Dysfluency
“Who is she?” I ask during dinner, as if the question has just popped into my head. I read once that, when surprised, people are more likely to answer honestly.
Auggie shrugs, raising the headphones around his neck. He eats quickly, carries his plate to the sink.
“You need to talk to me,” I say, but he’s gone back to his room. When he was eight, he was bullied on the bus and would come home with bruises on his shins, gum stuck to the back of his hair. He made excuses, but his stutter gave him away, then.
I watch him, waiting for a crack to open. At night, I stand by his door. The flicker of the TV lights the crack above the floorboards. The creaking of the bed, the click of trigger buttons on the video game controller. Good night, I say through the door, and I hold my breath, listening, in case this is the time he says it back.
*
I park behind the science center. Snow begins to fall while I wait for Auggie to round the side of the brick building. A mid-tier state school, close to home. His sisters went out of state. Boys grow up and leave, I hear my grandmother say. But, so far, Auggie stays.
Faces materialize, groups walking together. Boys in hoodies and Patriots hats and girls in leggings and fat boots, heads tilted to look at their phones. I scan the female bodies, wondering which one it could be, as if I could tell just by looking. In my mind, she is small and fair, nervous, perhaps easily flustered. Is she a Catherine or a Kaylee? Why it matters, I’m not sure. Except that she has something I don’t have. She understands Auggie in a way I don’t.
She knows.
There he is, trailing the group with two other boys. They are laughing. At first, I am heartened to see him happy. With friends! Auggie is showing them something on his phone. One boy takes the phone and puts it close to his face and moves his mouth as if he is howling. Auggie looks behind and around him. He takes the phone back. The boy grabs again, and then the other boy reaches for the phone, and Auggie presses it to his chest with his arms folded over and rolls into himself: mine. I can’t tell if it is meant to be a joke, this roughness between them. Or something more? The other boys don’t turn when Auggie leaves them to come toward me. His head is down; he moves in the direction of the car without looking at it.
“We got the hearing date,” I say as he climbs in. I watch his face, which is flushed from the cold. He tosses his backpack onto the rear seat.
“What?” he says. His eyebrows rise and fall. “Oh.”
“Next Tuesday.” One week away. I put the car into reverse.
Auggie nods and wipes his phone on the thigh of his jeans, thumbs in the code.
“I thought we could practice,” I say.
“Practice what?” He is scrolling.
“Your statement. What you’re going to say to the board. They’re going to ask questions. You have to be ready.”