Blind (27 page)

I said, “Sure, okay,” and he kind of took my elbow, which made energy shoot through my arm like I’d plugged it into a socket. We walked outside, until he was like, “So, um, should we sit here?” And I had no idea if we should sit there or not, so I said yeah, okay, and he took my elbow again and helped me sit down on what turned out to be a log. I could hear him breathing. I was nervous enough that it took me a second to realize how nervous he was. But once I did, it made me want to slide my hand into his, so I did. Mine was cold from being scared and his felt big and warm, like an oven mitt or a glove. He wrapped it around my hand right away, like he was happy about it. I suddenly couldn’t wait to tell Logan, even though she was obviously way beyond thinking that holding hands with Josh was a big deal. I had the mood-wrecking thought that if I told my mom, she might be the only one as thrilled as I was. We sat there on the log, listening to the noise of the warm night, crickets, dry grass, and the lake, close enough to where we were sitting that we could hear it.

“So, um, I mean, that note I left at the vigil? The one that was—whatever? It was from fifth grade.”

I waited.

He laughed a nervous, unfamiliar laugh. “So, I guess it’s pretty obvious it was from you,” he said. “I don’t know if you remember that you wrote it to me—about the floor hockey thing in gym? I’d saved it since grade school. But now I don’t have it anymore because I . . . um, I—” Maybe he realized that nothing he said was coming out right, because instead of finishing, he took my other hand and pulled me toward him and put his mouth on my mouth. Our noses bumped, and then his touched my sunglasses, which I reached up and steadied. My senses rushed at me, and I could feel his jaw and hands and mouth and shoulders, taste a mint he’d maybe just eaten, and a kind of boy-soap and boy-sweat-and-sneakers navy-blue feeling about him. His shirt and something spicy, maybe cologne or deodorant. I thought how the only boy in our family was Benj, and he was still so little that I didn’t really know much about what teenage guys wore or smelled or sounded like up close.

Josh held pretty still, with his mouth on my mouth, and I was trying to turn my brain off, so I could feel instead of think.
Feel it,
I thought.
Feel his heart racing, and your own heart beating.
I felt both, moving so fast I wasn’t sure whose was whose. I was giddy and breathless, trying to turn my mind down to a quiet hum, trying to
focus out
, to concentrate on kissing him back, on what he—and I—felt like. I had just opened my mouth a little, and put my hands on the back of his warm neck and then up a little bit into his hair. It was soft and wavy. Then I heard footsteps and Christian Aramond’s voice: “Oh, sorry, man, my bad.” Josh and I sprang away from each other, and Christian crunched away through the woods. We were alone again, but it was too embarrassing to leap back into each other’s arms.

“Well, um, I guess we better, you know, get back or whatever,” Josh said, in a voice that was still orange, but lit from the inside with embarrassment and also excitement, one that gave me the feeling of a giddy kind of falling, like a roller coaster right at the magenta moment when the rise becomes the fall. Like skiing, too, I guess, except not cold or solo.

We stood and walked back to the Mayburg place, holding hands. When we arrived at the door, he offered to walk me home, and I said, “Oh my god!”

Josh stopped walking so fast he almost tripped.

“What’s up, Em?” he asked, and I liked the way my one-syllable name sounded in his voice. It was sexy, a kind of gruff
Em
, the way he said it. Like he wanted something. My stomach felt fizzy again.

“I forgot about Spark,” I said. He was still in the Mayburg place, had been inside this entire time.

It wasn’t until I said the words—to Josh Winterberg—that I realized that there were moments when I was forgetting to need Spark. I wondered if I would admit this to my parents, who were pushing me to go to guide dog school and get a registered mobility-assistance dog as soon as I turned sixteen in June. I decided I wouldn’t tell them anything. When you’re little, you feel like your parents know every private thought you have. I remember vividly the moment I realized I could actually keep secrets from my parents. I was sitting with my mom on the porch and she had her knees up and her arms wrapped around them and she was looking off into the distance, thinking. And I said, “Mom?” and she didn’t hear me. And this weird wave came over me, because I knew she was far away in her own mind, and that it was a place where there were thoughts I didn’t and couldn’t know about. At first, I was sad and scared. But then, almost in the same second, I realized it was true of my mind, too; that I had thoughts my mom couldn’t know. It seems truer to me the older I get. I can even see my parents feeling and reacting to it, especially now that Leah’s off to college in the fall and Sarah’s finally working on her applications. It’s in the questions they ask us, the ways they think about our days, even how they touch or look at us; it’s like the more we know, the more they’re in a state of constant wonder.

Kissing Josh added another layer to my secret inside life, the one that belongs only to me, and that other people can’t really touch or see, even if I choose to tell them. I think I love that layer, the lava at my center.

“I’m sure he’s fine, but let’s go get Spark,” Josh said, and I liked the way Spark’s name sounded in his voice almost as much as I liked my own.

At first I thought everyone must be noticing us as we came back in, still holding hands, and I was glad. And then I realized they were probably all occupied with their own dramas. And I was still glad. I had just let go of Josh’s hand to squeeze by people and find Spark when Logan came rushing over and jumped on me. “Em! I’ve been looking all over for you!”

“I’m just grabbing Spark and heading out,” I said.

She went silent.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“It’s about Zach, he just—” she said. “Can we talk for a minute?”

“Em, you ready?” Josh said from somewhere in a crowd of people behind me.

I stood still for a minute, waiting for Spark, who I could now hear padding and panting his way toward me, and Josh, who was standing behind me in the mass of people.

“Of course, Lo,” I said. “Tell me what happened. Josh, can you give us a sec?”

“Sure, yeah, um, I’ll wait out front,” Josh said. I blushed.

“Okay,” I said, turning back toward Logan. “Is everything all right?”

Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Wait. Is Josh waiting out front for you?”

“I can tell him to go ahead, just—”

“Is he walking you home? Did you just make out with him? Is that where you were?”

When I said yes, quietly, she screamed with delight, grabbed both my hands, and started literally jumping up and down. She was like Baby Lily or Benj, going from crying to celebrating inside of an instant.

“
What?!
What are you waiting for? Go!” she said. “Do not send him ahead. I’ll walk my dumped self home. I deserve it. Walk with Josh and take his pants off and—not a germ on it!—call me the minute he leaves!” She gave me a gentle push. “But don’t do anything I wouldn’t do! Get it? Ha!”

I didn’t let go of her hand. “Don’t be ridiculous,” I said. “I’m not leaving you here. Come with us.”

“No,” she said. “You don’t be ridiculous. I’m staying; let Josh walk you home.”

“Come with us, Lo, and sleep over. Then we’ll have time to talk.”

If Spark felt betrayed that I had left him inside while I kissed Josh in the woods, he didn’t seem to hold a grudge; he just came up beside me and nuzzled my hand. I pulled a Milk Bone out of my jean skirt pocket and gave it to him. And if anyone else at the Mayburg place even noticed that Josh and I were holding hands, they didn’t mention it. Maybe no one else is as surprised as I am that someone would want to kiss me in the woods.

As we walked, I wrapped Spark’s leash around my wrist so I could hold my white cane in my right hand and Josh’s hand with my left. I had to work to walk steadily, because I didn’t want to drive Josh up onto the embankment. I wondered if Logan missed holding my hand. She talked the entire way home. Zach had broken up with her. He had apparently known about the Brian thing, and thought it would be okay with him, but now it bothered him too much that she had lied about it or not told him the whole story or whatever, and apparently she didn’t mind Josh—or me—knowing all the details.

When we got to my yard, Josh and I stopped. Spark barked. I laughed, reached my left hand down to pat him. “It’s okay, Spark, he’s our friend,” I said. Josh kind of leaned in toward me and Logan was like, “Jesus, you two, get a room!” But then she bounded up the porch steps, leaving us on the lawn. We stood there, awkwardly, and when Logan opened my front door I could hear the light and chatter coming from inside the house: Sarah’s voice, Leah’s, my mom’s, and then a boy’s, maybe Jason’s.

“Is there a motorcycle in the driveway?” I asked Josh. Maybe my asking this kind of stupid question would remind him that I couldn’t see, freak him out.

But he just said, “Yeah,” and then leaned forward and kissed me again. Our noses and my glasses were in the way of each other, but I kept my hands still and tried not to think. I also had a little bit of a tickle in my throat, and tried not to obsess about, what if I coughed? What if you do cough while someone you never imagined would kiss you is kissing you? Does the person faint with horror? Do you both pretend it didn’t happen? Do you say excuse me, or say nothing? How does Blythe Keene think about these things? I landed safely on the fact that Logan was staying over; we could stay awake all night analyzing the nose and glasses and possible coughing problems. And I could tell her about the feeling of Josh’s pulse through my chest and back and hips, my lips and legs. And maybe this is crazy, but kissing Josh made me realize that I was also going to kiss other people, including, I hoped, Coltrane Winslow. And maybe Seb, too, if that ever became okay with Dee. I planned to amaze Logan by telling her this.

In fact, maybe I’d shock the whole town by being “the guy about it,” and telling Coltrane I want to kiss him. I won’t botch it like I did with Seb. I’ll just call him up and ask him to meet me at Bridge for coffee, to talk about justice. Ha! He’ll like that, I bet. I like Josh, and I also like Coltrane, and I’m going to like other people, and hopefully be like Blythe—at least a little bit, I mean—picking whom I like, not just getting picked by whoever likes me.

I kissed Josh one more time then, exactly the way I wanted to, fully, turning my mind off and my body on. It was kind of mind-clearing—I stopped thinking of Logan, Coltrane, Seb, Dee, Sarah, Blythe, Claire, the past, the future, anything at all; just let the world go blank and quiet, like water, how it used to be. Warm and beautiful, before I was scared all the time. Everywhere I could hear and feel and see the rainbow-sparkle liquid heat of that kiss.

Sometimes, I know
for a fact that I can’t imagine how Claire felt. But other times it seems to me like saying “I can’t imagine” is the worst thing you can do to anyone else. So I try as hard as I can to imagine, while also trying not to die of fear, either my own or someone else’s. Because maybe the whole point of being a good human being is trying to imagine—for real—what it feels like to be someone else. Maybe Claire was in an irrational amount of pain over Blythe, or her parents, or something complicated and private enough that there can be no record of it except the one her death created. Maybe she had what Monica Dancat calls “mental illness” but I think might just be regular human suffering.

When I can imagine, it’s bottomlessly terrible. So maybe she felt that way all the time, without the bolts of joy to balance it out—maybe she never got the feeling of the braille dots rising up to mean something, or the piano sounding good again, or sisters laughing at a stupid joke only the five of you can get. Maybe Blythe never skipped her own birthday and then suggested going to the city at the end of the summer for a day to celebrate both birthdays. Or maybe she did, and the feeling of it made Claire desperate instead of happy. Maybe she took drugs to feel the way she thought she should feel more often—fun, or happy, or numb, or safe—and then she went swimming. Either to feel brave or to see blue or to feel dangerously alive.

And maybe in that moment, after the drugs, during the water, it’s possible to think that you don’t care whether you die. If it is, that’s only because you don’t know what it means to be dead, inside forever in the dark. You can’t know about death until you’re dead, not even if you’re me. No one can see that forever, but we all know it’s coming. Death is both the only thing we can be certain of and the thing we know least about, so I guess it makes sense to find it terrifying.

Here’s what I think: Claire forgot for a second that she would be a million other Claires over the course of the rest of her life, and some of them would have been happy. Even though she once told Amanda Boughman that, so we all know she once got it. Or maybe, like so many of us, she got it about other girls, but couldn’t hold it in her mind about herself. So I can totally imagine how she felt. And maybe the truth about Claire is like most truths: hard for everyone to agree on, kind of liquid, changeable—a weird, inconsistent lake.

The last week of school, Elizabeth Tallentine invited me to her house for a sleepover, and I said yes right away, the way she did when I asked her to come to the Mayburg place for our first meeting in the fall. Even though that was a crazy, terrible invitation. I didn’t want to say anything that might make her think I didn’t want to come. Because I did. And I didn’t tell Logan. Maybe I was worried she’d make fun of it, or feel bad, or not care. Or maybe telling someone everything all the time isn’t necessarily the definition of a good friendship. I mean, I don’t know what Logan was up to that Saturday night, and it’s okay, I guess, if sometimes we do our own things. Elizabeth’s house smelled like my house, warm and busy. She has two brothers and the little one wanted to hang out with us and she said yes and I liked her for it. We stayed up really late talking about sex, even though neither of us has had it yet, and we’re not 100 percent sure we’ll ever find anyone who wants to and who we also want to do it with. We also talked about the world, because she wants to travel, which I think is brave and awesome. She wants to go to India someday, and Greece, and Latin America. I knew she had a big map in her mind, and it was fun to hear about it. She said she thinks I’d have an amazing time traveling the world, and maybe I could write a book on the way each country feels or smells or something, a totally original perspective with all my “colors” built in. I didn’t even really know that I had mentioned the way I see things to her, but I guess I had. And she pays close attention. She was nice about it, too; I mean, I didn’t feel like she was patronizing me or trying to make me feel better or anything—just like she thought it was a good idea.

Elizabeth and I came up with a self-dare for me: to call Coltrane Winslow. She had this great idea, which is that if I want to dare myself to do stuff, it should at least be stuff I want to do anyway, not stupid, random things like jumping out of tree houses or sneaking out to the Mayburg place, which I told her about and she seemed to think was both amazing and also not that surprising. But once we thought of the Coltrane call, I couldn’t get out of it, and I was kind of glad. So maybe I’ll dare myself to kiss him, too, the way Josh kissed me.

Coltrane didn’t seem surprised to hear my voice on the phone; was just like, “Hey, Emma, what’s going on?” And I said, just like I’d practiced with Elizabeth at our sleepover and even recorded myself at home saying, “I was wondering if you wanted to meet up at Bridge sometime?” I had deleted all the extra words from my early versions—where I was like, “to talk about our meetings,” or “to talk about next year,” or anything that would sound like an excuse.

Coltrane said, “Sure. When were you thinking?”

I hadn’t planned this part. “Um, I don’t know, maybe this week?”

And he said, “Are you free after school tomorrow?”

I wasn’t; I had a piano lesson with Mr. Bender. “Yeah, totally,” I said, thinking I would call Mr. Bender and just tell the truth for once. Not skip without calling, not have Leah call and pretend to be my mom; just call and explain that this week, Tchaikovsky had to wait for my date with Coltrane Winslow. A date I had initiated!

But Coltrane paused for a minute, and I could feel my heart clench. Should I have been harder to get, even though I had called him and asked him to meet me? Should I have put it off? I hadn’t wanted to.

“So, um, I’ll come by your locker after sixth period and we can walk over together?”

It was the first time I’d ever heard Coltrane say “um.” Maybe he was nervous. I felt ecstatic. “Sounds good,” I said, and my voice was lavender and fluttery like Logan’s.

At Bridge, we each ordered a sparkling lemonade and we shared a blueberry muffin, which was his idea. We took turns taking little bits of the muffin, and our hands touched a few times while we talked about the year, Fincter, Spencer, Hawes’s class, swimming at Point Park Beach, and Mr. M. showing up at the vigil. Coltrane asked how I came up with the idea of all of us meeting at the Mayburg place, and I totally took credit, didn’t even mention Logan or Zach. We talked about Sauberg and America’s justice system and the Edna St. Vincent Millay poem about spring. I told him about Briarly, and how braille felt like piano, and then he asked if I have extra sensitivity in my hearing or touching.

“Depends what I’m touching,” I said. It’s hard to say which one of us this surprised more, but maybe him, because I think he was too shocked to respond. We were both quiet until I started laughing, and then he laughed, too.

When we stopped, he asked, “Um, so, can I walk you home?”

“Sure, thanks,” I said. We had finished our drinks and it was cooling off outside and there was no way to sit at Bridge anymore without it just being really weird. So I roused Spark, who was under the table, probably desperately bored. I felt bad for Spark as Coltrane and I walked out onto Lake Street. The walk was quiet, but it wasn’t awkward, for some reason.

“So, Emma, can I ask you something?” Coltrane asked when we were halfway home.

“Of course,” I said.

But then he waited kind of a long time, like whatever he was going to ask, he decided not to. He finally just said, “So, uh, are you coming to the Mayburg place Saturday?”

I said yeah, even though I was curious what he had actually wanted to ask.

“I was thinking maybe we could walk over together,” he said, and my stomach fluttered.

“Sure, okay, yeah.”

We were at my house. I was thinking about what it would be like to kiss him, what he might taste like—lemonade, or vocabulary, or summer? I don’t know how to explain this, but he felt familiar to me: like love, or hard candy, or home—something I’d been waiting for. I could tell he wanted to kiss me but didn’t know how to go about it. I wondered if he’d get home later and wish he had, or think of clever things he might have said on our walk. I really liked him; I think I liked him even more because I could tell he was unsure, too. I wished I were brave enough to make it easy for both of us and just kiss him myself.

But I said, “So, um, I guess I’ll see you Saturday,” and I bounced up the porch steps with Spark—one, two, three, four, five—confident and fast, without teetering or anything. At the top, I turned and waved, smiling, because I could tell Coltrane was still there, watching me.

As soon as I was inside the door, I dialed Logan. “You are not going to believe what I said to Coltrane Winslow,” I said, and then I told her that I had asked him out and met him for coffee and said “depends what I’m touching,” and that he was walking me to the Mayburg place on Saturday. And even though I had chickened out and not kissed him, she screamed so loud throughout the entire description that my mom heard her through the phone and came into the living room to check on me.

“I’m fine, Mom,” I said, holding my hand over the mouthpiece.

“You’re totally going to lose it to Coltrane Winslow,” Logan was shrieking into the phone, loud enough for my mom to hear.

When we hung up, I went into the garage and felt around until I found my bike, still propped up against the wall where it had sat, untouched, for the last two years. I pulled it away from the wall and wiped the dusty seat with my hand, which I brushed off on my shorts. Then I climbed up and sat on my bike for what felt like hours but was probably ten minutes. Would it occur to me to ride it, and then would I force myself to open the garage door and careen forward into the driveway, across the sidewalk, into the street? How would I listen for cars if the breeze was fast or loud in my ears? Holding the handlebars, I thought of the eggs I’d thrown into the crosswalk with Dr. Sassoman. I put my right foot on the right pedal, and balanced my body by leaving my left foot on the ground. Then I focused as hard as I could on imagining what it would feel like to ride forward into the dark. Scary, and fast, and probably good, too.

Then I climbed off my bike slowly and carefully, and leaned it back against the wall. Maybe I’ll ask Sebastian to bring his bike over here someday and give me a courage transfusion. I wonder if Dee rides her bike, too; I’ve never asked her. I bet she does. Maybe even if they came over, it wouldn’t help, but I think I want to see them ride their bikes either way.

• • •

Baby Lily took her first steps the same week I turned sixteen. She was already one, and my dad had started worrying about the walking, even though Leah and Sarah and I agreed with Mom that she’d walk when she was ready. Why pressure even the tiniest person in our family to hurry up and achieve everything? It turns out we were right, because one afternoon we were sitting on the living room floor—my mom and Leah and me in a kind of triangle across from each other, encouraging Lily to toddle on her own—and then she did it. She stood up and walked from my mom to Leah and then from Leah to me. We were only two feet apart from each other, but still. Sarah took a bunch of pictures while we all clapped like Lily had just won an Olympic gold medal. Benj came down to see what the noise was about, and Lily was laughing and shouting like,
Yeah, I told you so
, and then she let go of my hands, probably so she could clap with us or race over to Benj, but in any case it made her fall over. And then she crawled across the room.

I wished so hard I thought I might black out: that she would be safe, that nothing like what happened to me or Claire would ever happen to her. And I knew, as the joy over her walking rose like a balloon, that there was still, in me and in all of us, the sinking, scary truth: we couldn’t be sure.

Logan was on her way to pick me up in her mom’s car. I climbed up onto the gold couch to wait for her by the window, listening to Benj singing “Oh, I Had a Little Chickie,” the warm-water, dancing, bang-bang version. Babiest Baby Lily was pulling herself up and standing at the edge of the couch, listening to Benj sing, then falling down, then pulling herself up again and falling again and screaming and pulling herself up again.

The doorbell rang and I got up to let Logan in.

“You ready?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I joked. “How good a driver are you?”

“Logan, be careful, please,” my mom said, coming to the door. “Emma, wear your seat belt and call me when you get there.”

Naomi’s voice was so small it sounded to me like it came from between the floorboards somewhere. “Emma? Can I come with you?”

I said yes fast, without asking Logan.

“She has to have a seat belt on in the backseat. Emma, make sure,” my mom said.

“Fine.”

Once we were all belted in like we were taking a trip to the moon, Logan backed out of the driveway so insanely slowly that I thought she might be kidding.

“Are you terrified or just protecting Naomi and me so my mom doesn’t kill you?” I asked her.

But she answered in her serious voice, “I’m just trying to be more careful, I guess. About everything.”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. “I’m trying to be less careful.”

“Well,” she said, “we should be good influences on each other, then.”

Then Naomi said from the backseat, “Do you guys know what puberty is?”

I could hear Logan stifling a laugh. “Um, yes, I think so.”

“Well,” Naomi said, “it’s disgusting.”

At that, Logan laughed out loud. Naomi was silent and we both wondered if she was offended. Logan said, “You should talk it over with Annabelle. Aren’t you guys the same age?”

“They are,” I said, and I thought about how much easier it would be for Naomi to be in middle school than it would be for Annabelle. It seemed really unfair.

As soon as we got to Annabelle’s and she came out, Spark went wild.

“Hi, Spark!” Annabelle said, dropping to her knees to smother him with kisses. “Hi, Emma.” Then she went back to Spark. “I missed you! I missed you,” she said, muffling the words into his neck.