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“JD! JD!”
JD looked up as Veronica came over. He was still unused to her being taller than her, but when he was stuck in a wheelchair, most people ended up being taller than him now, even the short people. And he missed his height more than he missed the use of his legs at this point.
“JD,” Veronica said, smiling with a mischievous glint in her eyes. “How willing are you to get hurt in the name of fun and entertainment?”
JD paused a bit, his school textbook still halfway to being put in his bag. “…Why?” He asked uncertainly. That glint in her eyes either led to something really great or really horrible and there was never an in between.
“Because…. I have an idea,” Veronica said simply, smiling down at him brightly. In reality, she knew that this would be a very bad idea, but she didn’t care enough to not ask right now. “So? How willing are you?”
“That depends on what the method of entertainment is,” JD said, rolling towards her after he put his books in his bag and hung it from the handles. He stopped right in front of her. “Veronica, what exactly are you planning?”
“So… you know that big hill outside?” Veronica asked, pointing with her thumb over her shoulder.
“Yeah…”
“Well, you transferred after we got stopped, but we used to steal shopping carts and shove them down the hill because it was entertaining. We’d sometimes put confetti or glitter in them as well. And anyway, so we would shove them down over and over again.” Veronica paused a bit, chuckling slightly before she continued. “So… we got banned from doing that.. but we haven’t been banned from shoving other wheeled things down the hill… and guess what has wheels..?”
JD paused, staring. “You’re suggesting that we shove my wheelchair down a hill?” He asked, slightly disbelieving. He couldn’t decide whether he was intrigued or horrified by the idea.
“Uh… yes,” Veronica said simply. Her smile turned a bit sheepish. “Can we do it..? You can come see the hill first.”
JD sighed. This would be a horrible idea and he knew it, but he had to admit, he was certainly interested to see how this would go. “Let’s go see the hill,” He said reluctantly.
Veronica smiled and giggled a bit. “May I?” She asked, gesturing to the handles of his wheelchair.
JD nodded, letting her eagerly push him through the school to take him to the hill out back. This was going to go horribly, wouldn’t it..? “If I end up hospitalized then you’re paying for the doctor bills,” He said.
“Wait, you’ll actually do it?” Veronica asked excitedly.
JD nodded. “Reluctantly, but yes.”
Veronica laughed excitedly and started to push him faster. “Let’s go! No more waiting! Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!” She was giddy at this point, practically bouncing with excitement, barely bothering to consider that she very well might end up killing her boyfriend. “Heather!” She called when they got outside. “Heather, he said yes!”
JD groaned. He was glad his dad didn’t care about what he did, because he couldn’t imagine trying to rationalize why he had let Veronica and Heather shove him and his very expensive wheelchair down a hill for entertainment.
Heather MacNamara and Heather Duke were both standing by the hill. MacNamara stared at JD. “…How little do you value your life?” She asked, incredulous. When Veronica had said she was going to ask JD if he would volunteer she expected not only a no, but a possible breakup. Last time she checked, wheelchair users didn’t appreciate being asked if they could be shoved down a hill…
And JD already had a short enough of a temper.
“Too little,” JD said, looking down at the hill. No huge rocks or wood at the bottom… Leaves from the autumn weather… maybe they would help him not die. “And what do we do if I end up flipping out of said chair?”
“You crawl back up the hill, shut up and get ready,” Duke said rudely, slamming a helmet on JD’s head, much harder than needed.
Veronica glared at Duke and MacNamara just dropped her gaze, unsure of whether she wanted to cross Duke, no matter how rude she was being.
MacNamara took out a camcorder and turned it on.
JD was somewhere between excited and terrified.
“Just think of it as a roller coaster,” MacNamara said, trying to be reassuring.
“Not even close to the same. Roller coasters are ethical. This isn’t.” JD strapped on the helmet. He had never worn a helmet when he was on his bike but suddenly he was very glad he had one.
“Do you want a countdown?” Veronica asked.
“I don’t care just do it…” JD grumbled, grabbing the arm rests of the chair so hard his whole hands went white.
Veronica shrugged and shoved JD down as hard as she could.
MacNamara moved the camera with JD.
JD yelled when he was suddenly moving, everything blurring past him. His heart was in his throat and he wanted to throw up. He was never a religious person, but suddenly he found himself praying a prayer that consisted of the small snippets of different prayers all combined into one, because if he would die here and God happened to exist then he wanted to be on his good side in his last moments.
He yelled again as the whole chair jolted on a rock.
Suddenly the hill flattened out and he stopped slowly. He didn’t fall out, which was a miracle in and of itself, because he had certainly expected to be flying out of the chair at some point. He opened his eyes and let out a breath he didn’t even know he was holding. “I’m alive!” He called.
A cheer from Veronica met his ears and he rolled his eyes before pausing. “Hey! How the hell do I get back up?!” At the silence from the three girls he cursed under his breath.
Ten minutes later he had managed to get back up to the top of the hill after Veronica had come down to help, and that led to the (rather obvious) discovery that wheelchairs were not easy to push up a steep hill, especially when you had a tall seventeen-year-old boy in it.
“Well. You’re alive,” Veronica said, smiling at JD.
“Do it again.”
All eyes went to JD in shock. MacNamara was the first to speak. “…Do you… want to die..?”
“No, I want someone to shove me down the hill again,” JD corrected. Now that he knew he wouldn’t die (or at least hadn’t died) he was tempted to try it and see if he could bring himself to enjoy it. Gosh, what had his life come to?
Duke shrugged and pushed JD down.
JD yelped, not expecting it yet and nearly falling off. He yelled up a slur or two at Duke and looked back down at the blurred surroundings around him… MacNamara was right, it was kinda similar to a roller coaster… it was just… much more terrifying and dangerous. But it gave him the same thrill. He laughed a bit to himself.
He knew logically he should not be enjoying this, but he was. It was the closest thing he had to riding his bike dangerously through empty parking lots in the two weeks since he had been discharged from the hospital.
JD yelped as the thing he had been fearing the whole time suddenly became a reality. He and the girls had gotten a pretty borderline disturbing sense of entertainment from this, and this was probably th fifth time they had shoved him down. And he hadn’t been hurt, until now. The wheel on one side hit a rough patch on the ground and before he could even process that, he was on the ground, hitting his head on a rock he hadn’t seen before while he heard MacNamara and Veronica yell out to him.
He laid there for a bit before sitting up with a groan. His vision was swimming, but he saw a blue figure already on its way down the hill. Veronica.
Suddenly a voice dragged everyone’s attention from JD. “Hey! What are you guys doing?!” A teacher came practically sprinting into view. “We told you, you can’t shove shopping carts down—” He stopped as he saw what was going on.
As he saw a battered kid at the bottom of the hill with a wheelchair tipped next to him. A few beats of silence followed by a bunch of yelling and telling them off so frantic that none of them really understood what he was saying. But they got the meaning. They had been caught and screwed up.
By the time the teacher stopped yelling he sighed. “One of you go help him and take him to the nurse. I’m writing whoever’s idea this was up.”
“It was mine…” Veronica mumbled.
“You can’t shove shopping carts so you shove a classmate, Sawyer?”
“He agreed!” Duke said, pointing to JD. She didn’t care much about Veronica getting in trouble, but she wouldn’t complain about JD getting in trouble.
“No he didn’t, I harassed him into it!” Veronica called.
“No, I agreed,” JD yelled as loud as he could manage.
The teacher sighed. “I’m writing both of you up, but Sawyer, you have detention for a month!”
Veronica nodded and finished the walk down to JD while the teacher left. She didn’t say it, but it was so worth the month of detention. By the time she got down, JD had already fixed the chair and dragged himself back into it, looking a bit out of it still.
Veronica used the cuff of her sleeve to try and wipe off the blood from JD’s face so she could see how bad the injury was. It didn’t look that bad… “Are you okay?”
JD made a humming sound in reply.
“How many fingers am I holding up?” Veronica asked, holding up all five fingers on one hand.
“Four.”
Veronica frowned. “No, I—”
“The thumb is not a finger,” JD pointed out, smirking at her through the pain.
Veronica huffed, grabbing the handles of the chair and starting to push it back up the hill. “You’re making sarcastic comments already, you’re fine,” She grumbled. “But we’re still taking you to the nurse.”
JD groaned. “I don’t want to go to the nurse, I’m fine.” He hated school nurses. “They’re useless anyways. They never do anything for you. You could have your damn arm cut off and they’d give you a Ziploc bag of ice and tell you to lay down for five minutes then get back to class. Maybe offer to call your mom if you passed out for some reason.”
“We were told to, we’re doing it. We don’t need to be in more trouble than we are. Besides, I’m sure they’ll do more than that.”
Fifteen minutes later JD was holding a Ziploc bag of ice to his forehead while Veronica pushed him down the sidewalk because between being one-handed now and still in pain he couldn’t push himself well. “What did I tell you?”
“Yeah, you were right, that was a useless trip,” Veronica said. She had been given a note to give her parents along with where they had to sign it. “I have no clue how I’m supposed to explain to my parents that I gave into the intrusive thoughts and shoved my disabled boyfriend down a hill.”
JD laughed a bit, imagining the conversation.
“I just won’t tell them at all, I can easily forge their signature well enough to make it seem like they saw it.”
“Until they bring it up during a parent-teacher-conference and then you need to awkwardly explain that you shoved you wheelchair-bound boyfriend down a hill because you found it entertaining and then you get in even worse trouble,” JD pointed out. “And on top of that, how will you explain the detention for a month?”
Veronica sighed. “Good point… Maybe this wasn’t as worth it as I thought.”
“Oh, it was absolutely worth it,” JD said. “It was amazing.”
“You got hurt!” Veronica cried.
“Yeah, and I’ll regret it tomorrow, but as of today? It was absolutely worth it all the way.” He smiled up at Veronica mischievously.
Veronica rolled her eyes, then paused. “You were smiling more than I’d seen you smile in… a long time now.” Ever since JD had ended up paralyzed like this he had stopped smiling as much and it pained her to see. He would smile at her or when something funny happened, but even then, not as much as he used to. “You seemed like you had fun, despite this being the end result.”
“I did,” JD admitted, not sure that that was exactly a good thing. “It felt like a thrill, and ever since I stopped being able to ride my bike, I haven’t exactly had any of those. I mean, I know there’s probably normal… safer ways to experience those… but this was still kinda fun.”
“Well, I don’t think we’ll be doing it again anytime soon.”
“Not true, we just need to find a more secluded spot.”
“This is a horrible idea…” Veronica mumbled.
“That’s not a no.”
“Because I am self-aware and I know that unfortunately I would probably agree for the sake of you having fun,” Veronica admitted reluctantly. The smart and logical part of her knew that they should never do this again and never should have done it in the first place… but the second part of her rationalized that they did it once and it was fine and JD had fun, so they would be fine to do it again…
No. No. Shoving a wheelchair user down a hill was a bad idea….
But then again, they had done it once. And if said wheelchair-user liked it…. was it really such a bad idea?
Yes! Yes it was. No amount of rationalization would change this, it was a one-time thing. They never should have done it in the first place and she wouldn’t be doing it again… Unless he really wanted to… in which case she would no doubt give in and relent. “Maybe let’s start with some… safer thrills and fun,” Veronica said.
“Since when do I like safe?” JD asked.
“Never, that’s the problem.”
The next day, Veronica was walking past the bulletin board with JD and froze. “JD!”
JD jumped a bit and turned around. “What?”
Veronica pointed to the bulletin board where a new sign was hung up:
Attention all students, due to recent events, we have officially banned shoving all wheeled things down hills or slopes of any kind, and we beg of people not to partake in potentially dangerous things involving disabled students for the sake of entertainment as we do not wish to endanger them for the fact that it may cause a laugh or two.
Thank you, your Principal