by Wendy Mass
He laughs. “Say his name three times fast.”
“Huh?”
“Just do it.”
“KyleR, KyleR, KyleR.” I step back from the counter. “Killer?”
He nods. “That’s right.”
“So you sold me a killer rabbit?”
“He’s just a little feisty, is all.”
“Feisty? Last night I woke up with him lying on my face. I couldn’t breathe!”
He picks up the cage and puts it behind the desk. “You really shouldn’t let a rabbit sleep with you.”
“I didn’t! He was locked in his cage. With extra tape around the door!”
The man looks skeptical, but opens the cash register and hands me forty dollars. “This oughta cover it. And how about I throw in a goldfish? Not likely to kill you.”
Before I can tell him not to bother, he’s already swishing a net around the closest fish tank. Mom and Sawyer arrive while he’s scooping a goldfish into a plastic bag. They’re each nibbling a hot pretzel. Since hot pretzels are pretty much the only thing I eat in the cafeteria every day, I turn it down when offered. I’m glad to see Sawyer is branching out, though.
“I really don’t need one,” I tell the manager when he goes to hand me the fish.
“Goldfish!” Sawyer says, jumping up and snatching it. Good thing the knot in the bag is tight.
“You’re sure you want to do this, Rory?” Mom asks. “You loved that fluffy little guy.”
I take a last look at Bunny. His cute orange ears are still cute. His soft white fur is still soft. And his adorable little wiggling nose is still adorable. But inside his bunny chest lies a heart of stone.
“I’m sure. Let’s go.”
She puts her arm around me, and I put mine around Sawyer. The three of us walk out of the store, and right smack into Alexa, Natalie, Mena, Heather, and Jess. And I mean right smack into them, in that way that makes glasses slide down your nose and people holding bags drop them. And these girls were holding a lot of bags. I fix my glasses and see that they’ve been busy shopping in at least five different clothing stores, along with a bunch of makeup and accessories shops. Sawyer’s goldfish bag had also gone flying, but luckily it landed at Mom’s feet and didn’t break. As soon as the girls sort out whose bag is whose, they focus their attention to me. I brace for the worst.
“Aren’t you the girl who always wears that weird hat?” Mena asks.
I glance at Mom and nod reluctantly. “Um, I don’t really need it anymore.”
“That’s good to hear, Rory,” Natalie says, adjusting the pocketbook on her shoulder. “I was afraid you were going to wear it to my party.”
“So you are going to Natalie’s party!” Alexa exclaims. “Interesting!”
I know she’s thinking about our IM, the one she thought she was having with Boy Rory. I wonder if they ever got that sorted out.
Alexa notices Sawyer. “Hey, I recognize you! You have more clothes on now, though!”
The other girls laugh.
“We’ve got to get going, Rory,” Mom says, steering me and Sawyer away. “You girls have a lovely day.”
They giggle and head toward the food court.
We don’t speak the whole way out to the car. Well, except for Sawyer, who has been bellowing “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” at the top of his lungs ever since the collision. I climb in and stare straight ahead. Mom puts Sawyer into his car seat and joins me up front. She doesn’t start the car, though. Instead, she clears her throat and asks, “How’s your list coming?”
I look over, surprised. She’s never really acknowledged my list before. “Only three things left. Getting contact lenses, going to Natalie’s party, and riding the upside-down roller coaster.”
“Then what are we waiting for?” She starts the car and backs out of the spot. “Let’s go get those lenses.”
“It’s a Sunday, Mom. The eye doctor’s closed.”
She slows down. “Oh, right. Well, I’ll pick you up after school tomorrow, and we’ll go then.”
I watch her out of the corner of my eye. “You have a coupon, don’t you?”
“Maybe.”
The whole way home I think about how at least one of my attempts to look better for the party is actually going to happen. I won’t have makeup, or earrings, or hair-free legs, but at least I won’t have glasses, either.
The next day, since we made such a last minute appointment, we’re told we’ll have to wait a little while. Sawyer isn’t great in waiting rooms. He likes to climb over all the chairs — even if other people are sitting in them. Once Mom got caught up reading a copy of People magazine, and Sawyer started going through a lady’s purse on the chair next to them. The lady didn’t think it was very funny and threatened to press charges.
Luckily for everyone, this office building has a built-in babysitting room. Anyone visiting any of the doctors in the whole building can bring their kids to this room for only a dollar an hour. We drop Sawyer off, and he happily joins the other kids to watch The Lion King.
Back in the waiting room, I keep busy by looking through the contact lenses brochures. “Hey, Mom, look.” I hold up the brochure. She keeps reading her magazine. Undaunted, I ask, “Did you know you can get contacts that look like cat’s eyes? Or with little smiley faces in the middle?”
She flips her page. “You’re not getting those.”
I lean back in my seat. “I know. I was just saying.”
After a few more minutes we get called into Dr. Levinson’s office. She’s been my eye doctor since I failed the vision test at school when I was six. She’s always been very nice to me, which helps when you’re the only first grader who has to wear glasses.
“So you’re finally ready to try contacts?” she asks.
“I’ve been ready,” I reply. “It was my mother who wasn’t ready.”
“Hey, we’re here now, aren’t we?” Mom says.
Dr. Levinson checks something in my file, and says, “Usually we need to do a full checkup before fitting you for contacts, but your annual checkup was just a few months ago, so we can use that prescription.”
This is great news, because it means I won’t have to deal with that machine that blows a puff of air into your eye. I always dread that part.
“All we need to do is measure the curvature of your corneas to make sure we fit you with the right size,” she says. “I should warn you, contact lenses are a big commitment. You have to apply them very carefully, and then clean and change them as often as the type you choose requires. Otherwise, you can damage your eyes, and even permanently warp your cornea. It’s a big responsibility. I always tell parents to ask themselves how well their child follows through with their homework, or how well they take care of the family pet. Those are good indicators of how well they’ll do with contacts.”
Mom frowns. “Rory did just return her pet rabbit after less than two weeks….”
I whirl to face her. “He tried to kill me!”
She shrugs. “Nevertheless.”
Figures Mom wouldn’t let this be easy.
Dr. Levinson raises her eyebrows, but doesn’t pry. “You’re probably aware that there are many different types of lenses. For kids your age, I’m a fan of the disposable soft lenses. They’re very comfortable, and easier for the eye to adapt to than the hard lenses.”
I hold up the brochure. “What about the ones you don’t have to take out for thirty days? Those sounded good.”
She shakes her head. “I don’t recommend those for my younger patients. The chance for a negative reaction is too great.”
I let the brochure drop onto the desk. Well, that solves that! I’ve had enough negative reactions recently to last a lifetime.
Dr. Levinson pushes back her chair. “The first step is to make sure you feel comfortable inserting and removing the lenses. No sense going further before then.” She leads us over to a little nook with different-sized mirrors, bottles of contact solution, and boxes of different lenses. “Sarah, our c
ontact lens technician, will help you from here. Let me know if you have any questions.”
Sarah comes over a few minutes later with a tray. On the tray are little plastic cups with lenses floating in what looks like water, but Sarah says it’s called saline solution.
“We like to use colored contacts for this part,” she explains, “so when the iris turns color, you’ll know you got the lens in the right place.”
We all wash our hands in preparation. First she shows me how to put them in by demonstrating on herself. She lifts the lens out of the solution by touching it with the pad of her middle finger, holds her eye open with the other hand, looks down, pops the lens in, then lifts her eye and blinks it into place. Her blue eye is now brown! Then to remove it, she looks up, pushes the lens down with her fingertip, grasps the sides with her thumb and forefinger, and pinches it out. And that’s it! Looks so simple!
But apparently it only looks simple. When I try to pick up my own lens, I can’t even get it to stick on my fingertip. It goes downhill from there. Once I manage to get it out of the solution, I keep dropping it on the floor and we have to start over with another lens. Mom is no help because the thought of someone touching their eye makes her squeamish. After another ten minutes, I’m able to keep the lens balanced on my finger long enough to bring it toward my eye, but then I’m incapable of bringing the lens any closer than an inch. I try holding my eye open like Sarah had done, but it keeps blinking itself closed again as soon as my finger approaches. My eye has a mind of its own.
Another patient comes and goes. Mom abandons me to watch the movie with Sawyer. Dr. Levinson walks over, assesses the situation, and suggests she place the lens in my eye for me. That way at least I’ll get the feel of it. I agree. She puts on a rubber glove, picks the lens up on her finger and leans toward me. I lean away. I can’t help it, honestly.
She smiles patiently. “Rory, if you don’t want to do this, you don’t have to.”
“I really do want to,” I promise. “Let’s try again.”
She leans in. I lean out. She tries again. Same thing. She suggests we try it lying down on the dentistlike chair in the examination room. I think that’s a good idea. Nowhere for me to back up. I lie down and she leans over me, holds my right eye firmly open, and before I have a chance to think (or blink), she pops it in. I sit up, my eye watering.
She hands me a mirror. “Take a look.”
I blink away the tears. It feels weird against my eyelid. Not bad, just like I know something’s in there. I look in the mirror. “I have one brown eye!” I close my eye and touch my finger gently on the outside of the lid to see if I can feel it. I can. “It feels a little weird, though.”
“This particular lens is larger than what you’ll wind up with. When we measure your curvature we’ll know better. You ready to try taking it out now?”
I nod. She leads me back to the desk and hands me over to Sarah. I cover my green eye with my hand. I look like a totally different person with brown eyes. Or brown eye, to be precise.
Sarah goes over the removal process again, and I listen carefully. But when it comes time to do it … surprise, surprise … I can’t. Time passes. Sarah checks her watch. Mom comes in to say that Sawyer needs to nap or even singing lion cubs won’t be able to calm him. She’s not impressed with my brown eye.
“Okay, okay,” I say, taking a deep breath. “I can do this.” Following Sarah’s example, I open my eye wide, and look up. Then I force myself to reach in and grab it. As I’m grabbing, a few things happen. Sarah says, “Be sure to push it down off your cornea first, into the white area.” Mom comes back in and says, “Ack, can’t look,” and the next thing I know, I feel a searing pain, like a paper cut, but in my eye. Mom and Sarah carry me back into the exam room and lay me down. The receptionist is entertaining Sawyer, who was very upset when he heard me scream and saw me clutch at my eye.
“What you have is a mild corneal abrasion,” Dr. Levinson says when I finally take my hand away from my eye so she can examine it with a magnifying glass. It hurts every time I blink and my eye is tearing like crazy from the bright light. “This can happen if you grasp the lens with your fingernail instead of the soft part of your finger,” she says. “Also, you’ll want to avoid trying to take it out directly over the cornea.”
I really had been trying to follow the directions. I don’t know what went wrong. It all happened so fast.
“So now what?” Mom says, pacing in the small office.
“Mild abrasions like this to the outer layer of the cornea regenerate rapidly, usually within forty-eight hours. The discomfort you’re feeling is from the eyelid rubbing against the uneven cornea.”
It’s a little more than discomfort, but I don’t want Mom to get even more worked up, so I let it pass.
“We have two options,” Dr. Levinson says. “We can patch the eye, which would entail putting in a drop of antibiotic ointment and taping the eye closed. Or what we do more often now is to put in an antibiotic drop, and then place a disposable extended-wear contact lens over it to protect it from the eyelid. Either way, you’ll likely want to wear a patch over the eye because it will be light sensitive and teary while it heals, and we don’t want you rubbing it. Plus, there’ll be some oozing.”
“Did you say a patch?” I ask. “Like a pirate?”
“I’m afraid so,” she says. “But it’s only for two days or so. You could look at it like an extended Halloween!”
I groan.
“Which option do you think you’d like?” she asks gently.
The idea of having another lens stuck in my eye isn’t very appealing, but having my eye taped shut is definitely too creepy. “I’ll go with the lens.”
She nods. “Good. Then let’s get started. You can stay there on the couch.”
My phone rings a few times as I wait for her to return, but I don’t bother to see who it is. Can someone text with only one eye? I’m not sure.
Once the ointment is in and the lens placed on top of it, it doesn’t hurt anymore when I blink. The patch is as bad as I feared. Black, with a thin elastic band that goes around my head to hold it on. At least I won’t have to look at my eye oozing.
Mom guides me out to the waiting room where Sawyer is playing cards with the receptionist. I can’t see any way to hide the patch from him, so I don’t even bother. He takes one look at me, and instead of bursting into tears like I expected, he starts laughing and chants, “Rory is a pirate! Rory is a pirate!” He doesn’t stop all the way out to the car.
I think I’d prefer the crying.
When we stop at the one light in downtown Willow Falls, I ask Mom if I can stay home from school tomorrow. Dr. Levinson has to check my eye sometime tomorrow anyway. Usually I have to be at death’s door before Mom lets me stay home, but she must be taking pity on me because she says yes. I watch out the window with my one good eye, and think about how if this happened to Jake, he and his patch would be plastered all over the teen magazines and the tabloids. Although he’d probably start a new trend or something. At least my mistakes don’t follow me outside of Willow Falls. That’s something to be grateful for.
Mom must have called Dad while I was being patched by the doctor, because when I walk in the door, all he says is, “Annabelle called. She said you didn’t answer your cell.”
I don’t respond.
“Um, do you want to call her back?” He holds out the cordless phone.
I don’t take it.
“Sooo … how was school today?”
“Dad! I’m wearing a patch! I look like a pirate! You can’t pretend not to notice!”
He shrugs. “What patch?”
“UGH!” I try to run upstairs, but running with only one eye is next to impossible. Dr. Levinson says I won’t have “depth perception” as long as the patch is on, and she’s right. I can hardly tell if my feet are going to land on the right steps.
“Let me help you,” Dad says, climbing up to take my arm.
“Thought you did
n’t see anything,” I mumble.
“Can’t a dad just help his beautiful, one-eyed daughter up the stairs?”
I stop climbing. “Too soon for jokes, Dad.”
“You sure?”
“Positive.”
“Aye aye, matey.”
“Dad!”
“Sorry, honey.”
“No more pirate talk!”
“Okay. Can we talk about the bunny?”
“No!”
He stays quiet the rest of the way upstairs, which I’m thankful for. My bedroom feels empty without Bunny, and I worry for a second that I did the wrong thing by returning him. Then I remember the near-death experience and decide that I did what I had to do, for my own safety and that of my loved ones. I mean, what if he hopped his way into Sawyer’s room and went after him next? Who knows what he had planned in his devious little mind.
Dad leads me to my desk chair and asks if I’m going to be okay. I nod. “I only have to wear this for two days.”
“Wear what?”
I throw a shoe at him.
He holds up his hands in surrender and backs out of my room. My phone keeps buzzing to alert me that I have voice mails. Instead of playing them, I just call Annabelle.
“Finally!” she says, answering on the first ring. “I’ve been calling you all day!”
“Why?”
“We’ve got a really early morning shoot tomorrow! It’s a classroom scene. That means lots of close-ups! I wanted to make sure you got Brenda’s call this time.”
I close my eyes and lean my head back on my chair. “I’m not going to school tomorrow.”
“What? Why? Are you sick?”
“Not exactly.”
“But you can’t skip the filming, or they’ll drop you.”
“Maybe they won’t notice.”
“They’ll notice if you don’t sign in.”
“Maybe Boy Rory can sign in twice!” I suggest.
“But don’t you want the money?”
“Well, I don’t have Bunny anymore anyway, so I don’t need it as much.”
“But you’re gonna get a new pet, right? One that doesn’t lie in its cage all day plotting against you?”