After parting with Laila at the park one mid-August day, Terry said to me, “You should be grateful she’s interested in you at all, Half-head. It’s not like anyone else is waiting in line.”
Alia giggled and said, “If you want, Addy, I’ll ask Laila out for you.”
Terry snorted loudly. “Oh yeah, have your sister speak for you. That would impress Laila to no end!”
“Could you girls please give me a break?” I begged. “My life is complicated enough as it is!”
Terry said warningly, “Adrian, I’m still a Raven Knight, and as soon as duty calls, I’m shipping off again. Who knows how long I’ll be gone. Alia gets along wonderfully with Laila, and after all, Laila is the only person in New Haven who’s not too chicken to be around us. At least be friends with her.”
“I already am,” I insisted, “and that’s the way I want to keep it.”
“Are you going away again, Terry?” Alia asked worriedly.
“No definite plans yet,” Terry replied airily, “but you never know.”
Terry didn’t go off on any missions, but I noticed that she was out of the house for longer and longer periods of time. While I sat with Alia at my desk touching little raised dots for hours on end, Terry might be gone all day, skipping lunch and, at times, even dinner. I first thought that she was just getting more training in the dojo, but when I went down and called to her, she often wasn’t there. Once, she was even a few minutes late for one of our scheduled afternoon jogs. Far from seeing it as a chance to finally reprimand her tardiness as she had once so vehemently done with me, I grew increasingly worried with this un-Terry-like behavior.
When I confronted her about it one day near the end of August, she said irately, “What do you care what I’m doing? I’m not Alia, Half-head! You don’t need to know where I am every waking moment of your day.”
“I’m just curious, Terry,” I said.
“Well, don’t be!” she snapped. “I have a life too, you know! I still have a friend or two and I’m doing some peaceful work for Mr. Simms and – and I’m just busy!”
I didn’t believe a word of it, which only made me more curious, but I knew better than to pester her any further. After all, she was the one who demanded that Dr. Lauder tell me the bad news about my eyes. If Terry was choosing to keep something from me, she probably had good reason. Terry would tell me in her own good time.
Besides, I had my own mounting problems now.
For the first few weeks upon returning to New Haven, I had been grateful just to be alive at all. But as the summer began to wane, I found myself increasingly bitter with the sharp turn my life had taken. I wasn’t asking life to be fair.
Just fairer.
My first sprint through the park had greatly inflated my expectations of what I might be able to accomplish, but the sad truth was that, for all the wonderful stories we hear about people overcoming their handicaps, many things were simply beyond the abilities of the blind.
For starters, my psionic power was completely useless. I couldn’t telekinetically touch anything if I didn’t know where it was. It was actually much faster to grope my way to the light switch than to correctly guess its location on the wall from across the room, so Alia never asked me to telekinetically operate the lights anymore. Soon after my rescue, I had tried levitating myself once just to see if I could still do it. I could, but I discovered that I quickly lost my sense of direction, and when I cut my power, I couldn’t land upright. There was little point in being a flight-capable telekinetic if I couldn’t see where I was flying. Aside from my infrequent sleep-hovering, which I couldn’t help, I kept my feet firmly on the floor.
Fighting was another impossibility.
Despite her mysterious and increasingly busy schedule, Terry still regularly took me down to the subbasement dojo for CQC training. However, after a few failed attempts and bloody noses back in late July, she had given up teaching me combat moves and instead had me lifting weights and shadow boxing. I knew better than to complain of the futility of these exercises to Terry, who still obstinately maintained that I would someday regain my eyesight. I wished I could believe her, but I couldn’t.
In a strange way, it might have been easier for me if my blindness had been caused by illness or some kind of accident. If only there was no one to blame, I could have accepted my half-life and moved on. But what happened to me was no accident. Someone had chosen to do this to me, and there was nothing I could do to return the favor.
The helplessness I felt every day was different but just as frustrating as what I remembered from my experience at the Psionic Research Center. Without my eyes, though I was free to go wherever I pleased, I was nevertheless as dependent on Cindy and Alia for my day-to-day survival as I had been on the doctors who kept me locked underground. For me, blindness was a mental prison.
And in prisons, things fester.
I often found myself entertaining thoughts of what I might do to Growler had he still been alive. I wished he was alive, if only so that I could personally give him an end more deserving than a pair of bullets in his back. Occasionally, I even regretted my decision to ask for a painless death for Charles.
Spells of anger and frustration came and went, and my mood became as fickle as it had been back when my mind was struggling with a psionically suppressed memory. That isn’t to say that I spent all of my days moping in my room – Alia wouldn’t let me anyway – but I certainly wasn’t radiating sunshine around the house. Though Cindy and Alia frequently asked what was troubling me, I didn’t want to talk to them about my feelings. Cindy was too much of a pacifist to understand my desire for revenge, and I could hardly bring myself to confide in Alia. There were some things you just didn’t discuss with a little sister.
The one person who I thought could identify with my anger was Terry, but I couldn’t talk to her either. Despite her every effort to hide it, I knew she felt guilty about her decision to leave me with Raven Three. I strongly suspected that Terry was spending her days looking for some nonexistent cure to my blindness, and I didn’t want to add fuel to a purposeless fire.
In addition to the game room, which I never entered anymore, the penthouse had a small library, and beyond it a greenhouse filled with flowers and bushes both common and exotic. Like the books in the library, the greenhouse plants had been inherited from the penthouse’s previous owner when the Guardians purchased the building outright, but Cindy took good care of them. And whenever Cindy wasn’t tending the garden, this was one of the few places I could sit alone and calm myself when I knew my temper was unwelcome elsewhere in the house. I ended up spending a lot of time sitting alone in the greenhouse, and that was where Laila Brown found me one day a little past mid-September.
That morning, Alia and I had had an argument after breakfast, the short of it being that she wanted to play and I didn’t, and I had retreated to my regular chair in the greenhouse. Terry was out as usual, and Cindy was busy doing housework that I should have been helping with but wasn’t.
I heard the door open, and a moment later, Alia announced hesitantly, “Addy? Laila’s here.”
“Hi, Laila,” I said in a monotone, remaining in my chair facing the giant glass panels that looked down over the city below. “Don’t you have school?”
“It’s Saturday, Adrian,” Laila informed me.
“Oh... Well, Terry’s not home, you know.”
“I heard from Ms. Gifford,” said Laila. “I’ve been trying to see Terry for a few days now and I can’t even get her on the phone. You don’t know where she is, do you?”
“No,” I replied. “Terry’s like that.”
“I know,” said Laila, laughing quietly. “How are you doing?”
I suspected that my sister had already told Laila exactly how I was doing, but I lied anyway, “I’m alright.”
“Don’t I wish,” said Alia’s sour voice in my head.
Suddenly Laila asked brightly, “Say, do you want to come with me to the park? Alia too, of cours
e. I’m guessing Terry hasn’t been taking you outside as often as she used to.”
That was true, but mainly because these days I refused to go out when she offered. Terry could order me to the dojo for training, but not to the park for fun.
“I want to go, Laila,” Alia said happily.
“Great!” said Laila. “How about you, Adrian?”
“I’m sorry, but no,” I said stiffly. “I’m a little tired right now.”
There was an uncomfortable silence, but then Laila said, “Well, Alia, you and I can still go, and maybe Adrian can come later if he’s feeling up to it.”
Alia hesitated for a few seconds before replying, “Sure, Laila.”
“Adrian,” Laila said again, “are you sure you don’t want to join us?”
“I’m fine,” I said, giving a slight nod in her direction. “Have a good time.”
I welcomed their departure, but I also felt guilty about refusing Laila’s invitation. I knew that Laila had wanted to cheer me up and that she had only invited Alia out of consideration for the girl who hardly ever left my side. But once Laila had made her offer, she couldn’t retract it, and by my refusal, Laila was now politely stuck with taking my sister to the park. At least Alia would have a good time today, and for that I was grateful to Laila.
Breathing quietly, I closed my eyes and wondered what Alia and Laila might be doing. On the one hand, I wanted nothing more than to be out there enjoying the mild autumn weather with them. But recently, every time I went outside, I was increasingly reminded of all the things I used to be able to do but no longer could, and who needed that?
I continued to sit there with my eyes closed, forcing myself to believe that my closed eyelids were the only reason I couldn’t see anything. When I opened my eyes, I would surely see the sky and the clouds and the cityscape through the floor-to-ceiling windows, and I would walk briskly back through the corridor without having to touch the walls, and...
Hearing the door open, I opened my eyes to dim, murky light.
“Adrian?” Cindy called softly. “I just finished baking some peanut butter cookies. They’re cooling on the dining table now, and at the risk of spoiling your lunch, I thought you might like some.”
I wasn’t particularly hungry, but I had already been rude to two people today. “Yeah, okay,” I said, heavily getting to my feet.
Cindy tried to hold my hand but I snatched it away.
“Whoa, Adrian,” Cindy said in surprise. “Alia was right. You really are in a fiery temper today, aren’t you? Maybe you’ll feel better after you get some sugar in you.”
I doubted it, but I followed Cindy to the dining room anyway. The whole room smelled of freshly baked cookies.
“They’re spread over a pan in front of you,” said Cindy.
When I didn’t touch them, Cindy asked, “You want to talk about it?”
I shook my head. Cindy still believed that my blindness was the one and only reason for my increasingly frequent bouts of anger. I wanted to keep it that way.
I felt Cindy’s gentle hand on my shoulder as she said, “Considering everything that has happened, you have every right to be upset, Adrian. But do you also remember what I told you about Mr. Barnum?”
I did. “Cindy, I can’t choose to be happy on a dead man’s say-so.”
“Perhaps,” said Cindy, “but shutting yourself away in the greenhouse isn’t healthy.”
I pulled away from her. “You’re not about to start pestering me about PTSD again, are you?”
“I’m just worried about you,” Cindy said in a hurt tone. “Is that so bad?”
“No...”
Actually, I was very conflicted on that point. I was grateful beyond words for Cindy’s constant support, but I also felt weighted down by her concern. I didn’t like being a burden, and even if no one in the house ever treated me as one, I knew I was.
Cindy said, “You’re spending way too much time alone these days, Adrian. I know you’re trying to be self-reliant, but shutting out your family isn’t the way to go about it. I really think you’d feel better if you got out more often.”
“Where would I go, Cindy?” I scoffed. “What difference would it make where I was?”
Cindy suggested, “You might reconsider Laila’s Sunday offer.”
“No,” I replied flatly.
Two weeks ago, Laila had called the penthouse to ask Alia and me to Sunday church service, but I had turned her down. I didn’t feel like sitting in the house of a God I didn’t believe in and listening to Mark make a sermon about how there was some good to be found in every person on the planet, because there wasn’t. I still talked with Mark whenever he visited us, but I no longer made trips out to his church. When I told Laila that I didn’t want to go with her, I had simply stated that I was too busy learning Braille and learning to cope with blindness to bother, but Laila took the hint and didn’t ask again.
“I thought you didn’t want people to feel sorry for you, Adrian,” said Cindy.
“I don’t!” I said forcefully. “I just want my eyes back.” I didn’t add that I wanted them back so I could go Slayer hunting with Mr. Simms as soon as I could see again.
Cindy said jokingly, “Well, you keep acting like this and pretty soon the whole world will be drowning in tears over you.”
I didn’t laugh. My voice quivered slightly as I whispered, “It’s just so damn frustrating being useless.”
“You are not useless, Adrian!” Cindy said firmly. “Even if you were, it would make no difference to the people who love you.”
That was just too much. Suddenly I couldn’t contain my pent-up anger any longer. I heard something shatter and realized that I had lost control of my telekinetic power for the first time in months.
I didn’t care.
I shouted at the top of my lungs, “I am a psionic destroyer, Cindy! A destroyer! And don’t you dare forget it!”
Turning my face to hide my tears, I made best-speed for my bedroom and slammed the door behind me. Embarrassment over my childish outburst was now added to the hurt I was feeling. I sat crying on the floor, pounding my fists on the carpet and wishing that the building would suddenly disappear from underneath me so that I could fall to my death. There was a profound difference between wanting people to feel sorry for you and wanting to live a life where people didn’t. Why couldn’t Cindy understand that?!
Cindy gave me enough time to regain most of my composure before she knocked on the door and called softly, “Adrian? Can I come in?”
I got up to make way for the door and Cindy opened it. I felt horribly ashamed of how I had acted. The knowledge that Cindy was used to this kind of behavior from me made it all the worse.
“What did I break this time?” I mumbled.
“Nothing important,” Cindy said serenely. “I just thought, well, if there’s anything you want to talk about, either me, or Mark...”
“There’s nothing to talk about, Cindy,” I said sullenly. “You may not think I’m useless or care if I’m useless, but I am, and I do.”
Cindy replied soothingly, “I think maybe you’ve just been working too hard. You can’t learn Braille in just a few weeks, and you’re getting much better at everything else, but you still have to pace yourself.”
I walked over to the window and touched the glass with my fingertips. “When I stand here, Cindy, I can still see the sunlight. I can still see this city in my head. New Haven, where I once thought I would find peace.” I took a step back from the glass and shook my head. “But there’s no peace here, Cindy. Not for the Guardians, nor for anyone who knows about us. And if this turns into a war, I can’t protect Alia, or you, or anybody anymore. This isn’t about pacing myself. I don’t feel alive.”
“You wish you could see so that you could fight?”
I nodded slowly. “That’s not the only reason of course, but yes, Cindy. I wish I could fight.”
“You’ve really changed, haven’t you, Adrian?” Cindy said sadly.
�
��I guess I have,” I whispered.
In truth, I found myself as surprised as anyone at how quickly I had regained my desire for combat status. When I first returned to New Haven, I was certain that, blind or sighted, I would never want to get near another battle again. But now all of that seemed a distant memory. I still had my own mission to find and rescue Cat from the Angels, and that wasn’t going anywhere while I was walking with a damn kiddie cane.
Cindy said, “You know how much I hated watching you go off on those Raven missions, Adrian, but I still wish there was something I could do for you.”
I turned around and faced her voice. “You’ve done enough, Cindy. You saved my life and you did everything you could to help me live with my mistakes. I’m the one that’s being selfish. I was the one who insisted on going on that stupid mission. I’m blind today because of what I did.” I sighed and added, “I’ll try my best not to break anything else.”
“I don’t care about things, Adrian. I care about you, even if you don’t. Sometimes it takes a lot of effort to be happy. I can’t bring your eyesight back, but if you’re at all willing to take another shot at being happy, I’ll do everything I can to help.”
“You never change,” I said, shaking my head in resignation.
“Is that a good thing?”
I gave her a weak smile. “Yeah, it’s a good thing.”
“Have a cookie.”
Cindy placed a peanut butter cookie in my hand. It was still warm to the touch, and I took a bite.
“It’s good,” I said, chewing slowly.
“Of course it’s good!” laughed Cindy. “Now grab your cane and come with me.”
Cindy filled a small basket with some sandwiches and cookies. She was about to take me to the park to meet up with Laila and Alia when the front door burst open.
“Terry!” Cindy exclaimed in surprise, but Terry didn’t even reply as she stomped across the living room and down the corridor toward her room. I heard her door slam.
I let out a soft whistle. “Terry’s having a bad day too.”
“Worse than usual,” agreed Cindy. “I’ll go talk to her.”
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