Part 22

Joanna and AJ sat on a park bench, watching the kids playing.

"You're quiet," she said.

"I'm thinking about my testimony; it's making me nervous."

"Don't go through with it, AJ!"

"I wonder what would happen if I went to the cops and changed my story."

"Don't tell them, tell the lawyer."

"Dara Jenson?"

"No, tell that guy at Baldwin & Baldwin. Maybe he can try to make a deal for her."

"Emily's defense lawyer! Hey, that's not a bad idea, Joanna."

"You've got to live with yourself," she said. "And it'll be hard to go into a courtroom and lie."

"Would you go with me? To Baldwin, I mean. At least, as far as the waiting room."

"Is it that stressful?"

"Sort of. I need someone to nag me and keep me from thinking of my family's opinions and talking myself out of it."

"Oh thanks!"

"I'm kidding," he said. "But I could use a distractor. They keep you waiting in that room long enough for your brain to start working."

"And that would be terrible! Well, OK. Anything to keep your brain from working."

"Very funny," he said, with a grin.

Quinn was reading from a list of English words Zander had written for her in the Russian alphabet. She thought she agreed with Tim that the different alphabet was kind of fun; like cracking a code.

"OK," she said, "here goes. Vah. Vash-ee. Vash-eeng-ton." Vashington."

"Right."

"Pooort Chahlz. OK. Kah-nore. Koo-in."

"Do you remember that?"

"Oh yeah! Quinn. Let's see. Een-dee-ahn-ah-pah-leese. Notair – Notre Dame. Fee-la-dahlfeeya. Shon. Sean? Leetel Em-eh-lee."

She broke down laughing.

"You sound like a Russian trying to speak English," he said.

"Like the other students in your class over there?"

"Kind of," he laughed.

"You were so helpful to them. I know, Mom remembers that from your records."

He smiled a little bit. "She's really helps me a lot," he said. "Even by just saying nice things to me."

"I wonder what if people who say not-nice things think they are doing anybody any good. Other than themselves."

"They always claim they are."

"I don't think I believe them."

"Yeah, I've never felt like any real good ever came of it."

"So you wouldn't do it to other people yourself."

"I hope not! Not intentionally, anyway."

"That's a good quality for a teacher. To be encouraging more than critical."

"I bet your Mom is encouraging and not critical."

"Well, so are you. Look at me, I'm already reading these hieroglyphics."

He laughed, and went over to where she was sitting, hugging her from behind. "These are not hieroglyphics," he teased. "These are the Cyrillic alphabet."

She giggled; his hair tickled her neck. "All I can tell you is they made no sense an hour ago, and now they seem to say something!"

"It's really strange," Zander was telling Kathleen, at the race track, as they waited for the time trials to start. "I almost wish I could just take tests. I'm OK studying with Amanda and then taking a test. But sitting in class almost kills me!"

"That's attention deficit disorder, all right," Kathleen said. "Amanda gears toward you, the class toward people, with, er, let's say, attention surplus disorder."

"But shouldn't I be able to get through it on the same terms as other people do?"

"Well, not necessarily. No. If you learn a thing, you know it. Who cares how you learned it?"

"I guess."

"You're very smart in your way. It's not an inferior way. A brunette can be beautiful, so can a blonde. So can a redhead. Now society can favor blondes, but it's not rational. They really shouldn't call something a disorder when it's only different, but some people just have to categorize everything. It is in the nature of people with attention surplus disorder that they must see it like that, and in the nature of people with attention deficit disorder that they don't mind the other people being different and don't have to label them as disordered. That's why the label flows one way and not the other."

"I appreciate your encouraging me like this, Kathleen. It helps. Sometimes I feel hopeless. Like I wake up in the middle of a class, and the professor is talking about something and I have no idea where he is, because I've been thinking about something he said earlier."

"I've been reading a lot about this," Kathleen said. "And some say that you can focus better than they can. I know that sounds like the opposite. But what you just said bears it out. You can focus better than they can at the same time. You were thinking about something he said, while he went on. He was demanding a shift in your attention, and you don't want to make it. You were concentrating on the subject, but not on him and where he wanted to go."

"That gives me a feeling of being left behind."

"True, yet you can go into more depth than somebody else might. That's why you get behind rather than some sort of slowness."

"Maybe I ought to start driving cars, like Quinn," he smiled. "Out there, there's nothing to distract you and keep you behind."