Blind Spot (15 page)

But I knew the real reason. Greg couldn’t stand to be around me anymore.

“Yes!” JJ’s wheelchair narrowly missed me as I entered the SPED hallway after Thanksgiving break. Another wheelchair flew by half a second later.

“You got more practice and a motor,” the occupant of the other chair told JJ. “But I’m lifting weights. Motor or not, just wait, you’ll be eating
my
dust soon.”

I knew the voice. “Fritz?” I turned back around and hurried over to him. “Oh, my gosh! When did you get out of the hospital?” I gave him a big hug.

“A couple of weeks ago,” Fritz said.

“A couple of weeks ago!” How had I not heard this? Heather had been keeping me up-to-date on his progress—or I thought she’d been. I’d just spent all afternoon and evening with her yesterday, and she hadn’t said anything about his being out of the hospital.

He nodded. “So what brings you down this deserted hallway?”

“Going to class,” I said. “You?”

“Besides racing?” He smirked and patted his legs. “Life Skills. Gonna learn some mad skills for these bum legs.”

“The only skill you’ll learn in that class is how to be bored.” Before he could ask, I added, “Bum eyes.”

“Then we’ll be bored together.” We headed toward the room. “Missed you at my party Saturday.” He cranked his wheels faster and faster, flew forward, and then screeched to a halt a few feet ahead of me.

“Party?” I hurried to catch up.

“Mr. Grandman, welcome!” Mr. Dellian said as he passed us. “Miss Hart.”

“Hey, Mr. D.,” Fritz said. He looked back at me. “The welcome-home party Greg threw for me. Heather said you were busy helping your mom?” He tried to make a sharp turn into the room and rammed the wall instead.

They had a party for Fritz and didn’t invite me? I pulled Fritz’s chair back so he could try it again. “Oh, right, taking inventory at the cosmetic counter she works at.” So was Heather,
last night.
Saturday I’d done absolutely nothing.

“What’s the scoop with Heather and Greg? Are they dating or just friends?” He wheeled backwards, realigned his wheels, and then sped forward again.

“Dating,” I said.

“Really?” He careened through the door, made an abrupt left-hand turn to avoid colliding with a desk, and slammed to a halt with a grin on his face. “Always thought she’d go more for the daredevil type.”

“I already have a partner!” Jeffrey said when Mr. Dellian told him he and JJ would be partners with Fritz. “‘Partners’ is two people, not three!”

“But we have an odd number of people, Jeffrey. The three of you will need to partner up.”

“I can’t push two wheelchairs!” Jeffrey screamed.

“No one said—”

“When have you ever had to push my wheelchair?” JJ interrupted. “I’m not a friggin’ idiot! I can motor myself.”

“Ditto for me, Dude,” Fritz said. “I might be new to this thing, but I can handle it just fine.”

But Jeffrey had already worked himself up, and that pit bull in him wouldn’t let it go. “You said if your partner is having a bad day, you are having a bad day. That means I have to have double the bad days, and how am I supposed to get both of them in here if they are both gone? I can’t! Their chairs are too heavy!”

“It’s not as if you even have to!” JJ screamed right back. “When have we ever had to do anything as partners?”

Dellian put his hand on Jeffrey’s back to calm him.

“Don’t touch me!”

Dellian’s hands flew up. “Okay, I won’t touch you.”

It was Ruth who came to the rescue. “Fritz can be our partner,” she said in a calm, quiet voice. “We can handle three. Right, Roz? Until Tricia comes back?”

“It’s been two months, Ruth,” JJ muttered. “She’s not coming back.”

Jeffrey’s outburst didn’t surprise me, but I’d never seen JJ like that—first angry and now defeated. He was usually the quiet one who sat at his desk reading his comic books and bothering no one.

“She’s coming back, JJ,” I said. “She just needed some time away. Like when she left her foster family for eight months—they didn’t know where she was, but she was around. Right, Mr. Dellian?”

I honestly said this only to reassure JJ. But the way Dellian stared me down, for what seemed an eternity, before moving on, gave me the feeling he thought I was throwing something in his face. And he didn’t like it.

I was grateful for Christmas break a few weeks later. Dellian had become obsessed with humiliating me. In Life Skills he’d call attention to my vision problem in front of Fritz by asking me where my magnifying glass was or telling me to sit up front. He even brought in a bunch of low-vision aids to demonstrate to the class—for “Miss Hart’s benefit,” he said.

In AP he was a bit more subtle. He started handwriting the quizzes and tests in the tiniest, most cryptic print he could make. He’d call on me to read aloud from the book or the board, then say, “Oh, I forgot. You
can’t
read,” then call on someone else.

But when school finally let out, I felt even more isolated. Mom spent the entire vacation either working or with Tony, her new boyfriend. Heather spent the first week with her mom, and when she went back to her dad’s, she seemed to have something planned with Greg every time I called. So when Mom said I could have a few friends over for New Year’s Eve while she was out of town with Tony, I jumped at it.

“How do I get Greg over there?” Heather said when I called. “I can’t even get him to eat lunch with you. And don’t say ‘use my feminine ways.’ He won’t even kiss me!”

That news made me smile. “Tell him Fritz and Ricky are coming, and that I got two new UFO photos for Christmas.”

“Photos? Wouldn’t a keg be a better carrot?”

“With Greg?” She didn’t know him at all. “Just tell him. It’ll work. I promise.”

Heather showed up with Greg in tow. She wore a silver sequined cami over leather leggings; they were so out of sync with Greg’s casual jeans and green fleece, I almost laughed. Almost—if seeing them together hadn’t made my heart ache so much.

The first few minutes were painful. Heather tried to overcompensate for the uncomfortable silence with stupid, brainless jokes and exaggerated laughter, while I shoveled food into my mouth and tried to ignore how lonely the two of them made me feel. I think we all breathed an inward sigh of relief when Fritz and Ricky showed up.

“Those stairs are gonna be a problem,” Fritz said when I opened the front door.

Shoot. I hadn’t even thought about my house being a split-level. Whether going up or down, he’d have to take on twelve stairs.

“Could we carry you?” Greg asked.

“Nah, man. I’m too heavy, and that’s a lot of stairs.”

“Go through the garage,” I said. “There are only two steps leading into the den.”

This worked but it meant moving the party downstairs. Heather and I relocated the food and punch from upstairs, while the boys muscled Fritz into the den. “Our movies are out. No television down here.” I carried in several drawers full of CDs from my room. “But we’ve got music.”

“Dang.” Ricky flipped through the cases. “You have a little bit of everything, don’t you? Marley, Morrissey, Mudvayne . . .”

I realized then that Greg wasn’t in the den with us. I had a feeling I knew where he was—this was my chance to talk to him alone. “I have my dad’s old record player and album collection too. I’ll go get them.” Just as I thought, Greg was standing on my bed, looking at the UFO photos.

I grinned. “I knew you’d be in here.”

“Sorry.” He started to climb down.

“No, stay, look at them. There’re two new ones.” I pointed to the photos Dad had sent for Christmas. “This one’s kind of crappy—taken with a cell phone. The other one’s awesome, though.”

I carried a stack of records to the den and hurried back to my room. To Greg.

“Where was this taken? The noncrappy one?” Greg asked. “Hand me your magnifying glass for a second.”

“Indiana.” I handed him the magnifier. “A few months ago. It looks like a blimp or something thick; see how the lights appear to be above one another on the same side? But if you look closer—”

“The lights are spaced apart, not one above the other! It’s definitely cylindrical in shape, isn’t it?” He surveyed the other photos again, like a kid in a candy store, eagerly jumping from picture to picture with the magnifying glass. “Did he send you any other new ones?” he asked, finally stepping off the bed.

“Just a news article about a dead Big Foot found in the Alps. You can read it if you want. The corpse looks like a deranged mountain man in his Halloween costume.”

He grinned.

It had been so long since I’d seen him do that, I blurted out, “God, I’ve missed that smile,” before I even knew what I was saying.

The smile froze on his face. “I should get back out there.”

“Wait. Please?” My fingers clutched the fabric of his fleece. “I hate this. I miss laughing with you, and bitching about Dellian with you, and talking about aliens with you; I even miss how you have a quote for everything. I’m sorry I ruined that.”

He didn’t try to move away. I released the fabric and dropped my hand. “That day in your truck? I shouldn’t have said that Missy will never like you. I honestly don’t know if she does or doesn’t. But it was mean to say it, and I’m sorry . . .”

His face took on a weird expression—one I couldn’t read. Was he considering forgiveness or flight? I wasn’t sure, but he
was
still here.

“Okay, for the record? It wasn’t Jonathan I had to get over; it was the idea of him. You know, the popular guy liking the freak? The whole idea that he wanted me—it was so . . . like the first time you hear a dance song with a catchy beat. You know how it makes you just want to jump up and down and dance and sing. You can’t get enough of it, right?”

He shrugged, that odd expression still on his face.

“Okay, but after listening a few times, the song with its nonsensical lyrics and shallow, meaningless rhyme written for rhyme’s sake—it all just gets annoying. That was Jonathan. He made me feel good at first, but . . . he was just a great dance song with crappy lyrics.”

“I hate dance songs with crappy lyrics,” Greg said, a hint of a smirk on his lips.

“Me too.” I grinned.

Heather bounced in. “Hey, what’s the holdup on the record player? Fritz found a Nazareth
Hair of the Dog
album he wants to hear.” She looked at me and then at Greg. “Come on, you two. It’s New Year’s Eve. Can’t you put your stupid fight away for one night?”

“We’re trying,” I said.

Greg nodded. “Give us a minute?”

“I want smiles when you two come out.” She unplugged the record player and scooped it into her arms. “Got that? Smiles!”

Greg shut the door behind her. “You’re not a freak, Roz.”

I shook my head. “That doesn’t matter. Look, I just want you to understand that I got what you were saying that day. You were being a friend, and I wasn’t one back. I am apologizing, or trying to, because I really, really miss my friend.”

“Me too.” He gave me a shy smile.

“Truce then? You’ll acknowledge my existence now?”

The smile widened into that quirky, toothy Greg smile. “Acknowledge your existence? What are you, Sasquatch?”

“You know what I mean. Are we friends again? Will you stop ignoring me?”

“Friends again. You’re really hard to ignore anyway, what with your big feet and all that fur . . .”

Our talk left me happy and giddy and high for most of the night. The five of us played round after round of Name That Tune, as Greg and I had done on the bus. Fritz and Greg were fierce competition for me, but in the end, I stumped them both with obscure songs from B sides.

Then Ricky and Fritz left. We moved upstairs to watch some new action thriller that Heather had brought. I’d planned to watch
Almost Famous
because Greg said he’d never seen it, but Heather insisted we watch her movie, since I owned
Almost Famous
and her movie was due back soon. Whatever. Half of it took place on a Russian ship, which meant it had subtitles I couldn’t see. I sat on the couch with Heather between Greg and me, staring at the screen while she chatted at him the whole time. The sound of her voice annoyed me, and as I sat there, with Greg close by yet so very far away, the giddiness drained from me. I felt empty and hollow and alone.

I wanted to talk to Greg without Heather around. Over and over, I replayed the conversation we had in my room. I wished we’d never joined the others. I wished I’d invited only Greg or made up some lie so everyone but Greg had gone home.

“You want me to read those for you, Roz?” Greg said, cutting into my thoughts.

“What?” I said, realizing then that Heather had stopped talking.

“The subtitles. You want me to read them for you?” he said as I glanced over. Heather was asleep, her head resting on his shoulder.

The intense jealousy that ripped through me made my heart ache. “No, I’m not watching.” I stood up. “I’m gonna watch the fireworks.” I grabbed my jacket and headed outside.

It was well below freezing, minus-thirty degrees, and the blast of cold air slapped some sense back into me. Why shouldn’t she have her head on his shoulder? They were dating. Still . . .

I sat on the porch swing and tried to calm the confusion churning inside me.

“They start yet?” Greg sat down at my side.

“A few more minutes.” I stared at the star-speckled black sky, watching for the first signs of celebration. The fireworks in Birch, Alaska, were always huge. With full-time sunlight in the summer, we couldn’t set off fireworks on the Fourth of July, so the city made the New Year’s display spectacular.

“For the record,” Greg said, “I never had a thing for Missy.”

“Liar!” I said. “Yes, you did.”

“No, seriously, I didn’t.”

“Dude, I should know. I had a killer crush on you until I realized you were all gaga for her.”

“Killer crush?” He gave me a crooked smile. “On me?”

I waved him away, embarrassed. “Remember that Valentine’s Day party Missy had at her house? I showed up early and you were already there, helping her decorate with roses
you
brought.”