Blind

by Rachel Dewoskin

  Once, Claire came to school early, carrying a shoe box with a bird inside of it. She had found it the night before, on the ground in a patch of ice, hurt. And she had wrapped it in her winter hat, run home, and hidden it from her parents all night. She took it straight to the science teacher the next day, who said it was an emaciated, disoriented woodpecker, and that the reason it was on the ice like that was because of climate change; it had stayed too warm and then gotten too cold too fast. He said Claire was a hero for saving its life, and that he would help her get it to a wildlife rescue facility. But for some reason, this didn’t make her feel okay; she stood there with her eyes turning red and then cried until she looked like a puddle. I never knew if it was relief or sorrow that made her cry that day. Was she freaked out about climate change and all the other birds that were lost on ice without her to rescue them? Or just glad her lost woodpecker would live? Or was it something else altogether? And why didn’t I ask her? I remember walking out of the science room with a few other girls, Logan and Deirdre and maybe Elizabeth Tallentine, but I can’t remember who comforted Claire. Was Blythe there that day?

  “This is not fear,” I told myself, and the woods rustled and closed in around me. “This is bravery. You walking here? Brave.”

  I focused on my breathing, kept small-talking to Spark, as if his being there could mitigate the danger and terror. It could. It can, I told myself. You’re safe. Spark is with you.

  “Hey! Here we are! The Mayburg place,” I said to Spark. Lately the Mayburg place had taken on a smoother, more familiar texture, but walking alone through the night there stripped it back to jagged, splintery, abjectly scary. Spark recoiled at something I hadn’t heard or felt. An animal? A movement in the forest? A branch? Keep on, I thought. Focus in.

  “It’s okay, boy,” I said. “It’s right up here.” I counted the steps in, and within eleven minutes of leaving the highway, we were at the door. I pushed it open. It was silent inside, except for the night noises. Wind, maybe the lake a half mile back. Was that the lake I heard?

  “Why don’t you sit?” I said out loud, and I bent at the knees and felt around for a crate, found one, and sat on it. Spark settled at my feet. My legs felt like overcooked noodles. Spark’s must have, too, because he curled up immediately and his breathing slowed. I was too hot-wired to feel sleepy; my fear had every nerve in my body standing at such rapt attention I was prickly, wondering if fear could give you hives, or spikes. Maybe I would mutate into a blind porcupine.

  “So, we are gathered here today to talk about fear,” I said out loud, to myself, and started laughing. A gust of wind blew loud through the corners of the Mayburg place.

  I said, over it, “Terror is a choice. I can decide whether to be afraid.”

  I thought of Jason, the guy we’d found staying in the Mayburg place, making bacon. Had he slept here? How scary had that been, even for him? Did having sight mean you were never scared anymore? Of course not. He had asked what had happened to me, and I’d said, “I got burned,” just like that. Like it was some small fact I could speak out loud and then go on with my day. I said it again, into the blank, crazy night: “I got burned.” Then I sat for a minute more, utterly still and quiet, until I was sure I could hear the lake at Point Park Beach. I stood up, wrapped Spark’s leash tighter around my left wrist, and held my white cane in my right hand. I felt my way back to the door.

  “Fuck you, nighttime,” I said, and I walked out of the Mayburg place. Away from Point Park Beach and all the way home. I went slowly, not rocking, not chattering with fear, not talking anymore, just walking. Me and Spark and my white cane and night vision, in the middle of another dark, alone.

  • • •

  The grief counselors reappeared at school. It was as if they had been hiding underground and bloomed alive again suddenly when everything melted. Maybe they wanted to get a word in before vacation comes again. Otherwise summer might inspire more recreational drug and swimming suicides: We’re back! You’ve never met us before (except for that one time, when your friend gobbled tons of drugs and died in the lake, probably on purpose, and then her corpse floated up right where you learned to swim, and we showed up for a week at your school to ask how you were feeling), but here we are, in our capes and masks, to check in one more time. How are you feeling? Much better now, thanks!

  Logan must have gotten her driver’s license last week, but she didn’t mention it to me. I know because it was her birthday, and everyone has been going to get their licenses on their birthdays. I have a present for her, but I haven’t had a chance to give it to her yet. She hasn’t said anything about a party, and I’m too afraid to ask. What if she’s having a sleepover and doesn’t want me there, wetting the bed and leaving in the middle of the night? I don’t think I’ll ever be able to tell her about sneaking out to the Mayburg place alone. Not because I’m mad, maybe, but because some secrets only mean something if you keep them for myself.

  I was standing at my locker, getting ready to go to English myself, when Logan came up.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “Hi.”

  “Um, Em? So Zach and I were thinking, maybe we should meet up at the Mayburg place again? This weekend? I mean, now that it’s so weirdly warm, it might be . . .”

  I waited.

  She said, “Fun?”

  “You think?” It came out meaner than I meant it to.

  “Come on, Emma,” she said in a pleading voice. “Don’t you want to keep talking? Do you actually not think it’s worth it anymore? Or are you just mad at me? Blythe is willing to come, if—”

  “Of course it’s worth it. I just . . .” I felt sorrow wash over me and threaten to drag me under. “Let’s do it Saturday,” I finally said. “Why don’t you ask people from here? I want to invite some friends from Briarly.”

  “Oh, okay. Sure,” she said, and turned and walked away midsentence.

  “Logan?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Happy birthday.”

  “Thanks,” she said, and kept walking.

  In Ms. Spencer’s class, when she asked us whether Antigone had done the right thing by “refusing to follow the law,” I raised my hand.

  “Yes, Emma?” Ms. Spencer said, unable to hide her surprise.

  “I think she did follow the law, just not the state’s law. Her own, private one.”

  No one cared that I’d spoken, except for Ms. Spencer, who said, “Good point,” and Ms. Mabel, who squeezed my arm. The planet kept spinning, and people kept yawning, talking, passing notes, opening drinks, bags of chips, pop, crunch. I should speak in class more often.

  When I got home, I called Dee.

  “So, um, hey, do you maybe want to come over this Saturday? I mean, if you don’t have other plans or whatever? Or if your mom can bring you to Sauberg? I—”

  “Sure! I’d love to,” she said. “Should Seb tag along?”

  “That would be great,” I said, glad it had been her idea. “I, well, I got this kind of group of my friends from Lake Main together a few times, to talk, you know, about this girl from our school who died, and just about the world or whatever, and we might be meeting on Saturday in the late afternoon, so I was thinking you guys might want to come and check it out.”

  “Uh, okay,” she said.

  “I mean, I think I need some moral support. So I’m hoping you’ll come with me to our meeting.”

  “Sure,” she said.

  “Oh, and this is kind of weird, but we meet at this old, abandoned house near where I live, so one of my sighted friends or my sisters will come with us, if that’s okay.”

  “Okay,” Dee said. “I’ll call Seb and see if he’s up for it, too.”

  That Saturday, Seb’s mom drove them in and we all had lunch in my kitchen, which seemed like the most normal thing ever. Then I told my mom we were going on a walk, and that Leah would come with us. My
mom didn’t object, didn’t even demand to know where we were going, even though she must have been suspicious. She was working hard to let me go; I could feel it. We headed straight to the Mayburg place. Leah had been very eager to come, which I assumed was because she’s generous and wanted to help me and my blind friends find our way into the woods without perishing, but it turned out she had other reasons as well.

  When we got there, a few people had already gathered. Someone walked up to me, and when no one spoke, I did it. I reached my hand out and said, clearly, “Who’s this?” I couldn’t tell if Dee noticed.

  “It’s Christian, hey,” Christian Aramond said.

  “Hi, Christian. These are my friends, Sebastian and Dee,” I said, and felt them reach their hands out and shake.

  “Nice to meet you,” Christian said, and I thought I could hear a lacy edge of envy in his voice. Maybe he thought Seb was my boyfriend. I didn’t mind if he did, although maybe Dee minded.

  “These are my friends, Sebastian and Dee,” I said over and over then, interested in how easy it was, how everyone said “hey,” how no one, not even David Sarabande, who amazed everyone by showing up, made a blind-leading-the-blind joke. No one seemed to think I was made doubly or triply blind by having blind friends. When Logan arrived, she came straight over and introduced herself. Her voice made my stomach pitch and flip, as it always did these days.

  “You must be Sebastian and Dee,” she said maturely. “I’ve heard so much about you guys. It’s great to finally meet you.” I thought of her jealousy when I was at Briarly. Now she either didn’t feel it anymore or knew she wasn’t entitled. I felt sad, in spite of myself. And unhappy that Logan knew more about what Seb and Dee looked like than I did. She could probably see that Dee was half Korean and half black. But I consoled myself with the chilly comfort that she didn’t know what their hands or faces felt like.

  “You’re like the prom queen of your school,” Seb said.

  “Yeah, right,” I said.

  “She totally could be,” Logan said. “But she’s always been super shy because she has no idea how great she is.”

  Lo meant that as a compliment, obviously, but Dee punched Seb’s arm. “She’s a union leader, Seb, not a shallow prom queen, you sexist pig.” Logan recoiled, probably horrified that Dee felt like she knew me well enough to correct anyone about me in front of her. But Logan said nothing. What could she say?

  A few people in the back of the room started laughing, and I didn’t know why, because whatever happened, I didn’t see or hear it. But the laughter and the not knowing made me start to laugh, too. Maybe I was just really nervous, because I couldn’t stop, even though nothing seemed particularly funny to me. After a minute, we were all laughing, and it was surreal because I had no idea why I was laughing, let alone why everyone else was. Except Dima, who shouted, “What is everyone laughing about?”

  I stopped laughing fast, realizing if Dima was there, then Blythe must be, too.

  “We’re sorry,” I heard Deirdre Sharp say.

  I heard my own voice before I realized I had decided to speak. “My older sister Sarah laughed at our grandma’s funeral,” I said loudly, shocked to hear the bright, hot words come out of my mouth.

  “Weak,” David Sarabande said. I wondered why he kept coming, why Blythe did, too. Maybe it’s better to be in the conversation than out of it, no matter what the conversation is.

  I shrugged it off. “Yeah,” I agreed. “I thought our mom would be mad, but she said sometimes people’s bodies overwhelm their minds.”

  “Whatever that means,” Carl Muscan said.

  “It means that your body is trying to fix you, to heal you when your heart is broken,” Leah said, from way in the back of the room.

  “I remember that,” said a voice I recognized before the word remember was finished. The I was Sarah’s, the remember a kind of onyx word, glinting into that. It took me a minute to get it: Sarah was there, with Leah; had come to my meeting, a meeting I had organized. Leah must have invited her. Sarah, peppery, mean-spirited Sarah, was in the room. She had let me tell that story, her story, and not a very nice one, without interrupting. I was amazed.

  “Hey,” I said. I waved. “Hi, Sarah. I didn’t see you come in.”

  A couple of people, including Sarah, Leah, Logan, and Jason the runaway, laughed at this. Jason was sitting with Leah and Sarah. I listened hard.

  “I laughed when I first saw the news about Claire, actually. I know it’s horrible, but I lost my mind for a minute and it made me laugh,” Deirdre Sharp admitted. “Until I cried.”

  Blythe, her voice an octave lower than it usually was, said, “Well, I didn’t. When my mom told me they found Claire, I wet my pants. And then I blacked out. When I woke up, I was in the bathtub, with my parents trying to wash me.”

  No one laughed.

  An image of Claire came into my mind. She was running, without shoes on. I tried to focus on it, and saw her on a road, barefoot. She looked like both a dream and an actual image. And as she ran, Claire transformed into Logan and then into me. I kept watching her on the screen in my mind. Maybe seeing Claire like that is as close as I can get to seeing at all, or to knowing what it would feel like to be somebody else, even a sighted version of myself. It was like my mind was rebelling about all the focusing in, and doing the opposite; it was projecting itself out onto other girls—and then reflecting their minds, lives, and eyes back onto me. If I had been Claire, would I have died? If Claire were me, would she kill herself? Maybe I’ve been wrong thinking that after my accident I have no choices anymore. Maybe every minute is a choice I make to be alive for that minute. And the next and the next.

  “Emma, are you okay?” I turned toward the orange voice, which belonged to Josh.

  “Yeah, I’m fine, thanks,” I said quietly.

  “Oh, okay,” he said, embarrassed. “You just . . . I thought you might be—”

  “I’m fine,” I said again, quickly, because I didn’t want to let him say crying. I didn’t want to hear him imagine what that might mean for someone with eyes like mine. Josh is nice; he sounds like morning, like juice pouring into a clear glass.

  Then I realized someone else was crying, maybe Blythe. I didn’t ask. Monica Dancat was talking, and her words sounded familiar, like I’d said or heard or thought them before. “. . . or because people would have been totally cruel about it if they’d known,” she was saying. I thought of Logan making fun of Monica for dressing like a lesbian soldier. I thought of her making fun of Elizabeth Tallentine. Would Logan have been cruel to Claire if she’d had ammunition? Would I have? I wondered who talked about Logan, about me; who might joke about Seb and Dee after today. It suddenly seemed like none of it mattered much.

  “Whatever,” Carl said. “There are plenty of gay people in this town who don’t kill themselves. You have to be mentally ill to . . .”

  Then Blythe spoke. “Obviously,” she said. “And plenty of people who kill themselves aren’t gay or young, or whatever, aren’t Claire.” Her voice was different, deflated, edgeless.

  “I’m just saying, I think she felt like she had a lot to hide, right?” Monica asked, and I thought how she probably did, too. How we all did.

  “Everyone feels that way, don’t you think?” Dee said. She knew no one except Seb and me, and yet she felt like she could say what she wanted, which happened to be what I had been thinking but been way too chicken to say. And interestingly, no one was like, “What is that blind stranger doing, talking at our meeting?”

  Logan responded to Dee. “Yeah, I think so. No matter where they live. We’re all hiding shit. Maybe Claire was just more of a pressure cooker than the rest of us.”

  I expected Blythe to contradict this, or at least to be annoyed that Logan had said anything about Claire. But she didn’t. She let it go. I wanted to be like Dee. Why was it so difficult for me to be brave and so easy for
everyone else?

  So I said to Blythe, “Do you think Claire meant to die?”

  There was a long silence. But finally she just said, “I don’t think everyone’s hiding some kind of amazing truth, Emma. I know that’s how you see it, but maybe it wasn’t simple. And we don’t get to know what she was thinking. She didn’t leave a note. So who knows what the hell she wanted? Maybe she was waiting for me. I was supposed to meet her that night, so maybe you’ll think that’s like another huge secret the world’s keeping from you.”

  I ignored the rude part. “Why didn’t you meet her?”

  “Because my parents caught me sneaking out. So what?”

  “Doesn’t that make it seem more like an accident? I mean, if she was planning to hang out that night, maybe she just—”

  “What I’m saying is, stop it,” Blythe said. “It doesn’t matter and the guessing and keeping on about it just make it worse.”

  “So what should we do?” Logan asked.

  “I don’t know,” Blythe said. “Why don’t we do something she would have liked? Like shut up and go swimming. At night.”

  Coltrane Winslow said, “I love that idea,” which surprised me.

  My heart flipped a bit. “What if we each brought her something?” I said quietly. “And left it somewhere? Maybe where she’s . . .” I couldn’t bring myself to say either buried, that horrible blue-gray word, or grave, which was so bleak and airless it made my dark seem like sunlight and glitter. “I mean, what if we each left some object or photo or thing that’s meaningful to us, so we can all . . . would that be okay?” I was thinking of Benj, of Champon sitting on the rabbit’s grave, keeping her company.