Dyslexia

Beast Boy was sitting on the couch looking at a comic book with intense concentration. Raven had silently walked in to prepare herself a cup of tea. She, as always, had a large tome underneath her arm. She was confused as to why Beast Boy appeared to be struggling to read such simple material.

"Beast Boy," Raven asked startling the green changeling, "Why do you read those comic books," Raven asked genuinely curious, "they have no substance? And a lot of them don't have very good plots."Beast Boy looked down, waves of nervousness and shame rolling off of him.

"Oh, um, hey Rae I didn't hear you." Beast Boy stuttered. He was blushing so combined with his green complexion it was an interesting shade of red-purple. Raven replied in her normal monotone, "I know, and one my name is Raven, and two stop dodging my question."

Hey take it easy Rae…" he trailed off, receiving a glare from the tower's resident empath, "ven, Raven. Yeah it's nothing I'm just going to go now. Bye!" Before Raven could stop him he tore off to who knows where.

Raven soon followed him out of the common room area shortly after, tea forgotten. She wandered through the corridors opening her senses in hopes of finding Beast Boy; to her surprise she located him in one of the unused bedrooms. Raven fazed through the floor once again startling the Beast Boy.

"Gah! Geez, Raven you really need to stop doing that." Raven ignored him but sat down on the floor next to him. "Sorry, but seriously tell me why you're acting so weird." Raven demanded. Beast Boy was pretty close to telling her, Raven could tell. It appeared as if he was holding back something, like a dam ready to burst.

"Beast Boy, you know that you can tell me right?" Raven had put her hand on Beast Boy's shoulder, "Because, no matter how annoying you are, we're still friends." Raven's expression had softened just a little bit so Beast Boy could see the sincerity in her Violet-Blue eyes.

Finally Beast boy told her what was wrong except all his words came pouring out so he sounded like, " WelltheproblemisthatIcan'treallyread. ImeanIcanread. Butonlysimplethings. ." then Beast Boy took a huge breath. "Whew, glad that's off my chest, glad we had this chat Rae." He was just about to sneak off when a black aura surrounded his torso and dragging him back to his original position.

Raven just stared at him having listened to him, but not understanding a single word of it. "Great. Now repeat all that but slower, and don't try anything because I'm being nice for letting you slide about calling me Rae." She told him in her signature monotone. The green changeling looked at the empath and ran a gloved hand through his shaggy green hair. "Well, you see, I can't really read. I mean I can read simple stuff, and I can write. It's not like I'm illiterate, but if it's not simple then the words become a big blur." east Boy recited all of this with his head down. His ears drooped with shame.

Raven for one thing was shocked she reached out to touch his shoulder, but he scooted away. "Beast Boy, Beast Boy look at me," he still averted his eyes from her, "look at me, Gar," this made his head snap up, "why haven't you told anybody we could help you if you'd like." She was confused as to why he would keep it a secret from the team.

"Dang, this is exactly why I didn't tell anybody. I do not want yours or anybody else's pity." Raven stared at him, she understood the not wanting pity part, but not getting help seemed stupid. "Has it always been like that, have you never been able to read?" Raven asked quietly.

Beast Boy looked at her and said," My parents were geneticist, they were brilliant. When I was five going on six my parents were worried because even though I couldn't read very well. After they preformed some test, they found out that I'm dyslexic. They helped all they could reading to and with me all the time. It didn't help that when I was bitten by a rare green monkey I contracted a disease called Sukitia. To save my life my parents used an untested serum on me. Side effects as you can see were green skin and hair also it gave me my ability to transform. My dyslexia paired with all the animal genes makes extremely hard to read."

Raven had been silent through the Beast Boy's entire speech. She was so deep into thought that she never saw Beast Boy silently slip away.

Raven looked up from her book and looked around, Beast Boy had been nowhere to be found for the rest of the day. It was starting to worry her. The empath had been thinking of ways to help Beast Boy. The book she was reading was on dyslexia, but it wasn't really helpful. She then came up with a plan.

She once again expanded her senses and located the changeling down by rocks. She teleported down to the base of the tower and walked over to Beast Boy.

"I may have come up with a way to help you," Raven stated. Beast Boy's head whipped towards her, his expression one of disbelief, "how is that possible, I have tried everything. Even hypnosis. There is no way you found a way to help me. Hey I just said way twice!"

She told him about how she once read that the brain does not read every letter in a word, but the word as a whole. And that as long as the first and last letters are the same the rest can be a jumbled mess, yet still be understandable.

When Beast Boy asked her how that could help him, she told him that if they could teach him more sight words, and he learned to understand phonics and grammar better it might make reading easier for him to read.

6 months later

With lots of hard work and persuasion, Beast Boy was only two levels behind where he should be for reading. He even went as far as to ask Raven to help him pick out a real book not comic book (I'm not hating. I read them both, plus manga).

Not only did his intelligence soar higher, so did his confidence. It was to the point where even the rest of the team noticed the difference in BB's behavior. Raven was so happy for him she even gave her Mona Lisa smile. Now to tackle a bigger challenge… Beast Boy has to take the SAT's.

THE END

Sorry, this was a little more angst than I would have liked, but I think it turned out well, yes. So, looks like the only thing left to do is… REVIEW! Please, also tell me if I should do a sequel. Thanks bye.