Normal

The next morning, Billy, Eddie, Jeff and Olney were too nervous to do anything but head over to the Athletic Center for the swimming tryouts. Eddie was in his wheelchair with his little leg folded up in the seat. Olney was so nervous and disorganized he kept hopping back to his room for things he had forgotten. Billy had his cane and his shades. Jeff was locked up and couldn’t speak. Situation normal.

Finally they were ready to leave. They slapped hands. "All for one and one for all," and the four musketeers were out the door.

When they got to the AC, they could tell they were early. Things had not opened up yet but the schedules for the tryouts were on the counter outside the swimming office, one for the regular team and one for the disabled team. Jeff got two of each. They all looked at them, even Billy squinted at one. Jeff found his name. There were three things he had to do: swim several distances three different ways, fill out a bunch of forms and get assessed for cardio fitness. Jeff made sure he knew when he was scheduled for each of the three activities. It was going to take almost five hours because there were quite a few names on the list.

Then Jeff looked for Olney’s name but before he could find it Olney yelled, "Hey! My name’s not on the list!"

Olney started knocking on the swimming office door. The secretary opened the door and told them the office wasn’t open yet and that no one was there. Then, she closed the door. Jeff looked around for somebody to help and saw a bunch of guys from yesterday’s obnoxious group smirking. Josh was with them, staring at Eddie and Olney. Jeff went over and managed to say "Hi." He tried to be calm so he could ask him about Olney’s name on the list. He finally got across what he wanted.

"These guys scratched Olney’s name off the regular list and wrote it on the disabled list." Josh wouldn’t look Jeff in the eye.

"Yeah. We scratched his name off. The other team’s for cripples. Our team isn’t."

Jeff grabbed Josh by the arm and pulled him over to Olney who was now crutching around frantically looking for someone, anyone, to help. At this point, the big muscular guy from yesterday came down the hall, said ‘Hi!’ to them and unlocked the door to the swimming office. As he went in, Olney followed close behind. "My name’s not on the list!"

"Let’s see." He took the list Olney was waving at him. Jeff pushed Josh in the door in front of him. The guy looked at the list. "You’re right, it’s not. I saw you sign up. What happened?"

Jeff poked Josh and pushed him forward. Josh wasn’t going to say anything and Jeff was beyond speech, so he raised his arm and kept pointing down at the top of Josh’s head.

"Um. Well, the guys out there scratched his name off this list and put it on the list for the other team." Jeff poked Josh. "Um, they said the other team’s for ...." Jeff poked him again. "Um ... cripples and this one isn’t."

"WHAT?!?!? I CAN’T BELIEVE THIS!" Angrily, the man slammed down his gym bag and asked the secretary for the clipboards with the original signup sheets. "Come on!" He walked out of the swimming office with all of them following. He asked Josh to point out the ones that made the change. "HEY! COME OVER HERE!" he yelled in a very commanding voice. They came over. "I hear you scratched this guy’s name off this list." He waved the clipboard around.

"He has a disability. He signed up on the wrong sheet. We wrote his name on the other sheet, the one for guys with disabilities."

"What are your names?" They looked around at each other. "Give me your names NOW!" They gave their names and he put a check next to them on the signup sheet. "OK. You’ve got fifteen seconds to decide which one of you is NOT going to be in the tryouts today. That slot will go to Olney." He looked at his watch. The guys were dumbstruck. All of them wanted to be in the tryouts. A couple of seconds passed.

Olney, Jeff, Billy, Eddie and Josh and the now sheepish group of obnoxious guys followed the man through the door into the swimming office and down a hall to a small windowless office in the back. He threw his gym bag on the desk and went around behind it. They all crowded in, looking at him across the desk.

"Close the door. I’m Coach Gelling. I’m the cardio coach. It’s my job to monitor the level of cardio fitness for members of the swimming teams. Plural. Teams. I’m going to talk with you while I change into my work clothes." He took off his jacket, tie and shirt. He hung them up on hangers from a rack in the corner of his office. He had a beautiful smooth muscular chest and enormous smooth muscular arms. He sat down to take off his pants, shoes and socks.

"One of the thing all of you have to learn is that everyone has a disability, some just more visible than others. Physical disabilities are more obvious than others are and so people often react more negatively to them than to others. That’s wrong. Don’t judge people by the disability. Judge them by how well they develop what they are able to do."

He removed his pants and boxers and hung them up. He had some sort of prosthetic left leg. Turning around to face them, he bent over and began to unlock and untie the leg to take it off. Eventually it was loose enough. He reached down and pulled a small left leg out of the prosthesis. The leg was thinner than his right leg and it was only about half the length. Jeff craned his head to see the leg. Even though it was small, it was well muscled. Coach Gelling stroked the leg, flexed the knee and ankle and wiggled his toes. Except for a small amount of pubic hair, the hair on the top of his head and his eyebrows, his body was hairless. He was cut.

"I was born with a condition called PFFD. It makes the thighbone short, among other problems. The usual recommendation is to amputate part of the leg. My parents wouldn’t let them do that. They encouraged me to use the leg, as is, and excel at everything I tried."

He put the small foot down in his chair and took some steps using both of his legs -- showing that he could walk with the short leg if he had some sort of equalizer, like a chair, under it. It was clear he liked showing off.

"Because I had a short leg, I liked swimming. In the swimming pool, I could walk just fine without any help." He tapped the chair with his knuckle.

"I had a membership in a swim club. The club had a team and I wanted to try out for it. You wouldn’t believe the opposition from other members. I finally had to change clubs so I could swim on a team. I had my revenge a couple of years later when my new club swam against my old club. We skunked them. My own performance was a big part of the victory." Coach Gelling raised his short leg, put the small foot against the edge of the desk and did some muscle stretches.

"Almost twenty years have passed since then. I thought we were beyond this kind of thing. I am really angry you guys did that to a potential teammate. Olney was an excellent swimmer in high school. Coach Renger thinks he has lots of promise. Olney could make the difference between us winning or losing competitions if he makes the team. He deserves a chance just like anyone else."

Coach Gelling reached into his gym bag and pulled out an SU athletic shirt and a pair of SU athletic shorts. He put them on and hopped back to the corner to get an underarm crutch. While he did this, Jeff patted Olney on the back. He didn’t respond. He was looking at the front of Josh’s athletic shorts. Then he looked at Jeff’s. He frowned. Both were tenting out.

"Good luck to all of you. Josh, stay for a minute. I’d like to talk with you."

The morning was long and boring. Mostly they waited around until their names were called for each part. Jeff tried to cheer for Olney when he swam. He swam well. Jeff swam well, too, but didn’t hear anyone cheer for him.

Billy and Eddie swam on the other side of the pool. Jeff went over when they swam and tried to cheer them on. He couldn’t tell how well they did.

There was a nice looking guy sitting in a corner at that side of the pool. Jeff went over and tried to introduce himself. His name was Kevin Murphy and he was a double amputee: left arm and left leg. Jeff wanted to get a good look at his stumps. They were pretty short. He tried speaking with him but he was very shy and Jeff was nervous. Kevin tried to sit so that his stumps were hidden in the corner. He seemed to be ashamed of them. The more Jeff leaned over to look around him and see them, the more he tried to hide them. When Jeff looked into his hazel eyes, he saw fear. Eventually Jeff figured he was making Kevin nervous so he said he would see him later and went back to the "not obviously disabled" side of the pool.

All of them had to turn in the forms their parents had signed, the forms filled out by their doctors and even then they had to fill out more forms. It seemed endless. The paperwork was harder than the swimming.

Cardio fitness evaluation was the last thing they had to do. Coach Gelling had several assistants helping him. Jeff was surprised to see Josh was one of them. They weighed Jeff, attached electrodes to his chest taking readings while he ran on a treadmill and put a pincer on his abdomen to measure how much body fat he had. They also had him breathe through a plastic mouthpiece while resting and running. Last, he had to climb into a cage and they weighed him underwater while he held his breath.

It was interesting how Coach Gelling used his underarm crutch. It had an additional bar below the one for his hand. He stood on that bar with the foot of his short leg supporting his weight. Once, when his hands were full, he supported his weight under his arm and maneuvered the crutch by grasping the bar with the toes of his smaller foot. Very impressive.

Olney had to undergo cardio fitness evaluation, too, except that he used his hands and arms to crank an exercise machine instead of running on the treadmill. It turned out he was in better shape than Jeff was. It was all very interesting. The best part was that they used computers in all their tests. Jeff was extremely interested in how everything worked.

Coach Gelling seemed to take a special interest in Olney. So did Jeff. So did Josh. Eventually Olney and Jeff were both done so they waited around for Billy and Eddie. Billy used the treadmill and Eddie used the crank exercise machine. Both were in much better shape than Jeff thought possible. Finally all of them were done with the cardio fitness evaluation and they planned to head back to their residence hall for a well-deserved shower or bath.

It turned out that Billy and Eddie still had more to do: they had to be evaluated for the disability classification under which they would compete. This was going to take a while, so Olney and Jeff decided to head back to the residence hall to shower.

Jeff asked Eddie to wait for Billy and make sure to walk him back so he wouldn’t get lost. Eddie didn’t answer.

When they got back, Jeff asked Olney if they could shower together. He agreed. He put his right arm around Jeff as he did before and Jeff soaped him up and this time Olney once again rubbed himself against Jeff. He still didn’t get hard although Jeff did. Jeff was able to speak more clearly because he was talking quietly in Olney’s ear although he still stuttered some because he was nervous.

"Thank you. You’ve got great HA-HA-hands. I like the way you TA-TA-touch me. I like TA-TA-touching you, too. You HA-HA-have an awesome leg. That KA-KA-cannon of yours is HA-HA-huge. I think it’s bigger than Eddie’s lump. I wish we KA-KA-could always shower TA-TA-together." Jeff hugged him while he held his dick in his hand. Olney enjoyed showering with him.

"Only when I’m not nervous. When I get KA-KA-comfortable with a person who TA-TA-turns me on, I’m not as nervous and I get HA-HA-hard a lot. Like now. Will you let me TA-TA-take KA-KA-care of you?"

Jeff was hoping Olney would let him do more, but Olney turned away and they finished up and dried off. Jeff knelt and tried to dry off Olney’s stuff. Olney let Jeff play around a bit, but wouldn’t let him do anything serious. Both enjoyed the shower even though they felt frustrated because nothing much had happened between them.

They went back to their rooms to get dressed for lunch. As Jeff came out to wait for Olney in their lounge, Eddie rolled in.

"I don’t know. Behind me, I guess." Eddie rolled into his bedroom. Olney came out and Jeff tried to tell him that Eddie hadn’t walked Billy back. Jeff was stuttering so badly that it was hard for Olney to understand him. Eventually, he did.

They went out of the residence hall and looked around outside the building. No Billy.

"Why don’t you walk all the way back to the AC and start checking from there and I will start checking from around here."

"OK." Jeff headed back toward the AC while Olney crutched around the corner of their building.

Jeff made it back to the AC in record time. The swimming tryouts were over so he knocked on the door of Coach Gelling’s office.

Jeff was upset. He couldn’t speak so he wrote him a note about Billy not making it back yet.

Jeff thanked him and went over to look around in the team locker room. Billy wasn’t there either, but he did find his folded-up cane under a bench. That upset him even more.

Jeff hadn’t seen him on his way over to the AC, so he searched around the outside of the AC running up and down various paths leading away from the building. Next to the library there was a small, enclosed garden a short distance from the AC, some sort of secret garden. Jeff went into it and saw Billy sitting quietly on a bench looking down wearing his shades. He sat down next to him. He was so upset he couldn’t speak.

With some effort, he told him he found it in the locker room. He asked him what he was doing in The Secret Garden.

"I feel safe here. I’m waiting here for sunset so I can find my way back. I got lost. I fell down. I don’t need help to get back."

"I wish I were normal. I wish I could see like you. I hate being helpless like this. I want to be normal. I never knew my dick was normal until yesterday. I don’t know anything about sex. I didn’t know about foreskin. I still don’t know anything about girls. I don’t know anything."

He told Jeff that not being able to see well was really bad socially. He asked him if not being able to speak also hurt socially.

"I think it’s easier for those with an orthopedic disability. They aren’t isolated socially like we are. I think it’s tougher for us."

Jeff remembered what Coach Gelling had said in his office, so he replied, "Nope."

Jeff helped him up and they left The Secret Garden. He led him back to the door of the AC that they used yesterday and today. From there, Jeff asked him to lead him back to their quad. With his cane, Billy started to lead him back. They met Olney on the way.

"What happened to you?" Olney was looking at the scrape and, now larger, bruise on Billy’s arm.

"I lost my cane. Then I got lost on the way back and fell down. Jeff found my cane and then he found me. I’m showing him the way back to our quad."

Olney looked at Jeff and cocked his head. Jeff nodded. Olney laughed. "OK. You can show me the way back, too." Olney patted Jeff on the back and they continued on their way.

Eddie was nowhere to be seen. They figured he was taking a bath. Jeff asked Olney to get take-out from the cafeteria while he took Billy to the shower/bath room to give him a good soak in the bathtub. Eddie wasn’t there either. While Billy soaked in warm water they talked. As they talked, Jeff relaxed and was able to speak quietly without stuttering.

"Don’t you ever get upset that you can’t speak well? Don’t you ever wish you were normal?"

"Yep." Jeff remembered that the book containing the short story they had listened to the previous night also had two other stories. He sat on the floor next to Billy and spoke very quietly. "There is another story in that book, ‘Labyrinth.’ We should listen to it tonight."

"The ones I have are about the best I ever found. Glare keeps me from seeing and light coming in the sides hurts, too."

Jeff told him that he needed the "hi-tech" kind that wrapped around to the sides.

"I don’t want the kind that make me look like a blindo. I hate pity. I hate stupid people trying to be helpful. That’s why I don’t usually wear sunglasses indoors."

"You don’t look like a blindo. You look like a real stud. I don’t pity you. I’ve got my own problems."

A few minutes later, Olney came back with their food. Jeff asked him if he knew where Eddie was.

Olney and Jeff sat on the floor next to the tub and ate lunch with Billy as he soaked. Billy was starting to develop a very large bruise along his side along with the bruise on his arm.

"No, I don’t, but another leg would be nice. It would take the strain off my knee."

"I wish I could see like you can. I wish I were normal. I can’t even see my own dick. I never saw anyone else’s until yesterday. Thank you for showing me yours."

"I miss being independent. I don’t want to depend on others. I wish.... I wish.... I just wish I could see the food in the cafeteria so I could tell what to ask for!"

Eventually they had to go back to their quad to get dressed up in order to attend the new student convocation in the afternoon. Attendance was required of all new students. It was in the fieldhouse. A bunch of academic types in impressive-looking robes gave speeches. Awesomely boring. Jeff saw Dr. Testeronomy, the nice lady from the math department, dressed up in a robe but she didn’t speak. She probably wasn’t allowed to speak because she would have said something sensible and then shut up – definitely a violation of the rules.

The most exciting part of the ceremony occurred when Jeff nudged Eddie’s crutches and they fell against Olney’s crutches and both sets crashed to the floor. It woke a lot of people, including the current speaker who promptly dropped his papers on the floor. The whole audience laughed and applauded and, miracle of miracles, the speaker sat down and the convocation was over.

After the convocation, Jeff headed over to the speech therapy department to talk to them about how he stuttered less when he tried to speak quietly. They ran their usual tests and exercises. Then, a lady Jeff had never seen before asked him to whisper. He tried it and, sure enough, he didn’t stutter at all. He had never tried whispering before because he was sure he couldn’t do it. Jeff was stunned. He spent some time sitting and speaking quietly with the lady. She asked him about the convocation. He told her it was a real fiasco. He told her about the crutches. She laughed.

"Sounds normal for a new student convocation. I went once. Never again." She asked him to keep notes on how well he spoke, when it was better and when worse. He promised to keep her informed.

On his way back to his quad, he stopped off at the main plaza to see the campus organization fair. Every campus organization was supposed to have a booth. He found the gay-straight student alliance and the organization for students with disabilities. He signed up to join both and took some brochures.

Jeff saw Kevin walking around there so he said, "Hello." He was wearing a prosthetic arm and a prosthetic leg. Jeff showed him the brochures he had taken. Kevin wasn’t interested.

As he passed booths for fraternities, members would hand Jeff brochures and ask him to rush them but most lost interest when Jeff tried to speak with them: fraternities are cool and stuttering is definitely not cool. Jeff didn’t see any students with disabilities at any of the fraternity booths. Definitely not cool.

Back at their quad, Jeff put the brochures he had collected on the big table in the lounge and went into his room. None of his quadmates were around. He got on his computer and searched the web for Billy’s condition and sunglasses. He found out that Billy’s eyes were mainly sensitive to blue light and that sunglasses, in order to be effective, had to be red. There were some beautiful pictures of "hi-tech" wrap-around sunglasses with polarized red lenses. They looked sweet. Jeff wrote the web address on a piece of paper and put it on Billy’s desk.

Classes started the next day, Wednesday. Jeff would be taking
Calculus III
Developmental English (Olney called it "bonehead English.")
Introduction to Engineering for Computer Engineers
History I (Western Civilization)
Physics I

He was ahead in math but behind in English. He got ready by making up a schedule for each day of the week, listing what he would do during each period. He emailed all his teachers, telling them about his speech problem and requesting that he be able to ask questions via email. He checked his books and skimmed over the first two chapters in part three of the calculus book.

Eventually he got bored studying. He surfed the web and found a site that was about a boy and his dog – or rather a dog and his boy. It was very interesting but sad, too. The story made Jeff feel that perhaps the universe wasn’t the cold uncaring place he always thought it was. Maybe he could be a person who cared about others the way the dog did ... and then maybe somebody might care about him, too. Maybe the dog’s life was somehow a lesson.

By then, it was getting late, so he went to dinner by himself in their residence hall’s cafeteria.

None of his quadmates were there, so he looked around for someone else to sit with. Josh attracted his attention and he was sitting alone, so Jeff went over to eat with him. He spoke very quietly and was easily able to ask him about joining the gay-straight alliance and the disabled student organization. Josh was so embarrassed by what Jeff was saying that it made Jeff embarrassed too.

Jeff asked him about working for Coach Gelling and Josh told him that he had been invited to join the cardio group right after their meeting in Coach’s office. Jeff told him he was sorry he had been unable to try out for the team. Josh told him that he would be allowed to try out later if he still wanted to.

The more Jeff talked with Josh, the more he realized Josh was sad. Jeff asked him why. He shrugged. He asked him about his quadmates. He said he didn’t have any, that he had a small single room. Jeff told him about their entertainment last night and told him he planned to suggest the same sort of thing for tonight. Jeff invited him to phone them to see if and when they were going to have the next short story read to them by the machine. Jeff told him he wanted him to come over and listen with them. They exchanged phone numbers.

After dinner, Jeff went back to his quad. Still no quadmates. He wondered what they were doing. He spent an hour getting ready for classes the next day and surfing the web some more. Finally after the sun set, he heard the door and they were back. He asked Olney where they’d been.

"Billy was taking Eddie and me around campus showing us where his classes would be tomorrow. Eddie has trouble getting up steps so he showed us all the ramps and special entrances to the buildings, too."

Jeff told them he thought they’d missed dinner in their cafeteria. Billy suggested pizza.

Jeff told them he’d like to have Billy’s reading machine read them the second story, "Labyrinth," from the book of short stories. He told them he wanted to invite Josh to hear it with them.

Jeff asked them to call Josh. Neither Eddie nor Olney wanted to. Finally Billy volunteered. Jeff dialed the phone and Billy asked him for his preference in pizza and soda and invited him to come over in about half an hour.

Eddie ordered three pizzas and three bottles of soda. Jeff thought it was a lot since Josh and he had already eaten, but didn’t say anything.

Eventually Josh arrived, the food soon after. They decided to sit out in their lounge and eat around the big table with Billy’s computer speakers aimed at them from the door to his room.

Jeff told Billy he would keep him in pizza and soda. They all settled down with the pizza and soda spread out over the big table and Billy picked up several slices of pizza and got a cup of soda. He started the story.

Billy stopped the machine from time to time so they could refill their cups of soda and get another slice of pizza. No one said very much until the story was over. Then they said they really liked it.

Josh was especially vocal. "Did you hear that? ‘Then don’t wish to be normal.’ ... ‘Wish to be great!’ I really like that story."

Olney couldn’t wait to reply. "That’s easy for you to say. You’re able-bodied. You’re ‘normal.’ Nobody stares at you. Nobody scratches your name off lists because you have a disability." Billy had come out of his room and was standing next to him. Olney grabbed his arm and showed it to Josh. "Look at this. Billy got lost and fell down today. You don’t have to worry about that. You’re ‘normal.’ You don’t know what you’re talking about."

Josh kept looking down. "It’s true. I do. All my life I was different. I never met anyone else like me. No one in my family was like me. No one in school was like me. I was never ‘normal.’ Everyone told fag jokes. Everyone either pitied or despised or made fun of guys with disabilities.

"There was a guy at my high school with Cerebral Palsy. He had trouble keeping his balance. Guys would deliberately bump into him to see if they could get him to fall down or drop something. If he fell down, they kicked him. If he dropped something they kicked it down the hall so he would have to go after it. They made fun of the way he walked and the way he talked. I didn’t. I thought he deserved to be treated fairly. I tried being nice to him but he didn’t like me. He said he didn’t like ‘queers.’

"I have never fit in anywhere. That’s why I hung around with those guys who scratched your name off the tryout list. For once I wanted to fit in. For once, I wanted to be ‘normal.’ For once I wanted to have friends. I was wrong. I’m sorry."

"That’s why I liked the story. If I can’t be ‘normal,’ at least maybe I can be great at what I am! And maybe someday, like Taura in the story, I hope I will find somebody who likes me for being me. Maybe someday somebody will love me." At that point, his voice broke.

Jeff was so upset that even though he was speaking quietly he stuttered a lot. He told them that he had felt exactly the same way. No one in his family stuttered. His dad thought he was a loser because he couldn’t learn to speak properly. His mother thought he didn’t try hard enough to be ‘normal.’ After his dad divorced his mom he never saw him again. When his dad left, he didn’t even say good bye to his sister or him.

Jeff said that his older sister told him that no one would ever love him because he was a weirdo, because he wasn’t ‘normal.’ No one in school had ever liked him. No one cared about him except for his grandmother.

He told them he came to SU hoping that he could find a group of kindred spirits and was so happy he had such a great group of quadmates. He was really happy he had met Josh, too. Maybe instead of ‘normal’ he could be great at something.

Then, Billy gave his reaction. "Jeff came looking for me today when I got lost and fell down. No one except my parents has ever done that. I got lost and fell down because I was pretending to be ‘normal’ and find the way back on my own without my cane. Eddie and Olney helped me out so I know where my classes are tomorrow. My quadmates make me feel secure because they treat me like I’m part of a family, a family where I fit in. I always felt secure at home because I knew my family loved me but, still, I didn’t fit in. I always wanted to fit in. I never did because I wasn’t ‘normal’. I wasn’t like them. Maybe instead of being ‘normal,’ I can be great, too."

Eddie was the last to speak. "I was born in Romania. I had polio as a baby and my parents put me in an institution when I was three because I was so badly crippled. They visited me a lot and every time they left, I cried. I wanted to go home with them but I couldn’t because I wasn’t like them. I wasn’t ‘normal.’

"Romania is a poor country and my family was poor so there were no crutches or braces for me. I dragged myself around on my hands and left knee for four years in that institution. If I braced my left leg in a corner, I could sort-of stand. My right leg was completely paralyzed. I couldn’t use it at all. I just dragged it around behind me. There were many months when I never got to go outside. I had to stay inside because I wasn’t ‘normal.’

"When I was seven, my cousins from America came to visit my family. My family took them to see me and my cousins agreed to adopt me and bring me to the states so I could receive therapy. I was excited about coming here because I wanted to become ‘normal.’ The people you met, my mom and dad, are actually the ones who adopted me. They took me to a doctor who straightened my legs and put braces on me. I still couldn’t use my right leg, but I learned to walk using crutches and my left leg. My cousins were very disappointed I couldn’t use my right leg to walk better. Later, I was riding a motorcycle with a friend and we had an accident. I lost most of my right leg. All that was left is this lump.

"All my life I wanted to be ‘normal.’ I wanted to get out of that institution and go home to my family but I couldn’t because I wasn’t ‘normal.’ I couldn’t go outside to play because I wasn’t ‘normal.’ I wanted to come to America to become ‘normal.’ I rode on the motorcycle because I wanted to appear ‘normal’. I’m not ‘normal.’ I never will be ‘normal.’ Maybe I can be great at something, too."

Eddie, Josh and Jeff cleaned up the soda and pizza mess and took it to the trash chute. Jeff gave Josh some of the brochures and thanked him for coming.

"Thank you. I really appreciate the invitation. I’d like to hang around with you guys more if you’d like that."

Jeff told him he would. Eddie said he’d like to be friends with Josh. Eddie and Jeff shook hands with Josh and he headed back to his room.

When Eddie and Jeff got back, the light in the lounge was turned off and the doors to the bedrooms were closed. When Jeff got in bed, he remembered to tell Billy about the web address on his desk and about the "hi-tech" sunglasses. They got out of bed and he showed Billy the website. He looked at it and thanked Jeff.

"I really appreciate this. I hope these tinted glasses help, but even if they don’t, I appreciate the thought. I also am grateful for your help today. You’re a great guy." Billy gave Jeff a hug. He hugged him back.

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