That’s exactly what I don’t want. It’s bad enough knowing I helped ruin someone’s life without also knowing they’re a genuinely good person.
But I just mumble some sort of agreement, and Brie gives a wave and a quick goodbye before hurrying off to the dorms, leaving me to enter the library alone. As soon as I set foot inside, I consider turning right around and ditching. But the unique scent of old books and older words drifts down from the shelves, settling around me, and it gives me the encouragement I need to head deeper into the building.
Harting’s library is about the size of four classrooms put together, but it lacks the graceful beauty of the rest of the campus. Instead, every spare inch is crammed full of books, rows and rows of shelves lined up to display an overflowing collection. Everything from glossy hardbacks to withered and well-loved paperbacks fill the room, each perfectly aligned on its proper shelf. I don’t know how long I stand there in the entrance just staring, but eventually I hear Seth say, “I don’t bite, you know. You can come over.”
I flinch at his voice and turn toward it, finding him sitting at a table in the corner. A few of the shelves have been turned and pushed to the side to create a small study nook, and although a couple tables fill the area, Seth is the only one sitting there. He already has his laptop out, and he absently traces a fingertip over his specialized Braille keyboard. He carries the laptop around to all his classes, and he also has a pair of earbuds he wears a lot, which makes me suspect he has audio versions of a lot of our texts. Aside from that, and the bulky Braille edition he has of our World Lit textbook, he seems to function pretty much like any other student at Harting. He even writes quite a bit for in-class responses, although his handwriting is spidery and barely legible to me.
“Hi,” I say as I head toward him. The slim sunglasses covering his eyes are a strange relief, since it’s a reminder that he can’t see my nervous expression as I approach his table.
Seth looks like he always does—relaxed and casual, with an edge of strength in his movements as he waves a greeting. He leans back in his chair, making his shirt stretch over his chest—it’s a plain green one today, and the silver chain with his brother’s medal is tucked safely beneath the collar.
The shirt looks good on him. I hate to admit it, because it’s probably sick to find any sort of beauty in him. But after seeing Seth on a daily basis for a week, it’s becoming harder to see him as a mirror image of his dead brother, and easier to see him as an easy-going guy with unfair good looks.
I pull out the chair across the table from him, and Koda jumps up from beside Seth, wagging her tail in an exuberant hello. Seth murmurs a quiet command to her and reaches down to stroke her silky ears, and she lies back down, but her tail keeps wagging as I sit at the table.
“I’m glad you came,” Seth says.
“Um, thanks,” I say as I lean my cane against the side of my chair and set my backpack on the table. I start fishing out my textbook for Chem and ask, “How did you know it was me? When I came in?”
“Your cane clicks,” he says. “I used a cane all the time before I got Koda, and I still use it sometimes. Obviously mine’s a different kind than yours, but yeah, it’s close enough to still sound familiar.”
“Oh. I didn’t realize you used a cane.”
“Yeah, I use it whenever I’m going someplace it’s not convenient to bring Koda.” He skims his hand along the edge of the table until he finds my cane leaning there, and then he flicks it expertly into his hand and jabs it toward me slightly, as if it’s a fencing sword. “Next time I use it, I propose we have a duel.”
I sputter out a surprised laugh as he jabs at me again. “Challenge accepted,” I say. “But, for now, I propose you put that thing down before you poke my eye out and we both end up blind.”
He smirks and sets the cane back down, leaning it against the table.
“That’s really neat, though,” I say. “That you can figure things out just using sound.”
“Figuring stuff out like that is totally normal for me,” he says. “I was born with hardly any vision, and things just got worse from there. Sounds and touch are how I’ve always gotten around.”
“Do you remember how anything looks? I mean, colors and stuff?”
“Certain shapes and objects, yeah, I remember them. But colors? I’m not really sure. My doctors say I’ve never had color vision, but sometimes I swear I remember them.”
He gives a wry smile and points his finger in a circle, gesturing to the books around us. “But I can probably just blame that on reading too much. You read a poem enough times, and it paints a picture in your head, whether it’s real or not. You know?”
“Yeah, I know,” I say, and although the words are harmless, they feel more like a dangerous confession. As if I’m admitting that we actually have something similar between us, which shouldn’t be possible. He’s innocent, and I’m not. We should be opposites.
He reaches out to trace the rim of his travel mug sitting next to his laptop. The steam drifting out the hole in the top smells like Earl Grey tea, woodsy with a hint of citrus. Most of the students at Harting seem to depend on coffee for energy, but every time I see Seth, he has a mug of Earl Grey with him.
“You like poetry?” he says. “Really?”
“Well, not as much as prose, but I’ve been reading quite a bit lately.”
“It’s addicting, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I take it you read it a lot?”
He nods. “My brother got me hooked on it a long time ago. When we were real little, my dad used to always read us bedtime stories, but I’d get frustrated since I couldn’t picture what was going on. So when my brother learned about poetry, he had my dad start reading it to us instead. It usually describes things in a lot more detail.”
My guilt rears its head at the mention of Parker, but I manage to say, “That’s really sweet that your brother cared so much.”
My voice goes hoarse, and for a split second, it sounds just like it did during the trial, when I was still recovering from the injury to my neck. But Seth doesn’t seem to notice. He just rubs his forehead, as if trying to clear old memories out of his mind, and then nods to me.
“So who’s your favorite poet?” he asks.
“Um… I like Bukowski.”
Seth makes that little noise stuck between a chuckle and a scoff, which is the closest he ever seems to get to actually laughing. “You’re a bit of a pessimist, huh? I wouldn’t have pegged you for it.”
“And who would you have pegged me as liking?” I ask, trying not to sound too interested. But, truth is, I’m more than a little curious. Sometimes, I find him just staring in my general direction during breakfast, his blind gaze seeming to burrow into me. I have no idea why I seem to intrigue him, but I’m starting to worry he might be piecing together who I really am.
“I thought you’d prefer someone like Blake, or maybe Keats,” he says. “Someone more orderly than Bukowski. Or maybe just less depressing.”
“I strike you as a happy person?”
“No, just the opposite. But you strike me as someone who believes in happiness.”
I pull my backpack between us, pretending to search for my notebook, but really just wanting a barrier to hide behind.
“So am I right?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” I admit.
Honestly, happiness doesn’t seem very important anymore. I’d settle for a sad life, as long as it didn’t involve my sister teetering on the brink of death and a boy who’s already fallen off the ledge.
Seth leans back in his chair, a smug expression tilting up his lips. “I’m right. It’s my sixth sense, you know. Reading people. Everyone assumes I suck at it, since I can’t see them, but I think that just makes it easier for me. They let their guard down.”
“We’ve gotten off track,” I say, pulling the backpack closer to my chest.
“Were we ever on track? I think we’ve been off topic as soon as you got here and star
ted asking questions about my sense of color.”
“Okay, fine. Sorry about that. I’ll make sure to not ask anything personal anymore.”
He brushes away my promise with a swish of his hand. “Don’t apologize. I don’t mind you chatting or asking questions or whatever. Tutoring gets so boring if you don’t.”
“Okay. Well, um, thanks. But we really should get started.”
“Yeah, sure.” He faces his laptop again and expertly taps a couple of the Braille keys. I can’t make sense of any of the patterned bumps or even how their arrangement works, so I just hope Seth doesn’t expect me to be able to figure it out.
“Do you want to re-explain the acid-base equilibria to me?” he asks. “Because the explanation Mr. Bennet gave us made zero sense.”
I’m finally able to relax a little as I rattle off an answer that requires all facts and zero emotions. After that, I manage to keep the conversation away from personal topics, and it doesn’t take long to figure out that tutoring Seth is going to be a lot easier than I expected. I mostly just have to explain in detail the graphs and charts that are in my textbook but missing from his audio edition. Numbers seem to be the key to explaining things. He’s incredible at mental math, and using numbers to illustrate my points makes the session move along swiftly.
I find myself staring at Seth’s chest every few minutes, just marveling at the fact that it’s moving, that he’s breathing. Luckily, he never seems to notice when I zone out. He spends a lot of the session with his lower lip trapped between his teeth, his head tilted in concentration and his hair swished to the side. My brain flip-flops between thinking it’s cute that the ends of his hair curl slightly and thinking it’s creepy that he looks so damn much like his brother.
We’re both exhausted by the time it’s four-thirty, but I’m strangely relaxed. I made it through over an hour of one-on-one tutoring without Seth figuring out who I am. Maybe that means I can keep up this charade better than I anticipated.
I start packing up my notebook and say, “We should probably wrap this up for today.”
He nods. “Yeah, I definitely think that’s enough for one day.”
“How do you do that?” I ask, the question slipping out before I can stop it.
He raises his eyebrows. “What?”
“That,” I say. “Nodding, raising your eyebrows, all those sorts of little things. I’ve noticed you do it a lot, but if you’ve always been blind, how do you know to do it?”
“My brother taught me,” he says, his voice suddenly quieter. “In elementary school, I used to get picked on for having strange facial expressions. Pretty much all the expressions I made naturally were a little different from a person who could see. The bullying got pretty bad, so my brother made it his mission to teach me how to use expressions like a sighted person.”
He gives a soft, sad smile. “The first thing he taught me was how to roll my eyes, so if anyone ever made a nasty comment about my blindness, I could just roll my eyes and tell them to get over it.”
“He sounds like a great brother,” I murmur.
“The best,” Seth says with a nod. “He never let me use my blindness as an excuse for anything. And sometimes I’d get angry at him, but mostly I just loved him for it. He used to tell me that I’d always be the Ashbury with the most interesting story, since I see everything from a different point of view. But I think we all knew it was bullshit. He was always the one in our family with the most interesting stories, because he could find the good in literally everything.”
Seth hesitates a moment, and he lets his fingers trail across the silver chain hanging around his neck. Sadness darkens his expression, and he says, “You know, this might sound kind of weird, and yeah, actually, it is just flat-out weird. But you remind me of my brother. His name was Parker, and he’s, uh...he passed away recently.”
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, wishing I could repeat the words a million times. Then a question rises to the top of the swirling guilt in my mind. “But why would I remind you of him?”
He tilts his head to the other side and bites at his lip. “Because you both let me see.”
My chest freezes, and my breathing stops, and my words cling to my throat. Silence passes between us, thick and heavy. Then I swallow hard and choke out, “I’ve got to get back to my dorm.”
That seems to snap him out of some sort of reverie, and he quickly nods and shuts his laptop. “Yeah, Brie wanted to leave soon. We should go get ready. Uh, thanks for the tutoring.”
“Yeah, no problem.”
Koda stands up from where she’s been resting at his feet and lets out a dramatic, toothy yawn. Seth ruffles her ears. “Just a second,” he says to her, and then goes back to packing up his stuff. I get the feeling I shouldn’t offer to help—he’s clearly used to handling most things without any sort of aid. As if answering my silent question, he says, “Go ahead and take off, if you want. I’ll see you in just a bit, yeah? We’re meeting back in that same spot in the parking lot, right in the corner by the flagpole.”
“Yeah,” I murmur. “See you.”
Chapter Twelve
Hardly anyone is in the pizza parlor when we get there, which only adds to the old-movie vibe of the place. Black and white tiles checker the floor, and booths with matching red seats line the walls in empty rows. Despite its aged feel, every inch of the restaurant is sparkling clean, and even the front corner stuffed with pinball machines is polished to a shine.
We shatter the quiet as soon as we step inside. After so many months spent alone in the hushed silence of my house, I’m still trying to get used to the dizzying noise Brie and her friends make, but I can’t bring myself to dislike it. Brie’s closest to her five friends she first introduced me to, and they’re the ones who came into town tonight. As we head inside, their chatter joins the humming heater to fill the restaurant with a comforting warmth.
I immediately recognize Nathan, who’s reading a culinary magazine as he leans against the counter by the front register. He wears an apron and a smudge of flour on his cheek, and his expression brightens as his gaze lands on Brie.
“Hey!” he calls, setting the magazine down. “You guys want the usual?”
“Sounds good,” Brie says, her smile suddenly doubling in size.
Cameron looks pointedly between Nathan and Brie and then starts whistling the theme song from Lady and the Tramp. Hannah cuffs him in the shoulder and drags him away toward an empty table, and he breaks off his whistling to let out a yelp of protest, followed by a burst of laughter.
Brie blushes a deep red and hurries after them, the rest of us following her. I slip into the seat next to Brie, and Seth takes the spot right next to me. I should probably be bothered by how close he is, but after spending all afternoon tutoring him, my curiosity about Seth is starting to overcome my nerves.
‘“So what’s ‘the usual?’” I ask. I take a deep breath, savoring the scent of this place. It smells amazing, the fresh-baked bread mingling with the crisp tang of herbs.
Maddie smirks as she sits across the table from us, squeezing in next to Landon, Cameron, and Hannah. “There isn’t really a ‘usual.’ Nathan used to always complain that he never got to experiment in the kitchen, so we made a deal with him. He gets to serve us whatever he wants, as long as he gives us five bucks off and he never, ever tries using anchovies again.”
I raise my eyebrows at Brie. “You said the anchovies were good.”
She blushes, but it’s Hannah who answers. “Of course Brie thought it was good. Nathan could serve us a plate of mud, and she’d still say it was good.”
“Shush!” Brie squeaks, waving her hands at Hannah. “He’s not deaf, you know.”
“You’re sure about that?” Landon asks. “I don’t think you can make it much more obvious that you’re into him.”
Brie gives a small laugh. “I have to admit, I’m starting to wonder if he’s gay.”
“He’s not gay,” Cameron says, joining Brie in staring across the ro
om at Nathan. “Or at least he’s not out.”
“And how would you know?” Maddie asks. “It’s not like gay dudes walk around with a sign saying, ‘I’m gay, ladies need not try to impress, cute guys come hither.’ Or at least I haven’t noticed you carrying one, Cam.”
Cameron smirks sheepishly. “I asked. He said no.”
Seth raises an eyebrow. “You asked if he’s gay, or you asked him out?”
“Asked him out, of course,” Cam says, lightly punching Seth’s arm. “You really think I wouldn’t give it a shot? The dude’s freaking hot.” He shoots Brie an apologetic smile. “Don’t worry, Brie. This was before you called dibs.”
She sticks her tongue out at him. “Looks like you wouldn’t have been much competition, anyway.”
Nathan makes his way over to our table holding two baskets of breadsticks, and their banter comes to a conspicuous halt. Hannah and Maddie exchange giggles, while Brie’s blush deepens even more, but Nathan ignores all of it and drops the baskets on top of the table with a dramatic flourish.
“Enjoy,” he says over his shoulder as he heads back into the kitchen.
Everyone snatches up a breadstick, and I follow suit, juggling mine between my palms to cool it before I take a bite. Warm, buttery bread melts on my tongue, and I give an appreciative sigh. If the pizza is half as good as the breadsticks, Brie’s right—Nathan could probably use all the anchovies he wants, and it’d still be delicious.
“Looks like someone’s found true love,” Cameron says, winking at me.
I take another bite and nod. “You guys weren’t kidding about this place being heaven.”
Cameron gulps down the last bit of his appetizer and grins. “We don’t kid about our food, sweetie. And heaven is actually only one of our theories.”
“What are the others?” I ask, dusting a bit of flour off my hand.
This is What Goodbye Looks Like Page 8