Where You See Yourself by Claire Forrest

Author:Claire Forrest
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.

Inside Prospect’s Disability Services office, black-and-white photos of New York City landmarks hang on the walls: the Brooklyn Bridge, Times Square, Central Park, Broadway. I wonder how I would even get to all of those places.

On the Maps app, I check “subway” and “accessible trip” on the subway route from Park Slope to Manhattan for the internship and a pop-up on my phone says, “Please be advised there may be elevator outages along your route.”

I knew it wasn’t going to be easy. I’ve done my research. But I also know I owe it to myself to try. And so, dammit, I am going to try.

“Effie?” A woman who looks to be in her midforties has come out an office door and into the waiting area. “I’m Cynthia, the coordinator of Disability Services here at Prospect. So great to finally meet you.”

She leads us through the door to a side office full of cubicles, and to her own private one. She’s already pulled out one of the chairs, so I wheel in, and Mom and Dad sit in chairs on either side of me. Cynthia sits down at her desk across from me, a file folder in front of her, which, with a jolt, I realize is about me.

“I have to say,” she says, clapping her hands together a bit for emphasis, “we all have been so excited for your visit, Effie. Prospect has needed a student like you for a long time.”

A student like me? I’m not sure how to respond to that, so I just nod.

We chitchat, but it’s stalling. So I take a deep breath and jump in.

“I met some students today and they were wonderful. It makes me so excited about the prospect of joining your student body.” Cynthia smiles at me, and I gather myself. “Do you have other students on campus who use wheelchairs?”

Her smile quickly turns into a tight line. “At this moment, we do not. We had a student who used a wheelchair with us for a while, but he chose not to continue his studies here.”

Mom pipes up, her voice stiff and straightforward. “Chose not to, as in … ?”

“He transferred to another institution,” she clarifies. Mom nods, and I sit still. This school is well over 150 years old. She can’t possibly be saying … “But before that … at some point …” I press.

Cynthia removes the reading glasses she was using to look over my file. “Effie, your application is so strong. Your drive makes you exactly the type of student we want to see go out into the world and make a difference.”

I need her to stop dancing around it and tell me a number that is too low but is still something.

“At this point, no, I can’t say we have had a student in a wheelchair successfully graduate from Prospect.” Oh. I feel a thud that must be my heart hitting my stomach. I grimace slightly, then look down.

Imagine saying that out loud about any other minority. Imagine the size of the recruitment efforts to change it if it was for anyone else.

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