When my mom had to go to the bathroom after an hour, she urged me to come back to the ski lodge with her. And I wanted to. In fact, I had separation anxiety like Benj used to when he was one; whenever my mom left the room, he would hold his breath until he turned blue, in what my parents called “Benji’s blue fits.” He stopped having them around the time of my accident, when he was two and a half, I guess when he realized he could count on her to come back. I felt on the slope like I could not, must not, follow my mom to the bathroom, but also like if I stayed alone on that fake white hill I might transform backward into a sobbing baby, turn blue, pass out.
And then, furious that I could not do that, would never be able to do it again, I barked at my mom, “I don’t have to go to the bathroom, and I’m not coming. Kevin?” I wanted her to know that I was calling him over, that I was about to plunge straight down the cliff without her. On purpose. She wouldn’t even be watching this time.
“Are you sure?” my mom asked, her voice a mixture of the buzzing insect sound of panic that was always there and a lavender, fluttering sound—maybe pride that I had made a brave choice.
“I’m sure, Mom. You go ahead.”
And she did, because what else was she going to do? Pee our family name into the snow? Refuse to leave her almost sixteen-year-old alone for three minutes on a school trip? I wished I were Logan, smoking, swimming at night, in bed with a beautiful boy like Zach, or that I were Blythe, actually capable of rebelling.
Kevin was making his way over to me. “Hey, Emma,” he said. “Did you call me?”
“Can I go again?” I asked him. “Fast this time?”
“Absolutely,” he said, and he tied us together, and I took a deep breath in and let go. And I flew down that bunny hill so fast that I almost forgot Kevin was there, almost forgot that I had never been skiing, almost forgot who I was and wasn’t, what was and wasn’t possible, that Claire was dead and I was blind.
I forgot for one split of a perfect second everything except the feeling of tremendous power in my legs—and my own wild speed. Almost.
Sebastian was calling my name from somewhere at the bottom when I slowed down.
“That was amazing, Emma. Good work trusting me,” Kevin was saying.
“How was it?” Sebastian asked. He had come up right next to me, and now he put his hand on the sleeve of my hoodie. All the words in my mind were a flurry, so I didn’t speak; just tripped over my own skis to put my arms around Sebastian’s neck. He smelled just like himself, leather and tangerines, and his shoulders were wide and thin, almost like wings, his face warm. I hugged him for long enough that it started to feel strange, and he pulled away, embarrassed.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, and then, “Thank you. I mean, not just for today, but for last spring, too, for being so . . . I missed you.”
“S’okay,” he said. It took me a minute to see that Dee was standing there, too, sniffling. Was she crying? And if so, why? There was some other energy blinking in the air. Were they dating? They were dating. Why was I hugging Dee’s boyfriend? I backed up, trying not to fall over in my huge boots.
“Dee! How was your skiing?” I asked.
“Good, thanks,” she said.
I hugged Dee, too. “Thank you for inviting me,” I said. “For making me do this.”
She laughed, a short bark of relief, and then sniffled again, so maybe she just had a cold.
“You’re welcome,” she said. “Anytime. In fact, how about we all come back next week? They’re open until April.” Then she put her arms around Sebastian and me, and we began to tow each other along on our skis toward the lodge. I pushed some words out of my throat. Because I knew I’d be a new me by tonight, and she would hate the me I was right now if I didn’t say them. Out loud.
“Um, so, you guys, I came to the game the other day because I wanted to apologize for being kind of, you know, MIA this year,” I said. “I guess I was—” I thought about saying how busy I’d been, how tough it had been to start back at Lake Main, how something. And then, instead, I tried for the truth. “I was trying to pretend that last year never happened.”
“Why?” Seb asked. I felt sort of sick, my throat hurting, my head hot. But I kept on, as we pushed the doors open and the heat of a giant fireplace met my nose first, then my neck, my ears. I heard the logs popping.
“Because I didn’t want to be blind,” I said.
“We didn’t blind you, Emma,” Seb said fairly. “It’s not like it’s because of me or Dee or Briarly.”
“I know. I know that. It just took me some time to sort it out.”
“And now you have?”
“I don’t know,” I said truthfully. “But I’m trying.” I paused, then said, “I mean, I’ve trained myself not to be a PBK anymore. No sulking. No rocking. And I’m working on doing some brave shit on my own. I need to tell you about some of it. I think you guys will be impressed.”
“Yeah?” Seb asked, interested. “What kind of brave shit?”
I shrugged. “It’s nothing great,” I said. “Nothing like you’ve done with your championships and driver’s ed test and beep ball and saving blind kids like me. But I’ll tell you about it soon. Maybe you can even come visit me in Sauberg and meet some of my friends there.”
“That’d be nice,” Dee said.
“How about the driver’s test?” I asked Seb. “Did you end up telling your parents you were taking it?”
“Yeah,” Seb said, in a kind of flat way.
“Oh. Were they mad?”
“No.”
“Did they let you?”
“Yeah.”
“So, um . . .” I didn’t know what to ask.
“He aced the written part,” Dee said proudly, rescuing everyone.
“I’m not surprised,” I said.
I didn’t make him tell me the rest—about whatever part he’d failed. Why would I?
• • •
The first weekend in March, my dad took me over to Annabelle’s house. In the car, I asked him how many times Mr. Otis had come to our house last year, when I was first blind. I said it like that, “first blind,” and the words had a green, lime taste in my mouth, one I didn’t like.
“He came every day for about two months,” my dad said, “and then once a week for a third month.” I was quiet, surprised. That seemed both like more and less than I had remembered. “How did we start our lessons?”
Now it was my dad’s turn to be surprised. “Do you really not remember?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “I guess I was kind of in a daze. Did we start with finding stuff? Or labeling my clothes? Or—”
“You listed your goals, Em. You and Mr. Otis talked a lot about what you hoped you could accomplish, and how you would work toward those goals, one at a time.”
I felt sudden, nauseating fear. I didn’t know who I had been last year, and I had a harder and harder time remembering who I’d been before last year. If I lost track of every past me, who would I be now? Anyone?
“What were my goals?” I asked, and my voice had a layer of frost over it.
My dad took his hand off the steering wheel then and put it on my hand. “Your main one was to get back to school, to be at Lake Main with Logan and your sisters. Do you not remember that?”
“Not really.”
“Well, now that you’ve achieved it, you have new goals, of course, like more independence. Taking the bus, or getting to and from school by yourself,” my dad said. “You and Mr. Otis worked on dressing yourself, pouring things, eating, using the white cane, on listening to sounds that could help you figure out where you were and who was around you, on memorizing routes around the house. Once you acquired those skills, you didn’t need to remember the lessons themselves as much.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
At Annabelle’s, my dad sat and drank coffee with
her parents while I walked with her from room to room, feeling the walls, talking about what colors I thought the carpets and fixtures were. She giggled every time I got one wrong, and shrieked when I was right (once, about the bathroom being yellow). “How could you tell?” she asked. “It’s a lemon room,” I said. “Everything about it.” In her room, she showed me her toys, which were in a jumble, and I said I thought we should organize them. We made a line of plastic robots and glass and stuffed animals along the top of her dresser, and I felt inside some of her drawers. She and her mom hadn’t labeled her clothes yet.
“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.
-13-
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 s
et 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.
Blind Page 24