Blind (14 page)

Walking out into the woods together, we were all quiet. Logan was on my right, holding my hand again. It was midnight. Zach, Trey, Josh, and Coltrane were behind us, and Spark was just ahead. No one spoke. We staggered ourselves, walking back in the trees, rather than along the road, and then ducking whenever a car went by. It was the first time I’d ever been intentionally bad, if you don’t count smoking Sarah’s cigarette, or skipping piano and gym a few times. It felt pretty good, although maybe that’s just because we didn’t get caught.

Or maybe it’s because we were hanging on to the few small honest things we’d said inside, inspired by the possibility that even though we knew well enough to stay scared, at least we weren’t going to have to stay completely powerless, too. And maybe this is a disturbing way to put it, but I took comfort from the fact that Claire had floated up. She was underwater long enough to fill her lungs, and maybe she had hoped to sink out of sight forever, to be vanished and irretrievable. Maybe Elizabeth was right that Claire had been secretive, and maybe she had wanted to keep her whole story secret. But her body rose to the surface like truth.

Just before Thanksgiving
break, someone put a skateboard in front of my locker. Whoever did it apparently thought it would be funny if I stepped onto it and—what? Went flying headfirst into the bank of lockers? Slipped like a cartoon character on a banana peel? Cracked my skull against the floor or a wall?

What happened instead was that Logan (and everyone else) saw it there and Logan threw it in the trash chute that goes from the third floor to the inaccessible garbage dump in the basement. So everyone got to imagine me slipping and falling without it actually happening. And Logan got the unsavory task of telling me that it was there, and the heroic one of throwing it out. In other words, the humiliation happened, but not the actual killing myself in the hallway. Small mercies.

Some people are absolute assholes, but I already knew that, and I worked to remember that it didn’t have that much to do with me. But it made me miss Briarly, where no one would have done that. There are lots of stupid things about Lake Main. Including whoever tried to kill me, and the idiotic announcement they made, definitely Claire-related, that for the rest of the year we would be focusing on our own “life histories.” Ugh! All the teachers are frothing with delight about a “new curriculum that connects subjects in an organic way,” and since the only thing connecting our subjects is that we’re the victims of them, now we have to do “memoir work” in our classes: family history, history of our town, literature of childhood.

The art teacher, Mrs. Fincter, has pretty much made it clear that I’m a tragic special-needs invalid. So until now, she’s been letting me do an “independent study” and leaving me totally alone, which I love. But now I have to make something that “represents my life.” I tried to talk her into letting me use a collage I’ve been working on, but she said that was just an exercise, and I have to make a piece of “representative art” for this assignment, and it should “work well for me,” the idea being that I can make something you feel instead of see. It has to use more than one kind of material. My mom is going to die of excitement when I tell her, and I know this is mean, but it makes me not want to tell her. Of course I’m not a complete monster, so I’m not going to tell her about the skateboard, either. I don’t want to make her happy or sad.

In Mr. Hawes’s history class, we had to do horribly embarrassing presentations. Basically, we had to pick a piece of history that was meaningful to us in a personal way and tie our own story to the story of someone who lived before us. And then stand up and yammer away about the connection, in front of a roomful of people who can see me but who I can’t see. Which I hate, even when I’m the one who makes myself do it, like at the Mayburg place.

Anyway. Coltrane Winslow blew everyone’s minds, or at least mine, by doing this presentation on Langston Hughes, even though I didn’t think he was the type to read poetry because he’s so law school. He ended by reading a poem about America, and saying how this was all of our Americas. Zach did his on a radical antiwar group in the 1970s, because apparently his parents were hippies before they became Republican bankers. Trey Brighton did the Rolling Stones, even though he had no way to tie them to his life, and Logan did Susan B. Anthony and the suffragettes because her mom gets to vote or whatever. I went right after this guy Jason Kane, whose presentation was this totally parallel-universe thing about the history of UFOs, which he tied to his “memoir” portion by saying that there was “no possible explanation” for what he and his dad saw one night over their house, and that they had no choice but to join the thousands of believers who aren’t believed by anyone else, and how that’s a lonely place, but they know for certain that UFOs exist.

I made a point of not laughing with everyone else, not only because I was in a mounting frenzy about my turn, but also because Jason Kane is batshit crazy, and isn’t that bad enough? I mean, should he really also have to endure people making fun of him all the time?

I walked up the narrow aisle between desks, and a hum of oohing and aahing about Spark rose in place of the tittering over Jason Kane. I found Mr. Hawes’s lectern, set my white cane down, took out my notes, and turned to face the class. Spark sat at my feet. Ms. Mabel had offered to come and help, and I had turned her down, not wanting to stand in front of the class with a babysitter. But now I regretted it.

“So, um, I’m going to tell you a little bit about the origins of the organization called Lighthouse for the Blind,” I said, very fast. “There are Lighthouses for the Blind in more than thirty of the fifty states of America. The first Lighthouse for the Blind came into being because two sisters from New York, Winifred and Edith Holt, traveled to Italy and saw a group of blind kids listening to a concert. And, um, they were amazed by how much the kids were enjoying the music.”

I felt extremely embarrassed then, and a flash of rage went through me, at Sebastian and Briarly and everyone who had ever mentioned Lighthouse for the Blind. Why was I drawing unnecessary attention to my predicament, right as everyone was starting to forget I existed, that I read braille or had a dog? I had to follow Seb’s model and do a whole show about the Lighthouse?

I remembered the sound of Sebastian’s laugh, and how I had never seen him. The rage subsided and I fell dangerously into sorrow over the unfairness of my having to stand in front of a room of people I couldn’t see, of having no photos or video, of not being able to look at whatever images my classmates had beamed all over the walls. But I pulled myself up, took a breath, and continued. “According to the
New York Times
, if you lose one sense, your other senses may be heightened, especially your hearing, in order to compensate for that loss.”

Long before the Lighthouse presentation, I had heard this stupid “fact” from roughly a billion people who were trying to make me feel better about my accident. But actually, only if you’ve been blind since birth or since you were really little do you get the bat ears. I bet Dee from Briarly has them, and maybe even Seb. If you go blind after you’re ten, then you’re stuck with your original, craptastic hearing. I didn’t admit this, though, because if everyone wants to think I’m a superhero, why not let them? Anyway, when I said
senses
, I meant my mind. And my mind
was
heightened after the accident. I used to take seeing for granted, like everyone else, and now I don’t. Now I can focus my thoughts, find things, taste them, hear, understand. I might have called it magical, but I didn’t, because I know how to toe the line and not be Jason Kane talking about UFOs.

If I were brave enough to say the truth, in front of a class or to anyone at all—even Leah, my mom, or myself—it would be something like this: what’s so terrible about the accident isn’t even the me I’ve become; it’s just the endless fear of not knowing who she’ll be. Who I’ll be. Leah’s always telling me that we all contain dozens of versions of ourselves, and it’s only the lucky ones among us who get to try out being more than one. She says change, even when it feels tragic, can actually be okay, lucky, good. And she said this even before my accident. I’m trying to believe it. But sometimes I miss the other me, the one I don’t get to be—the innocent, okay one, who can still see like everyone else, who can still be young. And I don’t get to know who I would have been if the accident had never happened. Leah says someday I’ll love myself enough to be glad it happened, to be glad I get to be the person it made me. But I don’t know yet if that’s true.

The sisters who founded LFTB discovered that the blind kids were at the concert because someone had given them free tickets. And apparently they loved this idea and set up a free-tickets-for-blind-kids program in New York. Then it grew into this huge organization, with Lighthouses for the Blind everywhere, including one that taught blind people how to make brooms, which was better than nothing, because before that happened blind people couldn’t get work at all, and apparently the brooms were really good quality. This made me think of how everything in the world starts as an idea—even human beings, who are just ideas that parents had, not even as literal as “I want a baby,” but sometimes just, “I want you,” or “I want this,” and people come from those ideas, those drives. That’s why ideas are wants, desires. And tangible outcomes—I mean literally tangible, like brooms or music—can come from small thoughts. Because of my giddy feeling about the Mayburg meeting, the possibility of making a difference, I said this during my presentation: that the reason the story matters for me “memoir-wise” isn’t so much that it’s about a blind organization, but just because it shows that thoughts are the beginnings of everything, including tables and airplanes and governments and organizations “like LFTB.”

The room went silent when I said this, and that’s how I knew it had been too weird to include. Sometimes, I’ll make an observation that to me seems mundane and obvious, and some other kid will be like, “You’re a freak.” It’s one of the reasons I prefer to say nothing.

I was already twitching with misery when this girl Riley Grossman was like, “Is that why you, like, love music?”

“Excuse me?” I asked.

“I just thought . . . you’re really good at piano, or whatever, so is that, like, connected to your being . . . you know?”

“Um, no, I don’t think so,” I said. “Any other questions?”

“How come you decided not to stay at the blind school, if you don’t mind my asking?” this guy named Casey asked. “How come you came back to Lake Main?”

I tried not to turn toward Mr. Hawes, even though I hoped he would say that the Q&A hadn’t started yet or something. He didn’t. So I just said, “Well, my friends are here, and I realized I could do whatever I needed to, so, you know . . .”

Then Savannah Clark, who just moved to Sauberg this year, asked, “What exactly happened to your eyes?”

I shivered. Obviously that wasn’t related to my LFTB talk, and she had just arrived anyway, so she kind of had no business asking me private questions. And did she really not know? Had no one told her?

I said, “I had an accident, but it’s kind of a long story, so maybe some other—”

I wondered then for a brief but terrible moment who had put the skateboard in front of my locker—whether it was someone in the room, someone like Savannah. Or someone I’d known forever. What if it was Zach Haze?

Mr. Hawes said quickly, “We are actually out of time today, guys. Great job, Emma. If you could stick around for one minute, I’d like to chat. Everyone else, have a great weekend and don’t forget to read from pages 377 to 397 in
A People’s History
.”

People started to close their books and grab their bags, and I stayed in the front of the room, feeling cheated because everyone forgot to clap for my presentation but grateful to Mr. Hawes for cutting off the class early to save me from Savannah’s rubbernecking, even though we still had seven minutes left before the bell rang. I walked over to his desk, and he said, “That was an excellent and brave presentation. I want to apologize for not chatting with you beforehand about what the parameters of the questions should be.”

“It’s totally okay,” I said. “Please don’t worry. That was fine.” Was I no longer able to speak in sentences that weren’t three words long?

I heard his planner clap shut. Then he opened and closed a drawer.

“Here,” he said, and I realized he wanted to give me something, so I put my hand out, palm up. Immediately, I felt embarrassed by this gesture, by the way I thought my hand might look, empty, waiting, so I closed it, just as he tried to hand me something, so the thing dropped. I knew it was a pen from the way it bounced off my knuckles and hit the desk. I started apologizing, but he picked it back up and handed it to me while I tried not to feel so frantic.
Who cares if the pen dropped? Stop apologizing
, I thought. I rolled it in my hand, feeling the weight. It was smooth and heavy.

“This was my pen in high school,” he said in an unsentimental way. “I want you to have it.” Then he stood up, pushed his chair toward the desk. “I think you’re an amazing student, and I wanted you to know that,” he said. “I don’t know if you still take notes with . . . but I thought—”

“Thank you,” I said, hoping to save him from the awkwardness of remembering out loud that I was blind and might not want a regular pen. Because I did want it. And what was he going to give me, his braille stylus from high school?

“It’s really nice. Thank you,” I said. I thought I might combust with embarrassment. “So yeah, um, thanks again,” I managed, willing my blood to calm down, my brain to quiet. I put the pen in the back pocket of my jeans and walked out with my white cane and Spark. Logan was waiting just outside the door. She had definitely been peering into the window the entire time, and was practically panting.

“What did he give you?” she asked.

“Nothing,” I said. “So, what are—”

“No fucking way, Emma—you’re not going to try to change the subject. What just happened in there? Was he like—” She cut herself off, because the door opened and Mr. Hawes came out and walked by.

“Whatever,” I said, and started to walk, but Logan put her hand on my arm. “Oh my god,” she said. “Did Mr. Hawes ask you out?”

“Are you insane?” I said. “Of course not! He just wanted to tell me I did a good job on my presentation, and make sure I wasn’t unhappy about Savannah’s question.”

“What did he give you? I saw him hand you something, Emma.”

“You’re crazy. He just handed my stylus back. Jesus.” I felt the full force of lying to her as a kind of awful power and weight. I wasn’t even sure why I didn’t want to tell her that Mr. Hawes had given me his high school pen. But I knew I didn’t want to, rule book or not. I felt bad instantly, but not bad enough. I was selfish. I wanted the pen for myself, the whole heavy, lovely secret of it. Like Seb’s face and hands, my own secrets, the best ones no one else could touch or feel or see. I also didn’t want Logan to be jealous, because if people are jealous of you, then they hate you. That’s why I try so hard not to be jealous of her, especially about Zach, who’s definitely flirting with her. When I was little, whenever anyone was mean to me, my mom always said, “They’re just jealous,” totally missing the point, which was that they still hated me. Who cared why?