Mom clucks her tongue when the only two handicapped spaces are taken by cars without handicapped tags. She’s called a tow truck a time or two. But today she parks along the curb and hurries to get me out. She’s already got her game face on. It’s her advocate mode, the mom setting she developed from years of fighting for insurance to pay for things like new shoes to go over my braces and fighting school for extended time between classes and fighting teachers who thought CP was the same thing as a learning disability. Advocate mode accomplishes a lot. But it also landed me with a bodysuit I had to wear under my clothes for three years to help me sit up straighter. It was white with pink stars and I hated it. So there is a downside.

Today as we roll through the double doors (no handicapped button), Mom’s face says, We are the ability in disability. Hear us roar.

Oh boy.

But the problem, as I see from the get-go, is that there’s nobody to roar at. There’s only one person at the front desk when we get into the office, and she’s knitting. When she comes around to meet us, I see she is short and round and red cheeked and kind of looks like a garden gnome.

“Hi, you two. I’m Mrs. Peabody, just a volunteer up here at the front while everyone’s in meetings.” She cups my face in her hand and calls me “dear.” She smells like rose soap. “We’ve been expecting you. Let me take you on back to the principal’s office.”

Mrs. Rutherford, the principal, is a tall, thin woman, and when she bends down to shake my hand, she reminds me of Olive Oyl from Popeye. A picture of the lake hangs next to her diplomas in her office, and she has one of those big old leather desk chairs that looks like a throne.

“So nice to meet you both. How are you settling in?”

“We’re fine. Just fine.” Mom gives her a firm handshake and then pulls out a folder with my name across the front in huge block letters. She bought a label maker last fall, and I am embarrassed beyond all measure that she has actually put it to use.

“Good to hear. Give your mother and father a hello from me. I didn’t get a chance to speak with them at the Christmas Eve service.”

Mom blushes, but I don’t think Mrs. Rutherford meant anything by it. She looks like someone who says exactly what she means. No more. No less.

She keeps going. “Well, as you will come to see, we’re a small establishment here. There are only forty students in the sixth-grade class. One hundred fifty in the entire middle school.”

“Yes, so I’ve heard.”