I’m pretty familiar with high school kids, and one of the surprising things is that most have big hearts. Even the jocks. A disabled dude who nice, learns names, participates and is active is probably not going to be treated poorly. No, he’s not going to be student body president or sit at the popular table and have cheerleaders lusting for him, (not a guy who is hard to understand, anyway) but he’ll have friends, people who appreciate him, and after that first surprising week of “what’s wrong with that dude’s face” will be treated normally. By everybody-if how he described himself is actually how he was.
Russ didn’t want to be treated normally. He wanted to be the top of the pack, the most admired, the one every girl had the hots for, the most likely to succeed. And when he realized that wasn’t in his grasp, he wasn’t just happy having a job, some friends, being in a club - he instead seethes in his car, contemplates suicide and then threatens a school shooting.
The kids who are bullied (which is rarer in HS than Jr.High), often act super weird and make themselves targets. (It’s not popular to say but it’s often true.) That doesn’t come from a disability but a problem knowing how to fit in. Russ doesn’t complain about being bullied-that paragraph implies he had no idea he wasn’t “cool” until somebody told him, which makes me think he was bullied and can’t admit it.
I don’t think Russ has been able to see anything clearly since he was born. There is what he wants, then there is reality. And he just can’t be happy with something in the middle, like all of us figure out. He won’t settle for anything but what he thinks he wants.
The irony is if he ever had it, he’d hate it because his fantasies only involve the trappings, but not the reality behind it.