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“Do you think the Bar people grade on spelling?” Foggy asks.
Matt chuckles. “I gotta say, I haven’t thought about that one,” he says. In all honesty, he hasn’t thought about the Bar much at all, considering it’s still six months away. Most of his free time is dedicated to surviving the mountain of coursework they’re assigned every week. This last semester of law school is slowly killing him with an endless cycle of sleep deprivation and caffeine overdose.
“Yeah, I guess you have more important things to think about.” Foggy sighs, closes his laptop, and lays his head on his forearms.
Matt can practically hear the gears grinding in his friend’s brain. His senses aren’t actually that sensitive, but after years of living together he can read Foggy better than he’s ever been able to read anyone else.
“What’s wrong?” he asks.
“Nothing. I think I just need more sleep.”
He’s lying, but Matt decides not to press the issue. Foggy’s always very up front with things; if he wants to talk about it, he will.
~0~0~0~
“I forgot February is only 28 days!” one of their classmates says. “How can it be March already?”
The collective panic among Columbia Law students drenches the whole campus in the smell of stress. Out of their entire class, only about ten people elected to take the early exam in February. Everyone else will apply this month to take it in July.
Matt knows he’ll have to go through a whole additional process on top of regular registration, so he decides to get started early. He spends the afternoon reading over the general information guide, then tracks down the form for testing accommodations.
“Oh God, why is it eight pages long,” Matt bemoans.
“It’s ridiculous,” Foggy agrees. “But I was looking at it earlier; you don’t have to do much on three of them.”
Matt tilts his head. Foggy’s still sitting all the way across the room and facing Matt; there’s no way he can see Matt’s computer screen. “How do you even know what I’m looking at?”
Foggy’s heart rate kicks up a notch. “Oh. I, um…I knew you’d have to fill out the accommodations request, so I thought I’d familiarize myself with it in case you needed my help or something. I thought eight pages was pretty excessive, so the number stuck in my brain. Just now you said eight pages, so I figured that was what you were looking at.”
He’s lying. Which makes no sense because that’s absolutely something Foggy would do.
“That’s really sweet of you. I might need your help, especially since all of this is gonna have to be printed out and mailed.”
“You’re welcome. I’m sure it gets old, having to do extra work all the time just to make sure you’ll be able to participate. I’m happy to help.”
“Why are you so nervous? The exam is still months away. And we both know you’re going to pass with flying colors.”
Foggy laughs humorlessly. “I wish I shared your confidence, buddy.”
“What are you talking about? You know the law so well, you can talk circles around everyone here. Just last week you made Ryan look like an idiot in front of the whole class.”
“There’s no talking in the Bar exam.”
Matt doesn’t understand why that matters. He really wants to, though, because Foggy is currently radiating distress like a smoke alarm with low battery.
“What’s going on?” Matt’s never seen his friend like this, and it’s freaking him out.
“Shit, you’re not gonna let this go. I shouldn’t have said anything in the first place.”
Matt takes off his glasses in the hopes it’ll make him more approachable. Somehow, it has the opposite effect. Foggy wraps a hand around his temples and averts his gaze.
“Foggy?”
“Iwasn’tlookingattheformforyouIwaslookingatitforme.” He spits it out so fast that even Matt has no clue what he says.
“Huh?”
Foggy sighs and sits up straight again. He still doesn’t look at Matt’s face as he repeats,”I wasn’t looking at the form for you.” A pause. “I was looking at it for me.”
“What? Why? What happened?”
“Nothing happened. I’m fine. It’s just…this is kinda the most important test of our lives. And there’s a whole day of timed writing sections.”
“So? We’ve had loads of timed essays in class.”
“We’ve always been allowed to type them.”
“Oh. Are you worried they won’t be able to read your handwriting or something? I’m sure it’s not that bad.”
“It kinda is. But it’s more than that. I, uh…have this thing.”
“A thing?”
“Yeah. It’s…it’s really not a big deal. I don’t want you to think I’m complaining.”
“I haven’t heard anything that resembles complaining. You’re mostly stalling.”
“Right.” Foggy hesitates again. At this rate, Matt doesn’t know what it’s going to take to get this information out of him.
“So…what’s this thing you have?”
“It’s called dysgraphia.”
Matt’s never heard the word before. “And that is…?”
“It’s…considered a type of learning…difference. Some people might say learning disability.” The last word comes out so quietly Matt’s pretty sure anyone else wouldn’t have heard it at all. “It makes handwriting, like…ridiculously hard for me. Typing’s a lot easier, but even then I still struggle to put words together in the order I’m thinking them.”
“Oh,” he says, completely baffled. He’s gone to school with Foggy for years now; they’ve had probably half a dozen classes together, how did he not find this out sooner? “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Foggy shrugs, then says, “Oh, I shrugged, by the way. I didn’t tell you because…well, it never really came up. You’re…uniquely unqualified to make fun of my handwriting.” He laughs almost imperceptibly, then clamps his mouth shut like he’s worried someone might shove a bar of soap in it as punishment.
Matt doesn’t know why Foggy balks at that joke. He knows he’s allowed to make blind jokes—one of the first things Matt ever said to him was that he hates people treating him like he’s made of glass. But right now he’s doing exactly that.
“Yeah, but…we’re law students. We have to write all the time. That must be exhausting. I would’ve thought you’d need to vent every once in a while.”
Foggy shrugs again. “Yeah, but I’m not gonna go to you with that kinda stuff.”
“Why not?” Matt tries hard to show he’s a good listener. He has to, since most people use eye contact to gauge how much someone’s paying attention to them. Foggy has never hesitated to vent to him about girl drama or the obnoxious sidewalk traffic he encountered on the way to class. Why is this any different?
“You’ve got…I dunno, real problems.”
“What?”
Foggy shifts his weight uncomfortably. “Talking to you about that stuff…it’d feel like…like telling someone in a wheelchair that you’re so tired you can’t walk anymore.”
“I don’t understand the comparison.” Actually, Matt’s pretty sure he does, but he wants Foggy to say it in more absolute terms so he can be absolutely sure.
“Matt,” he implores. “You’re blind.”
“I’m aware.”
“It feels…unjustified, to complain about how hard writing is for me when it’s even harder for you. Like…you’re gonna request accommodations for the Bar because without them you literally can’t take it at all. If I do it, it’s just because my score might get a little boost if I can focus my brain power on the actual content of the essay and not on making sure my handwriting doesn’t devolve into blurry cuneiform.”
Matt’s so taken aback by this admission that it takes him a full fifteen seconds to produce any kind of response, much less a coherent one. “No…that’s not…you’re not…it’s not unjustified. At all. What, did you think if you told me about your dysgraphia I would’ve said, ‘At least you’re not blind,’ and refused to sympathize?”
“No! You would never say something like that. I just assumed you’d probably think it.”
Matt shakes his head. “No way. You’re my friend; if you’re having a problem, I want to hear about it. Doesn’t matter if it’s similar or better or worse than something I have going on. But I don’t even like to think about ‘better or worse’ problems; everything is relative. When I get frustrated with something, reminding myself that some people are blind and deaf doesn’t magically fix it.”
“I guess you’re right,” Foggy admits. “I just…I dunno. I didn’t want to burden you with it, but I also don’t like telling anybody. Most people just think I’m lazy or stupid.”
“You’re none of those things. Whoever said that, point me in their direction and I’ll punch ‘em,” Matt offers.
Foggy laughs, and it sounds almost genuine this time. He starts listing names as he counts on his fingers, “There’s my first grade teacher, my second grade teacher, my second grade math teacher, the first tutor my mom sent me to, my one grandma, my seventh grade science teacher—except I was actually being lazy in her class because I hated science.”
“Do you have their addresses?” Matt asks. He’s only about forty percent sure he’s kidding.
“No,” Foggy says. “And I wouldn’t want you to beat them up anyway. The motivation to prove them wrong was just about the only thing that got me through three years of remedial writing classes.”
“Remedial writing classes? I didn’t even know that was a thing.”
“That’s just what I started calling it. I don’t know if it even has an official name, but every day I’d get pulled out of class to go see this occupational therapist slash tutor lady. Sometimes it was actually kinda fun; we’d make bracelets or play with play dough and stuff. But mostly it was just her telling me to write stuff. One time she made me write my name over and over again for like half an hour straight, and every time I drew the N in Nelson backwards I’d have to write it three more times.”
“That sounds like torture.”
“Yeah, it kinda sucked. But it helped! I haven’t drawn a backwards N since the fifth grade.”
“I used to get pulled out of class to learn braille. My TVI had me sort coins and put tennis balls in a muffin tin, but we moved on pretty quickly to reading and writing full sentences.”
“What’s a TVI?”
“Teacher for the visually impaired.”
“You know, it’s weird, I never thought of you having to learn braille. Like I don’t think about how you had to learn to speak English. You just know it. You’ve never talked about what it was like learning it.”
Matt shrugs. “It never came up. Plus, it’s been so long that I don’t think about it either. Most people don’t walk around reading things in everyday life thinking about how hard it was to learn to read.”
“That’s a good point.”
He can sense Foggy’s about to change the subject, but Matt refuses to allow him to back out before they’ve discussed the actual issue that led them to this conversation. “So are you gonna request accommodations for the Bar? I’m sure they’d let you type.”
“I don’t know.” Foggy’s shoulders creep up towards his ears. “I can take the test normally, so I feel like I shouldn’t ask for special treatment. It’s gonna be hard, but it’s the Bar. It’s supposed to be hard.”
“It’s not special treatment, it’s accommodations for your disability.”
He flinches at the word.
Matt decides to handle this the way Foggy would if their roles were reversed. “Here’s what’s going to happen,” he declares. “We’re going to sit down together and we’re both going to fill out this form and submit it and register for the Bar and then we’re going to get ice cream to celebrate being one step closer to being lawyers. Okay?”
Foggy hesitates, but eventually caves. “Okay.”
Matt returns to his desk and pulls up the form. Foggy grabs his own computer and drags his chair over so they’re sitting side by side. “Would you mind reading it to me?” Matt asks. “It’ll go faster than trying to get the screen reader to find the right line.”
“Yeah, sure.”
They blaze through the first page of basic identification information. Page two begins with a checklist of different types of disabilities, then has two fill-in-the-blank questions about diagnosis history. “I was first professionally diagnosed with state diagnosis at the age of blank in blank year by name of qualified professional,” Foggy reads. “This diagnosis was most recently confirmed or reassessed at the age of blank in blank year by name of qualified professional.”
“My diagnosis was most recently confirmed this morning when I put on mismatched socks and only realized after you told me,” Matt jokes.
Foggy claps him on the shoulder. “That’s what friends are for.”
“Did you get reevaluated as an adult?” Matt asks. He knows people can be denied accommodations if their documents are more than a few years old. He knows this because the Catholic high school he attended demanded he get reevaluated before they’d agree to grant his requests, as if his vision might’ve miraculously returned in the years since a doctor declared his retinas scorched beyond repair.
“Yeah, my mom made me so I could get accommodations in undergrad if I wanted them.”
“Did you end up getting any?”
“No. Sometimes I just asked the professor if I could type notes in class, and if they said no I just toughed it out.”
Matt shakes his head in disappointment. “Did you get any for the LSAT?”
“No. The writing section was unscored and we had tons of time to do it.”
In the next section, they explain what they actually need accommodations-wise. Matt asks for the test materials in braille and a computer with screen reading software and a braille display for writing the essay section. He debates whether or not to ask for extra time. In the past, he’s been offered it, but more often than not he finishes before the regular time limit would’ve expired. He puts the screen reader on the fastest setting and can skim a passage as fast as any of his sighted classmates if he has the whole document printed out. The only thing that slows him down is when he has to toggle through a digital document with his braille display that can only show twenty cells at a time.
“Are you going to use extra time?” Foggy asks.
“No, I don’t think I’ll need it.”
“I think I’m gonna ask for 25 percent extra for the essay sections. It’ll be miserable to sit for nearly four hours instead of three, but I really don’t want to have to do this again if I fail.”
“You’re not going to fail,” Matt assures. He doesn’t even want to consider the possibility of failure, especially of one of them passing and the other not.
Page three brings them to the dreaded “history of accommodations” section. It asks them to indicate whether they received accommodations in law school, undergrad, high school, and elementary school, with supporting documentation for all of them. Additionally, it lists eight other standardized tests and asks both whether they’ve taken them and whether they received accommodations.
“Jesus Christ,” Foggy mutters. “Why do they need all of that?”
“I don’t know.” Fortunately, Matt already has all these documents compiled because he needed them to get accommodations for the LSAT. It was a pain in the ass to track it all down.
“I’m gonna have to call my mom and ask her to send me some paperwork,” Foggy says. “Why do they need to know if we took the MCAT?”
Matt shakes his head. “I have no idea.”
Page four demands a comprehensive written report from a medical professional that matches the guidelines outlined in some other manual. Foggy finds the other manual but when he realizes that it’s thirty pages long he decides not to read it. “Doctors have to write these things all the time; they’ll know what you’re asking for,” Matt tells him. “You don’t have to cite the manual to them.”
“It also asks for historical documentation from whenever a learning disability was first diagnosed. Hopefully my mom hung onto it.”
“I’m sure she did.”
“Are you kidding me?” Foggy exclaims.
“What?”
“This next section: provide a personal statement, no longer than 750 words, describing when you first became impaired by your disability, when you were first formally diagnosed, how your disability affects your daily life activities, including your educational and testing functioning, and how your disability affects your ability to take the bar examination under standard testing conditions, and explaining how each accommodation requested alleviates the impact of your disability.”
“Seriously? Sixteen years’ worth of documentation of me receiving all my school material in braille plus a doctor confirming that my eyeballs are nuclear fallout zones isn’t enough?”
“The whole reason I’m doing this is because I suck at writing, and they’re asking me to do more writing,” Foggy grumbles. “They also want my LSAT and SAT scores. What, are they gonna deny me if the score is too high? Say I can’t possibly have a learning disability?”
Matt groans. “They might.”
“Okay. Page five just asks if we’ve ever committed any academic crimes, six and seven are just legal gibberish, and the last page is a checklist of everything we need to include in the packet when we mail it.”
“I feel like we should read the legal gibberish since we’re, you know, aspiring lawyers.”
“You’re more than welcome to, but I have to go call my mom about some paperwork.”
Ultimately, the accommodations request form triples the amount of time they have to spend registering for the Bar. They don’t get their celebratory ice cream until two weeks later. As much as he hates knowing that Foggy’s been silently struggling with this the whole time they’ve known each other, Matt’s secretly glad he doesn’t have to do it alone this time.
~0~0~0~
“They accepted my request!” Foggy exclaims. “Well, part of it.”
“Wait, what?” Matt has also gotten confirmation that his accommodation request was approved; he’s never heard of anyone being partially denied.
“I can type, but they won’t let me have extra time.”
“Why not?”
“They said typing should be enough to make up for my deficit.”
“But you said it isn’t.”
Foggy hums noncommittally. “I’ll be fine.”
“That’s so unfair,” Matt fumes. “You had to spend so much time explaining what you need, and then they up and decide that actually, you don’t need it?”
“Stand down, Matt, it’s fine. To be honest, I was half convinced they’d deny me outright because they’re all Harvard types who believe everyone with a learning disability just isn’t trying hard enough.”
“Ugh, the bar is so low,” Matt groans.
“Indeed, my friend.”
~0~0~0~
Foggy strolls into their shared office at Landman and Zack and drops a box on Matt’s desk. “I’m a genius,” he declares.
“Tell me more,” Matt prompts. He reaches into the box and pulls out a chunky star-shaped block, like the kind a toddler would put through a star-shaped hole.
“We’re more than roommates now, we’re office mates,” Foggy explains. “And what’s one of the most important things about sharing a space?”
“Remembering to turn the lights on so I don’t scare the shit out of you?” Matt puts the star down and picks up a cylinder.
“Well, yes, but what made you aware of that rule in the first place?”
“You did, by screaming like a horror movie extra.”
“Communication,” Foggy answers for him. “And how do office mates communicate?”
The question is clearly rhetorical, so Matt continues fiddling with the shapes in the box while he waits for Foggy to continue. There’s also a semi-cylinder, a plus sign, an L-shape, a cube, and a few different kinds of prisms.
“Memos!” Foggy says.
“And what does this box of blocks have to do with memos?” Matt asks.
“I’m so glad you asked. You see, we’re in a unique situation, memo-wise. I hate writing them, and you couldn’t read them anyway. I fear learning braille would make my brain self-destruct, so that leads us to other modalities of sharing information.” He hands Matt a small plastic bag and an object that resembles the handle of an electric toothbrush. Matt opens the bag and pulls out several sheets of circular stickers.
“What is this?”
“They’re talking labels!” Foggy exclaims. “Here, let me show you.” He grabs one of the shapes from the box, slaps a sticker on top of it, and presses the toothbrush handle thingy to the sticker. “This is a cube,” he says, then hands the shape and the device to Matt. “Touch it to the sticker and push the bottom button,” he prompts.
Matt does exactly that, and a recording of Foggy’s voice reads back, “This is a cube.”
“Wait, that’s really cool,” Matt says. He’s encountered a lot of talking tech before, but never anything like this.
“Isn’t it? I thought it would be cool if we could be like, ‘Hey Matt, I had a thought about the Weinberg case, I left it on the cube for you.’”
“This is a great idea.” Theoretically, they could just call and leave each other messages, but that seems so much more formal and less personal than this method that Foggy clearly spent a long time devising. “But we could put the labels on anything, why shapes?”
“It was the first thing I could think of that I knew you’d be able to tell apart.”
Matt runs his fingers around the edge of the star. “Where did you even get these?”
“My niece.”
“You stole from a child?!”
“No! It was a fair negotiation. I just had to promise to bring her candy every time I see her for the next ten years.”
Matt grins. “Sounds like she got the better end of that deal.”
“I know, she’s a business tycoon in the making. Someday my mom’ll make a butcher out of one of her descendants, but that day is not today.”
The next morning, Matt slips into their office early before heading to a meeting. When Foggy gets in twenty minutes later, he finds the cylinder on his desk marked with Matt’s voice: “I hope you have a great day. If you hurry, you can snag the last cinnamon raisin bagel.”
~0~0~0~
The day of the exam finally arrives on the last Tuesday in July. They start with the performance test, which gives them three hours to learn a fictional set of laws and then use them to write a memorandum or draft a settlement letter or some other task they’ll be expected to do as real-life lawyers. The convention center where they’re holding the exam is just south of Hell’s Kitchen on 11th Avenue. It doesn’t start until nine-thirty, but Matt and Foggy, along with most of the other prospective lawyers, arrive at nine.
“Matt, this building is so cool looking,” Foggy tells him. “It’s all sleek glass and metal girders.”
“Cool. How’re you feeling?” Matt asks.
“Honestly? Like I’m about to shit myself.”
“Relax, you’re gonna be fine. Do you have your seat ticket?”
Foggy holds up a piece of paper.
“ID?”
He taps his back pocket.
“Your brain?”
“I would find a way to forget it if it wasn’t trapped inside my skull.”
Matt laughs. “Lucky for you, it is.”
They get through security, find the welcome desk, and are directed to the area where they’ll be taking the test. Matt holds onto Foggy’s elbow as they walk through the maze of desks to find the ones with the number matching their seat tickets. “I’m only two seats behind you,” Foggy says excitedly.
Matt smiles. “That’s great.”
Gradually, the room fills with noise as more and more people take their seats. At nine-thirty sharp, the proctor calls everyone to attention and explains the rules of the next three hours. While she speaks, other people move around distributing the test materials. “You’re the guy taking it in braille, yeah?” a voice to Matt’s right asks.
“Yeah.”
“Good luck, man,” he says with a disbelieving huff. There’s a thump and Matt reaches out to find a two-inch thick packet. It’s actually less material than he was expecting, but sighted people are always shocked by how much space braille takes up. He sets up his earbuds and his braille display and waits for the proctor’s indication to begin.
Three hours later, he and Foggy stumble from the convention center, exhausted and hungry. “How’d it go?”
“I only had time to read over it twice instead of the four times I would’ve wanted. Hopefully I didn’t leave any glaring errors.”
“They should’ve given you the extra time you asked for,” Matt says.
“It is what it is. How’d it go for you?”
“Pretty well. I thought it was funny that the fictional state all those laws came from was called Franklin.”
Foggy chuckles. “Yeah, it was weird to see my name written all over the test materials.”
They only have an hour and a half before the need to be back, so they eat a quick lunch and promise not to talk about anything law-related to give their brains a much-needed break.
Matt finds the essay section much harder than the performance test. He decides to write a first draft for all six questions, evaluate how much time he has left, and then return to each to edit them until he’s either satisfied or runs out of time. By the time the clock strikes five, he’s more exhausted than he’s ever been in his life.
Somehow, Foggy’s even worse off than Matt. He’s walking slower than normal, and Matt keeps having to adjust his pace to match. “That was a lot of writing for one day,” he remarks.
“No kidding,” Foggy says. “That test was hell. I think my brain is melting out my ears.”
“Did you get to finish all the prompts?”
“Yeah, but I didn’t get to read over the last one. There’s a fifty percent chance it’s completely incoherent.”
“I doubt that.”
Foggy stops so suddenly that Matt inadvertently shoulder checks him. He turns and wraps his hands around Matt’s arms. “Thank you,” he says with deep sincerity. “If you hadn’t convinced me to get accommodations, I one hundred percent would have failed.”
Matt doesn’t know what to say to that besides, “You’re welcome.”
“Seriously. You single handedly saved my career.”
“That’s taking it a little far.”
“No. Take the credit, Matthew.”
“Okay then.”
Fortunately for both of them, the next day consists of all multiple choice questions. Six hours of testing is still draining, but it’s not nearly as exhausting as writing. They leave the convention center thrilled to be done but dreading the three-month wait for the results to be posted. ~0~0~0~
The email hits in his inbox the week before Halloween. “Matt, did you get it?” Foggy asks.
“I did. Did you get it?”
“I got it.”
“Are you ready?”
“I’m scared.”
“We have to look at it one way or the other.”
“You go first.”
“Okay.” Matt logs in to the portal and toggles around the screen until he finds a number. It’s a good number. “290!” he says, elated. That’s about ten points higher than he expected to get. They only need a 266 to pass, and 300 is pretty much perfect.
“No way, that’s awesome!”
“Now you.”
“Oh my God,” Foggy mutters. “Oh my God.”
“What? What is it?”
“I got a 285!”
“No way! You did it!”
“We did it! Nelson and Murdock, baby!”
~0~0~0~
Their memo technique follows them to their new office. Foggy lines up the blocks on the windowsill with all the tender love and care of a collector putting his treasured wares on display. Matt notices Karen staring at them on at least four different occasions before she finally works up the courage to ask what they’re for. He turns it over to Foggy to explain, and he does so with the same gusto with which he originally explained them to Matt.
“Also, I know it seems counterintuitive,” Foggy adds, “But if any paperwork comes through that requires only one partner’s signature, take it to Matt. My signature is so wildly inconsistent they thought I was trying to commit voter fraud.”
“Seriously?” Matt’s never heard this story before.
“Yeah. I voted by mail in undergrad and they flagged it because the signatures didn’t match up. It was a whole mess trying to sort it out.”
Karen is confused but fighting hard not to show it. Foggy notices anyway and, in great contrast to that moment when he first told Matt, he comes right out and explains, “I have a learning disability that makes writing things by hand really hard. Hence the audio notes and having Matt be our designated John Hancock.”
Matt smiles and offers a thumbs up. He knows how hard it is for Foggy to admit that. Matt’s lucky in that the sunglasses and cane usually do the explaining for him, so he doesn’t have to disclose again and again every time he meets a new person. It’s one of the ways in which Foggy doesn’t have it easier than Matt, proving Matt’s point about the futility of comparison.
“Okay,” Karen says.
Foggy’s heart rate, having ratcheted up in anticipation of a negative reaction, settles back down to baseline.
“Let me show you how to record a message,” he offers. Matt sits nearby and listens as Foggy teaches Karen how to use the device, laughing when his idea of an example memo is “We’ve been trying to reach you about your vehicle’s extended warranty.”
~0~0~0~
“Foggy, where’s the list of witnesses for the Romero case?” Matt asks.
“I think I put it on the pentagon prism,” he calls back.
If he focuses hard enough, Matt can tell which shape is which without touching, but it’s easier to just run his hands along the lineup in the windowsill. He finds the pentagonal prism and brings it back to his desk. Across the office, the sounds of Foggy rifling through paperwork fall silent. Matt touches the pen to the sticker atop the prism and presses the bottom button.
It’s not Foggy’s voice that emerges from the speaker. It’s Rick Astley’s. “Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down! Never gonna run around and desert you!”
The rest of the recording gets drowned out by Foggy’s laughter.