“I want to go to regular school,” Emma said in a small voice, as though she should apologize for it. She didn’t want to seem ungrateful for the work Whitney said she could have. And her mother had thought it was a good career move to be tutored on the set, but she didn’t really have a choice if she wanted a major role on the show. And she didn’t want to betray her mother now. But she missed school and the company of other children. For three years, almost all her friends had been adults.
“Do you want to do any acting when the doctors say you can go back to work?” Whitney needed to know what to tell Robert, Emma’s agent. Emma shook her head and didn’t answer.
“I just want to go to school like a normal kid. Do you think Mommy would be mad at that?” She looked worried.
“No, I don’t think she’d be mad,” Whitney said gently. “I think she’d be proud of you. You have a right to do what you want, Em.”
Emma looked relieved when she said it. “I want to be a doctor like you,” she said shyly.
“You do? Why?” Whitney looked startled. Her going into medicine had been considered an aberration by her parents, and Paige had always said she thought it was weird that Whitney was a shrink. None of them had ever been impressed by her career in medicine. In their family, only show business counted.
“Because you help people,” Emma added.
“There are lots of ways to help people. I just do it this way because I like it.” She smiled at her niece.
“I think I’d like it too.” Whitney wanted to leave the door open for Emma to choose the right path for herself. She’d been through so much, and when she was ready for school, Whitney thought it was important that Emma pursue a path that excited her.
“Bailey and Amy think you’ll be ready to start in September.” That would be almost fourteen months after the accident, which was roughly what they had predicted initially, that her recovery would take at least one to two years, maybe longer, but she had made good progress. Belinda was still coming to work with her on her reading twice a week, and it had been slow going. Emma was having a much harder time learning to read again than she’d had at five when Paige taught her. It seemed harder to get going again, and sometimes her brain just wouldn’t cooperate. It was frustrating for Emma. Sam wasn’t coming to teach them sign language anymore now that Emma could speak again, but he and Belinda were seeing each other. Emma liked playing around with sign language now. She treated it like a game when she didn’t want to speak, or didn’t want people to know what she was saying to Brett or Whitney.
Whitney talked to Belinda about what she thought of the possibility of Emma going to normal school, and if she’d be ready for it in the fall.
“I think she could manage it,” Belinda said cautiously. “She still has memory issues, and she’s having trouble reading. She gets burned out very quickly, which never used to happen. She could study a script for hours and never lose her concentration. It’s a lot harder for her now. But maybe by September she’ll be ready.” It was still five months away, lots of time for Emma to work on her reading and brush up on math, which she seemed to have forgotten completely.
“What grade do you think we should apply for?” Whitney asked, concerned.
“She’ll be ten by the time she starts school in the fall,” Belinda said thoughtfully, “normally that would be fifth grade. A year ago, I’d have said it was no problem. Now, I think you’d be looking at third or fourth, since the accident. And you’re going to need a school that will give her accommodations and take the brain injury into account. You can’t have normal expectations for her, not even in five months.” Whitney nodded. It made sense to her too.
She started looking up schools on the Internet a few days later. Her inquiries were delicate. She explained the circumstances of the accident to the admissions directors, and most of the schools she called said they weren’t equipped to teach a child who had suffered a frontal lobe brain injury or had special needs to such an extreme degree. Eventually, she found three schools that were willing to meet her, and if the conversations went well, she would take Emma to see them, and for some testing, but they made no promises as to whether they would take her or not. Some seemed gun-shy about providing tutoring and accommodations, and Whitney didn’t want to put her in a special school for brain injured kids. She thought Emma could manage a mainstream school, with Belinda to help prepare her, and maybe tutoring later if necessary. She had always been so bright and done so well in school that it was hard to believe she wouldn’t now, and Bailey gently reminded her that a brain injury changed things, and she might have learning difficulties forever. Her personality could even remain altered and subtly different. That was common too.
“Will she ever be normal again?” she asked him with a look of frustration.
“Maybe. But a lot of things change, Whitney. She could have learning disabilities, or react differently than she did before.” Whitney had already noticed that Emma was more serious now, but she’d been in an accident, a coma, the ICU for two months, and lost her mother. It was obvious that she’d be serious after all that. Bailey had explained that a frontal lobe injury could alter personality, memory, ability to learn, change her IQ, and cause psychiatric problems. It seemed so unfair to Whitney. Why did Emma have to pay the price of all that because her mother had been texting and driving? Whitney had to force herself not to be angry at Paige all over again. What was she thinking? Or why wasn’t she thinking? She should have been if it was going to impact the rest of Emma’s life. But at least she was alive, hearing, and speaking again, and some of her memory had come back, even if it was far from perfect. And there was no point being angry at Paige, it wouldn’t change a thing. They had to look at the future and leave the past behind.
* * *
—
Whitney made appointments at the three schools, and didn’t say anything to Emma. She didn’t want her to be disappointed if they didn’t think she’d be a match with the school after meeting with Whitney, or if Whitney didn’t want her to apply. Two of the schools were well-known private schools and the person she spoke with on the phone had sounded somewhat pretentious but had agreed to meet her. The third school was also private but more alternative, sounded more creative, and was much smaller. Whitney felt as though she were applying herself when she went to see them. And for Emma’s sake, she had to get the decision right. Her future academic life was at stake here.
The first two made it clear to her that by the time Emma would start classes in the fall, they expected her to be up to speed and caught up on English and math work, even if she needed some remedial work later, which sounded challenging and like a lot of pressure to Whitney. The third school was willing to design a curriculum for Emma, at the level she would be in the fall, with different levels for different subjects, and they were prepared to help her catch up, as needed. They thought it interesting that she had gone to school on the set for two years before the accident. And they were optimistic that they’d be able to bring her up to speed in all subjects in the course of the school year. They had another student similar to Emma who had nearly died of meningitis and missed a year of school, after suffering a stroke and being in a coma for three months at fourteen. She didn’t have a brain injury, but she had memory lapses too. The school seemed ideal to Whitney, and she told Emma about it that night. There were only a hundred and ten students in the school, and the classes were very small. They were willing to offer Emma a place, and wanted to evaluate her in May or June. They suggested she work on her reading until then.
“Do you think I can do it, Whit?” Emma asked her, panicked, when Whitney told her about the school.
“I think you can. You’ll have to do your speech therapy, and work with Belinda on reading and math, but she said she’d help you.”
“What if they think I’m stupid?” She had tears in her eyes when she said it. She knew she was different now.
“They won’t. You’re not stupid. You’ve been sick for almost a year. You have a brain injury. But they’re going to accommodate you, and I think you’ll be able to catch up.”
“Maybe I should stick with tutors,” Emma said, looking nervous.
“I think it would be more fun for you to be in school with other kids, don’t you? You’ll be lonely if you’re just tutored at home.” Emma nodded. It was why she wanted to go to school, but she was scared too. “Why don’t you try it?” Emma wanted to, she just didn’t see how she could do it. And when she got nervous, sometimes she still had trouble speaking, or would forget her words entirely for a while.
“Why don’t we do something fun to take the pressure off? You can work with Belinda. But why don’t you and I take some kind of classes? Dance lessons, or singing, something we can do together.” It seemed like a good distraction, and she could see that Emma liked the idea as soon as she suggested it.
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Swimming? Cooking? A dance class?” Emma had forgotten how to swim too, and Whitney wanted her to learn before the summer, so she’d be safe around their pool. She didn’t want her to drown if she fell in. She had heard too many horror stories about kids who couldn’t swim, like Bailey’s brother.
“What about tap?” Emma suggested. “I’ve always wanted to take it.” Whitney knew she’d taken it for several years, but it was obvious Emma didn’t remember. It didn’t matter if she took it again, as long as she enjoyed it. Swimming would be more useful, but she could do that too.
“I’ll check it out,” Whitney promised, and called a dance studio on the way to Malibu that offered tap lessons. The traffic would be awful, but they were nice on the phone, and Whitney signed them both up for a beginner’s class, which she needed and Emma didn’t. It sounded like fun, and Whitney thought it would be good exercise for both of them and a good mother-daughter-type activity. Their first class was the following week.