She went back to school like a different kid. When the girl named Presley asked her something rude again that fall, I heard Mia told her, calm as anything, “My legs don’t work, but my brain does great, thanks for asking.” And apparently the whole class laughed — with Mia, not at her — and after that, somehow, Mia was one of the popular ones. Kids wanted to sit with her. The chair stopped being the thing they saw. She made it stop.
She wrote a speech that year for a school assembly. Stood up in front of the whole school in her chair with a microphone — she wasn’t scared of microphones anymore, not after Claire’s wedding — and she talked about the accident, and the wheelchair, and the difference between a body that doesn’t work and a person who’s broken. Her teacher told me later there wasn’t a dry eye in the gym. They gave her a standing ovation.
