Dad have called to check on how we’re doing, how much progress we’ve made. They’re both anxious to get here and see the device for themselves, so while we wait, Mrs. V suggests that we just keep programming it, adding more and more. She thinks I should practice using it for a couple of weeks before taking it to school. I don’t really want to wait, but I have to agree with her that this is going to take some time. I want to be able to use the system to talk like ordinary kids. Sort of.

So we return to words—I want to input thousands of them:
Notebook. Marker. Homework. Assignment. Test. Positive. Negative. Fingernail. Nail polish. Outfit. Backpack. Purse. Scared. Excited. Purple.

Then we type in more phrases—hundreds of them:
to the mall, from a distance, in the middle of, as a result, the reason why.

Lastly, we get to some sentences—dozens of them:
What time is it? What’s up with that? You crack me up. I’m so excited.
—before the doorbell rings.

When Dad and Mom come in to pick us up, Dad is ready with his camcorder. His hands are shaking a little. “Show us how it works, honey,” he says.

I can’t believe Dad is making a video of me saying my first words. It’s almost like when he filmed Penny’s first words—well, not really.

I type very carefully and push the button to make the machine speak.

“Hi, Dad. Hi, Mom. I am so happy.”

Mom gets all teary-eyed, and her nose gets red. She is looking at me all soft and gooey.

When I think about it, I realize I have never, ever said any words directly to my parents. So I push a couple of buttons, and the machine speaks the words I’ve never been able to say.

“I love you.”

Mom completely loses it. She bubbles up with tears and grabs Dad. I think he might be sniffing back a couple of tears himself.

But he has recorded it all.

I wait until after the holiday break to take the machine into school. I have practiced with Mrs. V every single day of Christmas vacation. Learning how to push the right buttons, how to switch smoothly from one level to another, how to make contractions. I had to figure out how to say
isn’t
instead of
is not
, or
there’s
instead of
there is
. It was hard. I kept messing up, but Mrs. V wouldn’t let me quit. I didn’t want to.

So on that first Monday back, Elvira is the star of the day, making me the center of attention. And not because of something embarrassing I did, like throwing
up or spilling my food, but for something really cool instead. Unbelievable!

Even the teachers seem impressed. “Watch out, world!” Mrs. Shannon announces when she sees me in the hallway. “Melody is ready to rock, y’all!”

I grin, push a button, and a song from the latest teen musical begins to play.

“Girl, you really got it goin’ on! Music and everything!” Mrs. Shannon starts sashaying down the hall in rhythm to my music. I crack up.

In room H-5, Maria is glued to me all morning. “Cool beans, Melly-Belly,” she keeps repeating. “Cool beans. Can I play?” She wants to touch the glowing lights and shiny buttons, but Mrs. Shannon steps in and distracts her with a new computer game she’s loaded on the classroom machine.

When Catherine comes in, just before the bell for language arts class, I’m ready for her. She’s wearing a green plaid shirt, a blue skirt, and orange knee socks. I planned the first thing I wanted to say to her, so Mrs. V and I had programmed it in ahead of time. I push a button and smile.
“Let’s go shopping.”

Catherine gasps, then laughs so hard, she almost can’t catch her breath. Then she runs over to me and hugs me. “I’m so happy for you, Melody! You really needed this! And, yes, we’re gonna have to find a day
so you can teach me some fashion sense!”

“We need hurry,”
I type in. I am in a great mood.

“You’re a coldhearted woman!” Catherine declares, still laughing. “But for now, let’s get you to your inclusion classes and show off this cool new machine!”

I shiver with excitement. When I roll into Miss Gordon’s room, as usual, nobody looks up, except for Rose, who flashes me a smile.

But then I turn the volume up real loud and I push a button:
“Hi, everybody. I have a new computer.”

Heads turn and voices whisper.

“They make computers for the special eddies?”

“It talks? Mine doesn’t do that.”

“You don’t
need
yours to talk!”

“It sounds weird.”

“So do you.”

“What could she possibly have to say, anyway?”

But Connor jumps up, his shaggy blond hair flopping into his eyes, and says loudly, “That’s awesome, Melody!”

And because he’s one of the popular kids, and probably the biggest and tallest kid in the fifth grade, I think because he gives his okay, the rest of the students decide to leave it alone.

Well, most of them. Claire, who was the first in the class to get her own laptop and who makes sure
everybody knows it when she gets a new iPhone or a Wii game, sniffs and says, “That sure is a funny-looking computer! But I guess it’s perfect for a kid like you.” She and Molly exchange looks. I swear they think I am blind.

Miss Gordon, who looks like she wants to squeeze Claire like an empty toothpaste tube, tells her, “Claire, I don’t allow rudeness in my classroom. Now sit down and hush!”

But even Claire can’t dim my good mood. I push another button for a sentence Mrs. V and I prepared ahead of time. Somehow I knew I would need it! The machine says,
“I talk to everybody now—Claire, too!”

I see her scowl, but everyone else laughs. They all want to touch the machine or push a button or try to operate it, but Catherine keeps them away and lets me do all the demonstrating.

I go to the green level—the jokes.
“Knock, knock!”

“Who’s there?” several people reply together.

“Isabel,”
the Medi-Talker says.

“Isabel who?” the kids surrounding me reply.

“Isabel out of order? I had to knock!”

Everybody laughs at the silly joke with me. Even though my arms and legs flail out and I drool a little as I laugh, it is the first time in my entire life that I feel like I’m part of the group.

I wish I could click a save button so I could play this moment over and over and over again.

I type in,
“Today is Monday. It is cold,”
then push a blue button on the machine. It whirs a little, then, like a tongue sticking out, a thin sheet of paper erupts from the side of it. Printed on it are the words I just typed.

“Whoa!” says Rodney, the champion video game player in the class. “It’s got a printer! That’s too slick!”

Miss Gordon nods with encouragement as Catherine passes the printout around so everyone can read my words. Then Catherine tells the class, “Melody’s Medi-Talker is a combination computer, music player, and speech device. It’s got HD, high-tech guts, and it’s designed to rock her world and connect you to it. Take the time to listen to what she has to say.”

Claire raises her hand.

“Yes, Claire,” Miss Gordon says, a look of warning in her eyes.

“I’m not trying to be mean—honest—but it just never occurred to me that Melody had thoughts in her head.”

A couple of other kids nod slightly.

Miss Gordon doesn’t raise her voice. Instead, she responds thoughtfully: “You’ve always been able to say whatever came to your mind, Claire. All of you. But Melody has been forced to be silent. She probably has mountains of stuff to say.”

“Yes. Yes. Yes,”
I make the machine say.

I give Miss Gordon a smile of thanks, then I show Rodney and Connor a video game that came with my Medi-Talker. I doubt if I’ll ever be fast enough to play Space Soldiers, but it’s nice to know it’s there. Rodney could probably master it in a hot minute.

Miss Gordon checks out the various levels and looks impressed. “What a huge vocabulary you have now, Melody!” she says to me. “I know you feel like a ton of bricks have been lifted from you.”

I nod.
“Way cold,”
the machine says loudly. Oops! I meant to say
Way cool
. I feel my face getting warm as I hear Claire and Molly snicker.

But Rose pulls her desk close to my chair. “This is so awesome, Melody,” she says softly, and I let her touch the shimmery keys.

“Oh, yes,”
I reply. Then I look at her.
“Friends?”
I type.

“Friends!” she answers without hesitation.

“Happy,”
I type, then I tense. I hope I won’t do anything stupid like knock something over with excitement.

Rose is looking intently at me. “I can’t imagine what it must be like to have all my words stuck inside,” she finally says.

“It sucks!”
I type in.

Rose chuckles. “I feel you!”

As I’ve been getting used to using Elvira over the last month, life at school has been almost pleasant. Almost. I can ask Connor about a TV show that came on the night before or tell Jessica that I like her new shoes.

It’s been snowing—just flurries—almost every day. Late one January afternoon I typed,
“I hope we have a snow day—no school.”
Everybody agreed. For once, I got to speak for the class.

I can answer questions in class lots better with Elvira to help me. For the first time, instead of “pretend” grades that teachers would give me because they weren’t
quite sure if I knew the answer or not, I get real grades recorded in the teachers’ grade books that are based on actual answers I’ve given. Printed out and everything!

But at recess I still sit alone. It’s been too cold to go outside, so we sit in the far corner of the overheated cafeteria until it’s time to go back to class. None of the girls gossip with me about some silly thing a boy has said. Nobody promises to call me after school. Nobody asks me to come to a birthday party or a sleepover. Not even Rose.

Sure, she’ll stop and chat for a minute or two, but as soon as Janice or Paula calls her to come and look at a picture on a cell phone, Rose will say, “I’ll be right back!” then skip away as if she’s glad she has a reason to cut out on me.

I just smile, hope I wasn’t drooling, and pretend I didn’t notice. After a few minutes of faking it, I push the button for the sentence
“Go back to H-5,”
and Catherine and I roll back down the hall.

One afternoon near the end of January, Mr. Dimming announced, in a voice that sounded like he’d been chewing on dry toast, “Instead of regular class today, I think we’ll have a practice round for the Whiz Kids quiz team.”

Everybody cheered because, otherwise, we would
have had a lesson on the Sahara Desert. Talk about toasty and dry!

Every year our school sends a team to the Whiz Kids competition. The local rounds, with teams from elementary schools all around the city and county, are held downtown at a hotel. Last year our school got to second place in the whole district. The principal was so proud, she bought pizza for the entire school, even though the team was only for grades four, and five and six.

The first-place teams from across the state go to Washington, D.C., for the nationals. It’s televised and is a really big deal.

Rose scooted her desk closer to mine. “I was on the Whiz Kids team last year,” she told me.

“I know,”
I typed.
“You’re smart.”

She beamed, then leaned closer. “Connor will probably get picked again too. He’s a little hard to handle, but he’s great with trivia.”

I glanced over—Connor was boasting to his friends about last year’s competition. “You ought to
see
the room in the hotel where they hold the contest. Gold chandeliers! Rich-looking stuff everywhere! And kids from all over looking smart. But we smoked them all!”

“All but one team, dude,” Rodney shouted out good-naturedly. “They tore you up!” The class hooted.

“Yeah, but this year we’re gonna win! Right, Mr. D?”

“We’re certainly going to try, Connor,” Mr. Dimming replied. “The rules have changed slightly, so our team this year will be made up of just grades five and six. That gives us strength because some of you competed last year. Now let’s just see how good we are. Let’s do a set of sample questions just for fun, shall we?”

“You got prizes?” Rodney asked.

“Not every competition results in a prize, Rodney,” Mr. D replied.

“Yeah, but it’s more fun with good stuff at the end,” Connor added. “Please?”

“Okay, okay! One slightly squished Butterfinger candy bar from my lunch bag,” the teacher said, holding it up. Everyone laughed once more.

“Chocolate gives you zits,” Rose teased Connor. “I don’t want candy—I want to win!” She moved her desk back to her own row.

Catherine sat on the other side of me. “Do you want to play the practice round with them?” she asked.

“Yes! Yes! Yes!”
I typed.
“Answers—A, B, C, D. Easy.”

She grinned. “Okay, easy! Let’s see what happens!”

Mr. Dimming cleared his throat and smiled. “Whiz Kids time is my favorite event of the year,” he admitted. “Let’s see if we can go all the way this year!”

The class cheered.

“I will read the questions first, then the choices for the answers. You will write down the correct letter. Does everyone understand?”

Connor raised his hand, then called out even before Mr. Dimming noticed him. “Don’t give us easy ones, Mr. D. I’ve got brains of steel!”

“And a mouth to match,” I heard Rose whisper.

“Number one,” the teacher began. “Which planet is closest to the sun?

A. Venus