Blind

by Rachel Dewoskin

  A few people said sure, and Blythe was like, “Yeah, okay, why not?” And then we kind of drifted off and talked about school and when the outdoor movie screenings were going to start and how stupid it is that they only show musicals from the dark ages, and then someone from Pendelton took out a box of wine. Zach Haze suggested a drinking game and Logan was laughing and I didn’t really want to stay or play or drink. So Sarah and Leah and Seb and Dee and I decided we’d take off, and started walking back through the woods.

  Seb hadn’t said anything the whole time at the Mayburg place, but as soon as we left with Leah and Sarah, he was showing off. “Let’s go swimming in the lake right now,” he suggested. “Come on. Seriously. It’s warm enough. Let’s do it.”

  Fortunately, Dee said, “No thank you,” so I wouldn’t have to. But as soon as I felt all relieved about not having to say no, I decided to be a decent friend for the first time in my life, so I admitted that swimming, especially at night, especially in the lake, sounded horrible to me, too. “I second the no-thank-you. Lake Brainch sounds like a horror movie,” I said.

  “Don’t be so chicken, Emma,” Seb said. “I thought you were all into doing brave shit lately, holding big town hall meetings and whatnot. And you got over your skiing phobia on the bunny hill.”

  “And your thing about fire,” Dee said.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  They were quiet.

  “Uh, your sister said you made a bonfire out of your homework in the backyard, so we figured . . .” Seb started.

  “Really? Which sister?”

  “Come on, Emma, lighten up,” Sarah said. “I didn’t think it was a big deal.”

  “How’d you even know about that?”

  “You think there’s anything that happens in our house that everyone doesn’t know about?”

  To my annoyance, Leah laughed at this.

  “Yeah. I know. I just thought . . . I don’t know,” I said.

  “What? You thought what?” Sarah asked.

  “Whatever, Sarah. Since when have you been interested enough to know what I’m doing?”

  “Maybe since longer ago than you know.”

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  “You know, it’s possible that even you can be wrong occasionally, Emma,” Sarah said.

  “Apparently I can be wrong pretty often,” I said. “But at least I’m willing to admit it.”

  “That’s true,” Dee said. “You’re good like that. Now that you talk.”

  We were turning onto Oak when a fat drop of rain fell on my head. Two seconds later, it started to pour.

  “Let’s run!” Seb yelled, and took off.

  “Show-off,” Dee said.

  “Can you run?” Leah asked me and Dee, and we said, “Yeah, okay,” and she grabbed the hand I wasn’t using to hold Spark’s leash and started off at a slow trot. Then I heard Sarah ask Dee if it was okay to take her hand, and Dee said yes, too. Then we picked up speed until we were bolting through the rain, getting totally soaked and laughing. Dee shouted ahead to Seb, “You got your swim!” and for some reason this seemed really funny to me. I tried to imagine what we looked like, three blind mice and a dog, running with my sisters on either side of us like parentheses. I started singing, “She cut off their tails with a carving knife,” and by the time we got home, I was bent over laughing at my own joke, even though no one else seemed to find it that funny.

  Then suddenly we heard the roar of an engine so loud I wanted to cover my ears, but I couldn’t because I was using my hands to feel the front gate of my yard and to hold Spark’s leash and Leah’s hand. But Leah dropped my hand as the engine slowed. “That’s Jason,” she said. “I’ll see you guys later. Will you tell Mom I went out for a bit?”

  Sarah said, “Sure,” before I had time to say anything, and Leah sprinted off. Sarah took my hand then.

  “Jason?” I asked. “The runaway from the Mayburg place?”

  “He’s not a runaway,” Sarah said.

  “What was that noise?”

  “His motorcycle.”

  “Really? Is Leah going out with him?”

  “I guess so.”

  “On his motorcycle?”

  “Apparently.”

  “In the rain?”

  “Jesus, Emma. What are you, Mom? Jason’s a nice guy. And they’re just friends. So far.”

  I tried to press down the envy rising in my throat. Did Leah confide in Sarah instead of me? Was it like Logan not telling me about her life last summer, because she thought I’d be jealous or feel left out? Or was it something worse: had I never asked Leah a single question about herself?

  In my room, Seb and Dee and I listened to weird music by this band Logan had introduced me to, called Pearl and the Beard, and I took total credit and didn’t mention Logan. I think they were impressed. Seb said he’d been practicing biking, because his new plan was to teach himself how to bike to and from school, and Dee told me she was going to Korea in the summer to visit her grandma. Hanging out with them was easy: we didn’t have to talk about anything intense or crazy, no one we knew in common had died, and we’d all been blind since we’d met and it was just normal. They didn’t seem to think the Mayburg meeting had been that weird, and being in my room with them felt like exhaling after all the drama at Lake Main.

  After they left, I was in a good mood, and I went to Sarah’s room. Leah wasn’t back yet. “Um, so, I’m sorry,” I said, hanging in the doorway.

  “For what?” Sarah asked, fake confused.

  “For saying that you never believed in anything good about anyone. And that you were self-involved or whatever.” Hearing it again didn’t make it better, and I could feel her bristle.

  “I accept your apology,” she said.

  Then I waited for her to apologize, too, for being such a bad sister that I’d felt compelled to say that to her in the first place. For calling Spark “that dog,” and never letting him into her and Leah’s room, which was hardly a spotless place of worship. I walked in, pushing past her, and sat on Leah’s bed.

  Instead of apologizing, Sarah asked, “Why didn’t you invite me to your big parties?”

  “What? They weren’t parties,” I said. “I mean, you saw—it was, like, a bunch of us trying to . . . and anyway it didn’t work. But it wasn’t like we were—”

  “Whatever, Emma,” she said. She went over to her desk.

  “I made these,” she said, handing me a fat envelope. “You can have them.”

  I felt the cream color before opening the thing up and sliding out a bunch of smooth, loose pages.

  “They’re printed on regular printer paper,” she said, “but they’re pictures of your thing from before you burned it. And two of the fire.”

  “You took pictures of . . . Did Benji tell you?”

  “Come on, Emma. You think Benji went out in his pajamas with a bucket of water alone?”

  I thought about this. “You were there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t you say something?”

  Her voice was quiet, maybe unfriendly, or maybe just hesitant. “I knew you would take it the wrong way if I—” I didn’t say anything. Sarah’s voice rose to a slightly more cheerful register. “Whatever. I just thought you’d prefer Benji. I didn’t want you to think I was trying to, like, criticize you or control what you wanted to do. So I sent him.”

  “But you took pictures of my . . . ?” I was too embarrassed to call it “memoir sculpture,” or anything else at all, and my words seized up. But the truth is, I missed that stupid lump of clay with the chopstick white cane and the half-dog. Not to mention my L&E rule book. Now I’d never see any of it again. I shouldn’t have burned it.

  Sarah said, “Show these pictures to Fincter to prove you did the work,” she said. “You don’t want to fail art. Take it from me.” />
  “Did you fail—” This seemed like the wrong question, so I started again. “But you took these before. I mean, why did you take pictures of that stupid, hideous lump of clay in the first place?”

  Now her words were pinched flat and ashy. “It wasn’t stupid. It was good, especially the white cane and the wire eyes and everything. Mom loved it, of course.”

  I didn’t know my mom had ever seen it. I hadn’t shown it to her.

  “Did she ask you to take pictures of it?”

  “No,” Sarah said in gray, annoyed way. “I was going to use them because I was writing about what happened, but I didn’t. Because like you said, I’m no Leah or you.”

  “What were you writing?”

  “Nothing,” she said, and I heard her stand up. “I didn’t do it and it doesn’t matter.”

  Her college essay. She had been writing her college essay about my accident and she hadn’t been able to finish.

  “Why didn’t you ask me to help?”

  She didn’t answer, but I knew why. Because she’d been afraid I would be possessive about my story, or think less of her for being too stupid to write her essay herself. Both were possible.

  “Maybe I could help now?”

  Her teeth scraped against each other, and two opposing parts of my mind clamped shut on a thought like teeth on teeth: How much had my older sisters suffered? How scared or traumatized were they? I know this sounds crazy, but it wasn’t until I heard Sarah’s teeth make the sound that I really thought of it. My accident had seemed like mine alone, or mine and my mom and dad’s or something. But how terrible for me has Claire’s death been? And I’m as far away from her as anyone else who knew her from childhood or school or whatever small intersections there were between our lives. So isn’t it possible that my accident might have been life-wrecking for Sarah in more ways than just costing her our parents’ attention?

  “Yeah, no thanks, Emma,” she said. “I have to write my college essay myself, you know.” In her voice was the same hiss of self-hatred I’d heard in Logan’s. I thought of the snake tattoo I would never see, moving up Sarah’s leg, hidden by socks.

  “I don’t know about having to do it yourself,” I said truthfully. “I think most people have to ask for help in whatever areas they need it in. I obviously have a lot of those areas. And I get a lot of help.”

  I slid the pictures back into the envelope. “I wish I could see these,” I said. “Thank you for taking them. Sometimes I wish so much I could open my eyes. I just . . . even just once, so I could, you know, take one last look at . . . well, at everything. Or stay friends with my friends. Or do any of the things that I should be doing. Like grow up, for instance. But I can’t. I can’t do anything right anymore.”

  She didn’t argue with me, or offer stupid advice. She just said, “I’m really sorry.” And, “I can’t imagine.”

  I shrugged. “Maybe you can.”

  -14-

  It stayed the hottest spring in the history of the world, and the funny thing is, I felt relieved: not that we’re destroying the earth, but that summer was almost back. I wasn’t surprised or enraged, like last year. I guess that’s progress, because I’m glad that almost a whole year has passed since Claire, almost two since my accident. It makes me feel further away from both of those things, closer to something else, something better. Maybe just summer break, cheesy musical screenings on Lake Street, lazy mornings in the house. Maybe I’ll even make it to the lake with Logan. Or Seb and Dee.

  Ms. Spencer told us this week in class about the pathetic fallacy, and how easy it is to think what’s happening outside of us is related to or representative of what’s happening inside of us. Then she read us a poem in English about how stupid spring is anyway, maybe to make us feel better about the fact that we’ll never experience it again. The poem was by Edna St. Vincent Millay, and I loved it, and I said in class that I liked it because it wasn’t cheerful or fake. Coltrane came up to me after and said he’d liked it, too. I was like, “Yeah. It’s almost good enough to forgive Spencer for making us read The Inferno,” and then I laughed a little too loud. He was quiet for a second, but then said, “I kind of liked that one, too, though.” And then I wandered off, feeling awkward—even though, why? I mean, shouldn’t it be okay to disagree with people some of the time? Why do I always feel like everyone has to see things the way I do?

  I had a snack after school with Sarah and my mom. Leah was out with Jason again, and I’ve noticed that the more she’s out with him, the more Sarah’s around. And the more Sarah’s around without Leah, the more of an actual human being Sarah can be. She even walked home from school one day last week with me and the little kids, because Jason picked Leah up on his motorcycle, which our mom still doesn’t know about. Maybe it hasn’t been that easy for Sarah to be Leah’s terrible twin. I’d never really thought about it before.

  On the first really hot Saturday, some of us met up at the cemetery. It was dusk, and the air was thick with sudden humidity, pollen, the steady hum of a cloud of gnats above us.

  Zach and Josh and Logan and Blythe and Christian and Deirdre arrived, followed by a trickle of kids, including Amanda, David, Carl, and Coltrane.

  “Mr. Hawes is here,” Logan said, grabbing my arm. “Weird.”

  “And Mr. Aramond, Christian’s dad,” I heard Deirdre say. “Did someone tell the teachers?”

  More adults were apparently gathering. Mostly teachers, from the whispering, and some parents. I didn’t know who, exactly, but my parents weren’t there. We just did what we had planned to anyway: took turns walking up to Claire’s grave and leaving whatever objects we’d brought. Logan whispered in my ear: now Blythe was unscrewing her nose ring and setting it down; Carl Muscan left a police badge his uncle had given him. Zach put a book down, and when Logan told me that, I didn’t ask what book it was, or even whether she knew.

  “I’m going now, Em,” she said. “Do you want to come?”

  “No thanks,” I said.

  She let go of my hand and walked away from me, toward the grave. A little time passed, during which no one told me anything about what was happening. Then Logan came back and she picked up my hand. I felt bad for not walking up with her.

  “What did you leave?” I whispered.

  “My chemistry set,” she said, the one her dad had given her when we were little, when he and her mom were married; the one we’d made borax snowflakes with.

  When it was my turn to go up, I asked Logan to come with me, and she said sure. She told me when we arrived at Claire’s grave, and I bent to touch the stone, letting go of Lo’s hand and passing Spark’s leash to her. Then I gently set down Mr. Hawes’s pen. I whispered my quiet thank-you—to Benj, because who but Benj would have thought to leave his most beloved possession for a dead friend? And then I said, silently, “I’m sorry,” to Claire.

  Then Logan held on to me on the way back to the crowd of quiet kids. She touched my arm with the hand she wasn’t using to hold mine. “Why a pen?” she whispered. And I could hear that she was hurt even before she found out why it was that she wouldn’t know about an object I loved enough to have considered using it for this.

  “Because Mr. Hawes gave it to me,” I said. “It was his in high school.” I heard her take this in. “I’m sorry I lied about it.”

  She was quiet. Obviously her giant lies trumped my tiny ones, but she still minded. In a way, I was glad. Not to have lied to her, but that she still cared about our sad, lost pact, too. Eventually, while other kids filed up with their treasures, she said, “It’s okay. About Mr. Hawes giving you a present. I get why you didn’t want to tell me that.”

  When everyone was done, Blythe went back up to the front and stood at Claire’s grave. “Hey, everyone,” she said. There was a buzz of hellos.

  “So we’re all here,” she said shyly. Then she paused for a long moment, as if deciding something, and a
dded awkwardly, “This is a vigil for Claire, who, um, as you know, committed suicide last June. We were all her friends, and so we’ve been talking about how to remember her life? So, she was my . . .” I could hear people crying, but I couldn’t tell who. I didn’t feel like I was going to cry, just felt really quiet and calm in a way I don’t think I’ve ever felt before. “She was my best friend, since we were kids, and my girlfriend, so . . . Anyway, we’ve left some things here today for her, and, um, if anyone else wants to leave something or say something, anyone who wants to can.”

  Dima said, from behind us, “I do,” and she moved toward the grave while we waited. “So no one’s really said this out loud in the news or whatever, but we all know Claire was, you know, a wild one,” she said, and there was laughter, soft, in-joke laughter, like we all knew her and it’s okay, now that Blythe talked, to say she was wild. Dima’s voice blended with the air coming off the lake, slowly moving through the leaves and branches around the cemetery. Dima sounded nervous, unlike herself, and I wondered for a moment what her throat looked like, her jaw, her cheekbones. I had never seen her, and I wanted to. Dima was saying, “. . . pure fun, too. I guess we all know she was kind of crazy. In a good way, I mean. And I think she would want us to keep telling her story.”

  Some people clapped awkwardly, but that seemed wrong, and then Dima walked back into the crowd.

  Josh was standing behind us, and Logan whispered to him, “Hey, Josh, what’d you leave for Claire?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “I mean, something, of course, but . . . well, forget it.”

  I perked up, interested that he could be embarrassed. Spark barked for some reason. I reached down and petted him.

  “No, come on, what was it?” Logan asked.

  “Just an old note,” he said.

  I smiled. “I save those, too,” I said, but he didn’t say anything else, and I turned my attention back to the ceremony. Logan let go of my hand, walked back up to the grave, and said that Claire and Blythe had taught her to be braver.

  When she came back, she told me Amanda Boughman was walking up.