Blind (24 page)

“My mom helps me get dressed,” she said.

“That’s fine, of course,” I told her. “But in case you ever want to do it yourself, you can.” I reached into my bag and took out a small packet of premade braille labels for her clothes, with colors and identifiers like “TS” for T-shirt or “SJ” for skinny jeans on them.

I had blank ones, too, and my slate and stylus ready, so we could make our own if she preferred that. “You can do what I do,” I said, “and pick your favorite thing to wear, and just have a bunch of the same ones. Oh, and I always wear a tan bra, so no matter what T-shirt I pick, my bra won’t show through.”

She giggled. “I don’t have a bra,” she said.

“Well, not yet,” I said. I thought how she was Naomi’s age, and how in three years they’d both be completely different people from who they were now. Sometimes I forget that that’s true of everyone and not just me.

I thought for a moment, and then I said, “So, I wanted to tell you that I went skiing. I think you should try it sometime—when you’re ready. Maybe we can go together.”

She was as quiet as she had been the first time I met her, in the hospital. I thought about how quiet I used to be. I talk more lately. I said that on the mountain, I’d been really scared, but also the bravest since my accident.

Annabelle listened, barely breathing, and I told her every detail of what it was like to ski down a cliff, how my mom’s and my words had melted the air in front of our faces. I said the boots had been heavy and I’d thought I might fall, but I hadn’t fallen, had flown instead. The more I told her, the more amazing my own stories seemed, and the less I thought they could actually be my stories, that they could actually be true. But they were.

I even told Annabelle how I’d spent most of this year trying to forget being at Briarly last year.

“It didn’t work, though,” I said. “It kind of made things worse, I guess.” I paused, but when she still didn’t speak, I added, “It made me a terrible friend, for one thing. To a few people, but mainly to this boy I knew at Briarly. One time, last year, I touched his face? And this might sound weird or funny or whatever, but touching his face made me hopeful, like I might be okay, even though I was blind, and for me, it was the first time I felt that. So instead of ignoring and forgetting him, I probably should have thanked him.” I felt a sudden electrical surge of embarrassment and laughed nervously, even though it was just Annabelle. She didn’t respond, so I sped up and finished: “Anyway, so yesterday I thanked him and it was too late, but I’m still glad, because it felt kind of like the skiing.”

Annabelle asked in a clear voice, full of the kind of Disney want I associated with Blythe Keene, “What was his name?”

And I knew, maybe without her even knowing it, that she was worried she’d never have a boyfriend. And even if she wasn’t yet, she would be worried about a job, too, a life, like I was, like we all were.

“Sebastian,” I said. “His name is Seb. I hope you can meet him, because he’s amazing.”

“Is he your boyfriend?”

I laughed, but it came out forced, like a small bark. “No,” I said. “He has a girlfriend named Dee, who’s also my friend from Briarly. Seb and I are just friends. I’m hoping to be more like him about—I don’t know—about being blind. Or being a friend, or whatever.” As I said this, I realized it was the stark, warm truth; that truth isn’t always blinding, agonizingly sharp, cold, or bright. Each word was a little lit bulb inside a night-light, leading me down a soft hallway in my mind. I wanted to be like Seb, to try to make someone else okay with being a blind girl. Because I had been wrong that forgetting last year would make this year—or anything—easier. In fact, the opposite was true.

If I’m going to live with any of what’s happened to me, unlike Claire, I have to remember everything as clearly as I can. I used to know that, back when I was a spy, but somewhere along the way, I forgot. I’m going to start saving my details again, because that’s what being alive is, I think. Not banishing or forgetting or drowning any part of it. Some of my best stories I’ve already saved, just by telling them to Annabelle.

It got hot
all of a sudden, frying the winter out of our systems and apparently skipping spring. The flowers in our yard and along the sidewalks bloomed straight up through the dirt only to stand thirstily in the sun and then fry into withered stalks. My shorelines have changed; there’s nothing slick or icy, nothing wet. I knew before anyone else that the world had decided to skip spring, because of the overly bright and dry way the air smelled.

Leah’s acceptance letters started pouring in; she’s already gotten into her top two places and now it’s just a matter of her choosing. Sarah never finished her applications, so we’re all calling the absolute train wreck of her future “taking a year off.” What this means practically is that my parents are like trapped animals, caught between trying to celebrate Leah and make life livable for Sarah. I know this is awful, but I can’t be happy for Leah. For the first time in my life, I wish Sarah were the smart one, the one who was leaving. I wish Leah were staying here, because the thought of her being gone sends a vacuum of blood straight out of my heart. But it’s happening. It’s coming. Just like I’m groping down the barrel of summer and next year myself. Eleventh grade. Ms. Mabel has started talking about next fall, SATs and APs and college visits and whether and how much I’ll need her. My parents are talking about my birthday in June, and how once I’m sixteen I can go to guide dog school over the summer and get a guide dog.

Instead of the future, I’ve been thinking about peekaboo, about the strange and stupid idea you have when you’re little that if you can’t see people, then they can’t see you. Obviously I know now that this isn’t true, but what I wonder, late at night, is whether people who can see me know more about me than I do. Or whether what they know is just different. Last night I was lying in bed, listening to Naomi sleep, imagining forever without Leah, forever in the dark, the specific forever of Claire’s flesh blowing off her bones underground. I was thinking about spending forever without my eyes when I had a thought that sat me straight up, made me rabbity-awake, like a predator was hovering above me, ready to strike. Except I was also the hawk, about to attack myself. I threw the covers off my legs and swung around so that I was halfway out of the green tent.

My heart started jackhammering my rib cage into cat litter, and I decided I would do it. Just because I had thought of doing it. I stumbled silently out of bed, feeling less like an animal once I was standing and more like two people who hate each other: this Emma, that Emma. But neither could talk the other out of it; I couldn’t stop myself. I was determined not to wake Naomi in her bed above me, and tried to be as quiet as I could while I grabbed around for some sweatpants and a jacket, my hands working less well than I needed them to.
Calm down,
I told myself. You can tell yourself to calm down, like Dr. Sassoman once said. I tugged the sweatpants over my pajamas, tripping and trying not to bang into my desk chair. Once I had them on, I pulled on my Converse, threw a hoodie haphazardly over my shoulders, and shook Spark awake. Poor Spark.

“Come on boy, shhh,” I whispered, and guided him toward the window, helped him stand and lift his front legs over and out. He didn’t bark. I climbed out after him, slipping down onto the bushes and brushing my pants off as soon as I was standing outside. I unfolded the cane and set it down in front of me, felt it describe the grass, a medium-size stick, some rocks.

“Let’s go, Spark,” I said, and we started walking.

It was a warm night, and smelled peaceful. There was no noise except for the occasional car swishing by as we walked along.

“Dark is safe,” I said out loud to Spark, although he seemed delighted to be treated to an extra walk, and not to be too concerned that it was happening in the middle of the night or that we had left by window. It’s like he actually thinks of dark the way I pretend to. At least I haven’t pushed my fear off onto him.

“Dark is cool; light is hot,” I told myself as we made our way down to Lake Street. I listened to my phone tell me where we were until we had made it to the statue. Then we started along the highway, where there were no cars.

“Look at us, Spark! We’re doing fine. And who cares if it’s night, right? Day is dark, too.”

He didn’t say anything.

“Right, Spark?”

He padded along cheerfully.

“I wish you could talk,” I told him.

When we got into the woods, the crunch of my sneakers on the twigs was so threatening that my teeth started to chatter. “Not cold,” I told myself. “You’re not cold. Don’t worry, teeth.”

Ever since my eyes got ruined, it’s like all the other parts of my body have stopped trusting me. Maybe my arms, legs, teeth, and hands are afraid they’ll be next. The last time Dr. Walker checked the reflexes in my legs with one of those little hammers, I almost fainted. He had to keep reminding me to breathe, because I was certain my legs wouldn’t respond, and he’d tell me that I was going to be paralyzed.

The woods were too still and too alive at the same time. I could feel them pulsing and breathing in this wet, dark-green, nighttime spring way. This was my fault, I reminded myself. I had to figure this out for myself: how to sleep, how to live, how not to be so scared that it killed me. I had tried the Mayburg place idea, tried to have a real conversation, but maybe that had failed. It had obviously failed Logan and me. Not to mention Blythe. And honestly, Claire too. I felt like the sound Logan had made about herself. I heard a bird, wondered what birds were awake at night—just owls? This didn’t sound like an owl.

Once, Claire came to school early, carrying a shoe box with a bird inside of it. She had found it the night before, on the ground in a patch of ice, hurt. And she had wrapped it in her winter hat, run home, and hidden it from her parents all night. She took it straight to the science teacher the next day, who said it was an emaciated, disoriented woodpecker, and that the reason it was on the ice like that was because of climate change; it had stayed too warm and then gotten too cold too fast. He said Claire was a hero for saving its life, and that he would help her get it to a wildlife rescue facility. But for some reason, this didn’t make her feel okay; she stood there with her eyes turning red and then cried until she looked like a puddle. I never knew if it was relief or sorrow that made her cry that day. Was she freaked out about climate change and all the other birds that were lost on ice without her to rescue them? Or just glad her lost woodpecker would live? Or was it something else altogether? And why didn’t I ask her? I remember walking out of the science room with a few other girls, Logan and Deirdre and maybe Elizabeth Tallentine, but I can’t remember who comforted Claire. Was Blythe there that day?

“This is not fear,” I told myself, and the woods rustled and closed in around me. “This is bravery. You walking here? Brave.”

I focused on my breathing, kept small-talking to Spark, as if his being there could mitigate the danger and terror. It could.
It can,
I told myself.
You’re safe. Spark is with you.

“Hey! Here we are! The Mayburg place,” I said to Spark. Lately the Mayburg place had taken on a smoother, more familiar texture, but walking alone through the night there stripped it back to jagged, splintery, abjectly scary. Spark recoiled at something I hadn’t heard or felt. An animal? A movement in the forest? A branch? Keep on, I thought.
Focus in
.

“It’s okay, boy,” I said. “It’s right up here.” I counted the steps in, and within eleven minutes of leaving the highway, we were at the door. I pushed it open. It was silent inside, except for the night noises. Wind, maybe the lake a half mile back. Was that the lake I heard?

“Why don’t you sit?” I said out loud, and I bent at the knees and felt around for a crate, found one, and sat on it. Spark settled at my feet. My legs felt like overcooked noodles. Spark’s must have, too, because he curled up immediately and his breathing slowed. I was too hot-wired to feel sleepy; my fear had every nerve in my body standing at such rapt attention I was prickly, wondering if fear could give you hives, or spikes. Maybe I would mutate into a blind porcupine.

“So, we are gathered here today to talk about fear,” I said out loud, to myself, and started laughing. A gust of wind blew loud through the corners of the Mayburg place.

I said, over it, “Terror is a choice. I can decide whether to be afraid.”

I thought of Jason, the guy we’d found staying in the Mayburg place, making bacon. Had he slept here? How scary had that been, even for him? Did having sight mean you were never scared anymore? Of course not. He had asked what had happened to me, and I’d said, “I got burned,” just like that. Like it was some small fact I could speak out loud and then go on with my day. I said it again, into the blank, crazy night: “I got burned.” Then I sat for a minute more, utterly still and quiet, until I was sure I could hear the lake at Point Park Beach. I stood up, wrapped Spark’s leash tighter around my left wrist, and held my white cane in my right hand. I felt my way back to the door.

“Fuck you, nighttime,” I said, and I walked out of the Mayburg place. Away from Point Park Beach and all the way home. I went slowly, not rocking, not chattering with fear, not talking anymore, just walking. Me and Spark and my white cane and night vision, in the middle of another dark, alone.

• • •

The grief counselors reappeared at school. It was as if they had been hiding underground and bloomed alive again suddenly when everything melted. Maybe they wanted to get a word in before vacation comes again. Otherwise summer might inspire more recreational drug and swimming suicides:
We’re back! You’ve never met us before (except for that one time, when your friend gobbled tons of drugs and died in the lake, probably on purpose, and then her corpse floated up right where you learned to swim, and we showed up for a week at your school to ask how you were feeling), but here we are, in our capes and masks, to check in one more time. How are you feeling?
Much better now, thanks!

Logan must have gotten her driver’s license last week, but she didn’t mention it to me. I know because it was her birthday, and everyone has been going to get their licenses on their birthdays. I have a present for her, but I haven’t had a chance to give it to her yet. She hasn’t said anything about a party, and I’m too afraid to ask. What if she’s having a sleepover and doesn’t want me there, wetting the bed and leaving in the middle of the night? I don’t think I’ll ever be able to tell her about sneaking out to the Mayburg place alone. Not because I’m mad, maybe, but because some secrets only mean something if you keep them for myself.

I was standing at my locker, getting ready to go to English myself, when Logan came up.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hi.”

“Um, Em? So Zach and I were thinking, maybe we should meet up at the Mayburg place again? This weekend? I mean, now that it’s so weirdly warm, it might be . . .”

I waited.

She said, “Fun?”

“You think?” It came out meaner than I meant it to.

“Come on, Emma,” she said in a pleading voice. “Don’t you want to keep talking? Do you actually not think it’s worth it anymore? Or are you just mad at me? Blythe is willing to come, if—”

“Of course it’s worth it. I just . . .” I felt sorrow wash over me and threaten to drag me under. “Let’s do it Saturday,” I finally said. “Why don’t you ask people from here? I want to invite some friends from Briarly.”

“Oh, okay. Sure,” she said, and turned and walked away midsentence.

“Logan?”

“Yeah?”

“Happy birthday.”

“Thanks,” she said, and kept walking.

In Ms. Spencer’s class, when she asked us whether Antigone had done the right thing by “refusing to follow the law,” I raised my hand.

“Yes, Emma?” Ms. Spencer said, unable to hide her surprise.

“I think she did follow the law, just not the state’s law. Her own, private one.”

No one cared that I’d spoken, except for Ms. Spencer, who said, “Good point,” and Ms. Mabel, who squeezed my arm. The planet kept spinning, and people kept yawning, talking, passing notes, opening drinks, bags of chips, pop, crunch. I should speak in class more often.

When I got home, I called Dee.

“So, um, hey, do you maybe want to come over this Saturday? I mean, if you don’t have other plans or whatever? Or if your mom can bring you to Sauberg? I—”

“Sure! I’d love to,” she said. “Should Seb tag along?”

“That would be great,” I said, glad it had been her idea. “I, well, I got this kind of group of my friends from Lake Main together a few times, to talk, you know, about this girl from our school who died, and just about the world or whatever, and we might be meeting on Saturday in the late afternoon, so I was thinking you guys might want to come and check it out.”

“Uh, okay,” she said.

“I mean, I think I need some moral support. So I’m hoping you’ll come with me to our meeting.”

“Sure,” she said.

“Oh, and this is kind of weird, but we meet at this old, abandoned house near where I live, so one of my sighted friends or my sisters will come with us, if that’s okay.”

“Okay,” Dee said. “I’ll call Seb and see if he’s up for it, too.”

That Saturday, Seb’s mom drove them in and we all had lunch in my kitchen, which seemed like the most normal thing ever. Then I told my mom we were going on a walk, and that Leah would come with us. My mom didn’t object, didn’t even demand to know where we were going, even though she must have been suspicious. She was working hard to let me go; I could feel it. We headed straight to the Mayburg place. Leah had been very eager to come, which I assumed was because she’s generous and wanted to help me and my blind friends find our way into the woods without perishing, but it turned out she had other reasons as well.

When we got there, a few people had already gathered. Someone walked up to me, and when no one spoke, I did it. I reached my hand out and said, clearly, “Who’s this?” I couldn’t tell if Dee noticed.

“It’s Christian, hey,” Christian Aramond said.