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by his shirt and swing him back and forth across the sky, and from the way his father’s deep voice bounced off walls. It was around this time that Ori Jean became concerned about her husband’s drinking, but Bill insisted he had no problem.
    As Mike thrived in kindergarten, Ori Jean was at a crossroads. The Silver City public school, like nearly all public schools in the country, was closed to blind students. Next year, Mike would need to be shipped away to a school for the blind. That prospect was unthinkable to Ori Jean, who believed that immersion in the whole of the world was crucial to leading a full life. She began to ask questions. She began to make phone calls. The landscape of options was thinner than she had imagined.
    According to Ori Jean’s research, only a very few public schools integrated blind and sighted students. Most were located in big cities like Chicago and Boston, but one was in Walnut Creek, California, which seemed small and close-knit, and was home to one of Bill’s friends. Ori Jean put their house up for sale and prepared for the thousand-mile journey west.
             
    The May family arrived in Walnut Creek in the summer of 1959. Ori Jean enrolled Mike at Buena Vista Elementary. Of the school’s six hundred students, perhaps fifteen were blind. They were assigned a resource teacher who was to help with logistics. Other than that, they were to be treated like any other student—same classes, same activities, same rules. The first day was a revelation to Mike. He met other blind kids for the first time. And he met Nick Medina.
    Medina was the resource teacher for the blind students. He told the class that his vision was impaired and that he considered himself blind, though he walked without a cane and could even drive a car. He was just twenty-three years old and small of stature, but he laid down the law early. He expected the children to do their work and do it well. He would suffer no excuses, self-pity, or whining. He would go to bat for them—do whatever it took—but they would have to earn it. He wasn’t going to lay himself on the line for some kid just because that kid couldn’t see.
    At home, Ori Jean set up the house for her four bustling children, hanging a dinner bell on the back porch and assigning chores. Mike was exempt from none of them. He was required to clean his room, fix his own lunches, help in the yard, and take out the garbage. When the jelly from his sandwich dripped onto the floor, he was expected to find a mop and clean it up. Diane thought he got off too easily—why didn’t Mike have to vacuum? Ori Jean told her, in a voice loud enough to carry, “He probably can’t do it. You need to be able to see in order to vacuum.”
    That was enough for Mike. At first his lines were crazy crooked. Ori Jean said nothing—she could see Mike thinking while he vacuumed. Soon he was pushing the vacuum in a back-and-forth pattern and not missing a spot. “All I have to do is remember where I’ve gone and then I’m good at this,” he told his mother.
    Mike was not as good at some other chores. His bedmaking appeared expressionist. The clashing clothes he picked for himself made noise. His recipes often contained surprise ingredients, even to him. Ori Jean saw beauty in his effort.
    The neighborhood children had no idea what to make of a blind kid. Diane told them, “He’s really good at stuff,” but they still picked him last for their teams. He swung at baseballs and missed wildly. He ran into trees instead of second base. He fell down all the time. But he could also boot a kickball to the clouds and quickly find kids in games of hide-and-seek. He wasn’t afraid of blood. Before long, the children didn’t much notice when Mike crashed his skateboard or jumped into the bushes with his pogo stick. He was playing and they were playing. To them, that made everyone on Kevin Court look just alike.
    Soon enough Mike decided to ride a bicycle. Just the idea of