Chapter 3: Trip with Larissa

By Easter at the end of the school term, Helena’s life was very different indeed. Her legs weren’t much better, just no shooting pains, but she’d had no tingling or any other symptoms in her hands. That was pretty good in her book, and more than enough. She still had bad days when she got around school with her walking stick. Her Jedi-blade, all the kids at school called it. But mostly she could walk without it, and she’d never once missed riding her bike to school after that day she left it behind when they took her to hospital.

Her normal week was that she went to her mum’s place on Monday to Wednesday after school. Her mum would take her to Traralgon pool on Tuesday afternoon and they swum laps together. On Thursday afternoon, she’d go home to Aunt Raychelle’s house for more laps and have dinner with Aunt Raychelle and whoever else was there. Friday night was more laps, then date night, after which her girlfriends would sleep over at one of their places, and then Saturday night was usually general sleepover down the back of Aunt Raychelle’s place before riding back to have lunch with her mum. Then she’d meet Larissa in the park and then stay at Aunt Raychelle’s for Sunday evening family night, and then it’d start all over again.

This meant she got plenty of exercise on her bike, and she was a regular on the roads around Traralgon, and always happy to wave to people. Given that she was pretty famous after what had happened, it seemed like most people at least waved, and many slowed down, wound their windows down and actually said hello; she always took the time to say at least hello back, because that was something the disabled kids who rode had started as a group and pushed at all the kids - if anyone in a car slowed down to say hello, they got a very cheery hello back, or more, and they did that because it was really a road safety thing, everyone was slowing down for kids riding on the roads, and she knew that the police were in on it too, telling everyone to do that.

At school, she was never alone; there were always kids around her. Some were there for protection; some of the timid kids hung around, knowing no one would ever hassle them while they were under Helena’s wing, though she was encouraging them to be fearless, specially at school. Rosey often hung out with them, and she’d taught all of them to look out for Rosey, to give her the best life she could have; all Rosey wanted from her life was to be as normal a girl as possible and hang out with her friends at school as long as she could.

The rest that hung with her were just friends; the group expanded and contracted as other friendships came and went, but there was always plenty of friends around her. There was an inner circle of friends, though. Loya, Aria and Amber, close friends. Athena, bestie for life, closer than a sister. And Daniel.

Daniel wasn’t exactly Helena’s boyfriend. And they weren’t exactly dating. Instead, they were the nucleus of a group of boys and girls that hung out together on most Friday nights, and some Saturdays, and even had done a few coed sleepovers together, usually with Julian and Larissa supervising. Underwear Parties, not Ribbon Parties, though Helena was sure that was in their future. Eventually. But there was no hurry. What she did have with Daniel was a relationship, one in their hearts, and the confidence that all the other things that implied would come when the time was right. She and her mum usually had dinner with Daniel’s family after the pool on Tuesdays, and Daniel’s mum was a fierce fan of Helena and made it clear that Helena was always welcome at their place, and she definitely approved of Daniel’s choice in girls, and the patient way they were going about building their relationship.

Helena had known just how much a fan she was when one day at dinner, Daniel’s mother presented Helena with a family heirloom, and asked Helena to make it her own: Daniel’s deceased great-grandfather’s walking stick. Helena loved it too, a light coloured walnut wood, smooth and worn, with a heavy knob at the top that had layers of steel and wood. It made a resounding bang when she hit something with it, and her friends often asked her to demonstrate.

It also helped that Larissa and her siblings had met Daniel and approved of him greatly, and he often joined them in the park on Sunday afternoons to play footy or cricket with Julian and his mates. At first, Helena had played with them as much as she could so the girls could talk sex, but one day she’d said to Larissa that a physical relationship with Daniel was in her mind now, and in her future, and she wanted in on the sex discussion. Larissa had agreed it was time, and from then on she often had her mind blown by what the girls got up to, and she had definite plans for when it was her time with Daniel. Also, Larissa had made sure she understood the biology and practice of contraception extremely well, and she’d discovered she suddenly counted as an expert in that to her friends, some of whom already needed that advice. Athena and Loya were also cosying up to two of the boys in the group, but not there yet, while Aria ... it was close with another boy, a friend of Daniel’s. Amber was still waiting for her true hero.

As for her mum, she’d been doing very well. Helena was confident that her mum had n’t had anything to drink; she went out with a ribbon on when she did go out, and she was careful to tell Helena where she was, and which of Larissa’s drinks she was drinking. Her mum had reverted to shouting one day after a challenging day at work, and Helena had sat her down and got her mum to settle and work through her issue, and then she’d apologised and treated it like a grown up and nothing more had been said. Helena was fully aware that they were equal partners now, not really parent and child, and Larissa had coached her about having to make a choice; if she wanted to be an equal with her mum, she had to be grown up, careful and responsible, she couldn’t have it both ways. When her mum had started dating, she’d taken it slowly, and she’d brought Paul home for Helena to get to know him, and Helena quite liked him. Maybe one day he might be rather more in her life, but that was still in the future for her mum.

What they had done was had Aunt Raychelle, Mary and Bob for dinner twice, and they’d all had a lot of fun. And doing that had given her mum a prod to take pride in her home, and it was no longer a terrible eyesore. In fact, the neighbours had noticed her trying, and heard about Helena’s story, and a group of them spent one Saturday afternoon helping them get on top of the outside challenges. Her mum had discovered during that that there were several elderly women around them who were struggling to hang on to their independence, and afterwards she often had one of them over for dinner on Wednesdays as part of doing their shopping for them. That was something Helena had never seen her mum do, but she gave every indication of enjoying it greatly. Her mum had even been to Sunday evening at Aunt Raychelle’s twice and liked that.

Helena was doing OK at school too. Probably she could do better, but she’d decided doing just enough to keep her in the middle of the class was good enough; Athena could be the wizard at the top of the class, the one that won all the writing prizes. Instead, Helena gave herself time to focus on her art project. It’d started when her mum told her that she had a little of Bob’s money left over for something for Helena, if she wanted. Helena did want, and she’d bought a low-end 3d printer. Then when it arrived, she’d messaged her blind friend, the one who got his hands on her tits, and told him what she’d got, and she was going to experiment with printing stuff for him to look at, if she could figure out how to get it to him. One thing led to another, and he’d bought exactly the same printer, and she’d got an old laptop from Mason to use, and both of them had taken their printers to school, where any student could print a 3d photoscape for a blind or blindfolded student to ‘look’ at. Her blind friend had an art period at the same time she did, so they’d zoom each other, and she’d send him files to print on his printer for them to talk about, and while he was waiting he’d work on amazing digital soundscapes for all her friends to listen to.