Sara rattles over the planks just behind me. “You make me think of my grandmother!” We roll toward the lake. “She can’t cook—not even rice—but she can sure tell other people what to do. She calls it ‘executive ability.’ You’ve got it too!”

It’s true. I don’t need to hold the camera; I can explain what to do. Maybe it’s odd, but what else am I supposed to do?

At the lake, I get a good shot of Sue and Carole together on the dock. I get Peggy Jo strapping a life vest on Mary and Yvonne making rabbit ears over Denise’s swimming-cap-covered head. I want a picture of Sara working on her drawing.

“Sorry,” Sue says, “Sara’s picture can’t be taken.”

“Oh, yeah, doc-tor’s or-der.” I raise my eyebrow at Sara, and she smirks back at me. I leave my camera with her and stomp cheerfully into the lake.

*   *   *

“Did you take the photos in your scrapbook?” Sara asks.

“I mean, other than all those telethon glamor shots.”

“Most of them.” I open my mouth to beef stew. Camp Courage stew.

“You know, things really are upside down in this world.”

I raise an eyebrow.

“The more severely disabled you are, the crappier job you get, if you get a job at all. Like, maybe, stuffing envelopes, on a piece-rate.”

Peggy Jo joins the conversation. “A wheelchair girl who used to go to my school got a job at a workshop drawing big Xs on cardboard cones from a textile mill.”

“Oh, God, what a life!” With glassy eyes, Sara pantomimes picking up cones and drawing Xs. Then her eyes get sharp again. “Why did they want Xs on the cones?”

“I don’t know. She never said. She was just glad to have a job.”

“You see, Norms give us drudge work and call it rehabilitation, never mind if we have executive ability. No telling what we could do if we had two or three Norms to boss!”

I don’t see myself having two or three Norms to boss—or putting Xs on cones. I’ll go to college and maybe get into computers. I’ve never seen a computer, but I think I could be a programmer. I’m good with details, and I can type, very slowly but accurately. I don’t know, but I do know that I won’t wind up in some workshop. Maybe that’s what the kids at Butner and in crippled schools do, but I’m one of the top students at Crosstown High. Our top students go to college.

I suck some iced tea through a straw. “I plan to go to col-lege to get a job using my brain. In com-pu-ters.”