Old Friends & Other Strangers

Here's the first part of chapter one. Wendy Weller is narrating. Below is a picture of what Danny/Charlie might look like with his girlfriend, Winnie McCallister:

I had never seen a dead body before. My eyes darted around the room, looking for something to focus on other than the coffin. I clenched my hands together trying to keep them from shaking as dread wrapped around me making it hard to breath. Staring at the floor, I shuffled forward before looking over the side of the casket wondering if I could have done anything differently.

Mixed feelings whirled inside me. I was shocked at first, but somewhere buried underneath all the emotional rubble, something nagged me. I felt incomplete, as if there was something I should say or do, but I was totally clueless as to what. Fortunately, Charlie figured it out.

I didn’t know him very well at first. Actually, most people kept their distance. Looking back on it, I don’t know why. He wasn’t very different from anyone else, but he had the look you associate with kids like him.

He had a flattened face with puffy eyes that bulged out, like he just woke up and wasn’t sure where he was. And he wore coke-bottle glasses that made him look like he was staring at the world from the inside of a fish bowl. He’d scrunch his face up if he wasn’t sure about something, which was most of the time. But his smile would draw you in. Now that I think about it, he really was quite charming, and he had a way of ducking his head to the side and aww-shucking his way through life.

He was pretty nice once you got to know him. The problem was no one wanted to get to know him because he has “special needs,” but if you ask me, that applies to everybody.

I mean, I have special needs. I’m a freak. I’m over six feet tall, and I’m only in the ninth grade. You may not think that’s a big deal, but you’ve got to realize I’m a girl. If I were a guy, that would be a big advantage, but I stand out too much – literally. I’d rather slide through unnoticed. Makes it easier to fit in that way.

But I didn’t fit in, and neither did Charlie. Most everyone shied away from him as if Down syndrome was contagious, and you could it get by brushing past him. Even I felt the same way – in the beginning.