The Problem with Forever

by Jennifer L. Armentrout

  You there, stranger?

  I sent a quick yes. I’d barely talked to her since my party fail, too wrapped up in my own head to appreciate the stream of increasingly outrageous IMs she’d sent in the days that followed. Since that night I’d felt itchy and uncomfortable in my skin. I wanted to shed the layers but didn’t know how or where to even start.

  The feeling had lingered through the beginning of the week. I couldn’t remember what was covered in class. Keira had asked about the party on Monday, and I’d lied, saying I’d come down with something. I knew Rider worried. We’d spent a few hours together after school on Wednesday, and I felt like I’d taken several steps backward. I was hyperaware of everything I did and said, which meant I said and did very little as we walked the Harbor. Rider watched me like he was afraid I’d break down at any given moment, which was probably what he expected. He only held my hand and kissed me on the cheek when he left for the garage and work.

  I’d stayed in my room since I got home, carving away at a new piece of soap. I couldn’t touch the butterfly. It sat on the desk, half-transformed. Nothing I’d created with the new bars of soap looked right. I couldn’t get the petals right on the bloomed rose. I’d accidentally broken the ear off the bunny I’d been working on, and the cat looked like something out of a Tim Burton film but not as interesting.

  I wasn’t concentrating. I couldn’t concentrate. Maybe Ainsley could distract me. A new IM appeared.

  Can I call you? I know you hate talking on the phone, but I want to call.

  I straightened, frowning. For Ainsley to actually call meant something was up. Something more than just my not being in the mood to IM all week. Of course, I typed, and my phone rang a few seconds later.

  “I know phones aren’t your thing, but I just... I need someone to talk to,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “And you’re my best friend and I’m—” Her voice caught, and my chest squeezed. “I’m just really freaking out.”

  “Is...is it Todd?” I asked, moving my laptop out of my lap and onto my pillow.

  Her laugh was cutting. “No. I wish it was just about him.”

  I folded my arm across my stomach. “What...what is going on?”

  Ainsley’s deep breath was audible through the phone. “You remember how I had to go to the eye specialist—a retina specialist? Because of what the doctor saw when I was getting checked out for new glasses?”

  “Yeah, I...I remember.”

  “Well, I saw the specialist this afternoon and I...I don’t even understand. I really just thought he was going to say something like you have crappy eyesight or you have a mole on your eye. Did you know you can have moles on your eyes? You can.”

  “I didn’t know that.” I chewed on my lower lip. “What did the...specialist say?”

  “They dilated my eyes and then checked the pressure in them. It was a little higher than normal but not a big deal. Then they took images of my eyes—you know, when you have to stare at the X on the screen? And then they did another series of tests that were X-rays, I guess. They put iodine in me and then flashed all these lights in my eyes while they took pictures. It was really weird and it changed my vision to red and then blue for a few seconds.” She took another deep breath. “And then the specialist finally came in and examined my eyes.”

  Ainsley cleared her throat before continuing. “He sat on his little stool, took off this head contraption that reminded me of something miners would wear, and he...he said he was pretty sure I had this thing called retinitis pig-ma-something-tosa, but he needed to schedule a field vision test to be sure. He also said there was swelling in my eyes. And I was like okay, so what do we have to do?”

  “Okay.” I clutched the phone tight.

  “And he said for the swelling he was going to prescribe eye drops. Some kind of steroid. He made it sound like the swelling was pretty serious. Something called macular edema or something and that if the veins or something ruptured, it would be real bad.”

  Oh my gosh. “But the...the drops will help with that?”

  “Yes.” Ainsley’s voice sounded strained. “I asked him how he was going to treat the retina thing and he said there wasn’t anything he could do about that. There was no cure. And I was like okay, not a big deal, because I’ve always had less than perfect eyesight, but he was looking at me like he felt bad for me, and I didn’t get it.”

  I had a really bad feeling about this.

  “That’s when he told me that I would most—I would most likely go blind or almost completely blind.”

  “Ainsley,” I gasped, shocked.

  “And they don’t even know when it will happen, but it will happen. There are more tests they have to do, but he started telling me that I could either lose my vision from the sides or something called lattice vision and—” She cut herself off with a deep breath. “Okay. I’m not going to freak out.”

  “It’s...it’s okay to freak out about something like this,” I reassured her. This was an official freak-out situation. “Are they sure it’s really that?”

  “I think so, Mal, I really think so. Even the assistant was looking at me like she wanted to hug me and I was just sitting there having no reaction at all. And I came home and it still hasn’t... It hasn’t sunk in. Like, am I going to wake up tomorrow blind? Do I have like a few weeks, a couple of years? I don’t even know what to think. A couple of hours ago, everything was normal.”

  I pressed my hand to my chest. “Ainsley, I’m...I’m so sorry. I don’t know what to say.” And for once it wasn’t because I was caught up in my head, but because I honestly didn’t know what to say. This was a big deal. This was life-changing. “I hope...I hope they are wrong.”

  “Me, too,” she murmured. “There is a chance, you know? They have to do a field test and they were mentioning some kind of genetic test to confirm, but no one in my family is blind. I don’t know.”

  “Is there...anything I can do?”

  “Find me new eyeballs?” She laughed, and for a moment, she sounded like her normal self.

  When we said good-night a half hour later, I was still reeling from the news. I dropped my phone on the bed beside me and stared at my computer. Closing my laptop, I pushed it off the pillow and away from me. It slid to the middle of the bed, stopping as it reached my book bag.

  “Oh my God,” I whispered, closing my eyes tight for a moment.

  Swinging my legs off the bed, I stood and started toward the door but stopped. I didn’t even know where I was going.

  Ainsley was going blind?

  How was that even possible? How did you wake up one morning thinking everything was fine, that today would be like any other day, and then get told something like that?

  I didn’t know what to think.

  Sitting down on the edge of the bed, I slowly shook my head. I had no idea what Ainsley must be going through, what she must be thinking. You took something like vision, no matter how poor, for granted. No one ever considered the possibility of not having it. Of not actually knowing what the color red looked like or how the sky changed at dusk. If I was her, I’d be panicking. I would be in a fetal ball somewhere, rocking—

  I would probably never know what I’d do.

  Because I wasn’t going to lose my eyesight. At least as far as I knew.

  My hands dropped to my knees as I stilled.

  I would most likely never get shot in the back and lose my ability to walk. I would probably, hopefully never again experience what it was like to go to bed hungry at night, my stomach so empty it hurt. I didn’t have to worry about everyone having low expectations of me anymore. I had Carl and Rosa, who cared about me deeply. I had great friends, one who was going through something serious, something that would change her entire life. I had Rider. I had all of these things because of the second chance I’d been given.

  I thought about all the people who would never have the privilege of a second chance at anything.

  I was lucky.

  My life had been hard
, but the past... It was a part of me, but it wasn’t me. I had a future, possibly a beautiful one where I wouldn’t be a...a victim, and yet, when I got lost in my head or let what Mr. Henry did shape my decisions, I wasn’t embracing that future.

  I wasn’t acknowledging everything I had.

  That...that had to change.

  And I thought, by realizing just that, becoming aware, I was changing.

  Chapter 29

  Rider grinned as he eyed the open bedroom door from where he sat on the window seat. I was sitting in the middle of the bed with my speech textbook open in front of me. We were supposed to be working on the next speech, one we were to deliver on someone who was important to us. I’d given my persuasive speech during lunch last week, which hadn’t been hard to write though was still painful to deliver, but this one was giving me fits.

  There were so many people I could write about. How could I just pick one? Taking a deep breath, I started writing again.

  There are several important people in my life, people who have had a hand in changing who I am.

  I stopped, sighing. It seemed obvious that I’d write about Carl or Rosa, but putting why they were important to me into words on paper was harder than I realized. I didn’t want to go too deep into why they were so important even though Mr. Santos probably already knew part of it.

  Rider pulled a sheet of notebook paper free, crumpled it up and then tossed it at me. I had no idea who he was writing his speech on. When I’d asked, he’d said he was going to write about Peter Griffin from Family Guy, and I was guessing—hoping—he hadn’t been serious, because I doubted Mr. Santos would appreciate that.

  I smiled as it landed among pieces of paper I’d painstakingly straightened. I knew without even opening it, it would be a drawing of some sort. This had become his habit over the last month, whenever we studied together.

  I would study.

  He would draw.

  I would tell him to do his homework.

  He would distract me in the best possible ways.

  Things had been...different but the same in the weeks following the night of Peter’s party. Ainsley’s field vision test had confirmed what the doctor had diagnosed. She was losing peripheral vision—already lost about thirty percent without realizing it. The doc had told her she would still have several years of functioning vision and that with all the advancements in that medical field, there would likely be a cure.

  Likely.

  Ainsley didn’t really talk about it. I wished she would, because I knew better than anyone that staying silent wasn’t always the answer. There were some things you needed to talk about, and this was one of them.

  Carl really hadn’t warmed up to Rider, not even when he had dinner at our place at least once a week, but at least he hadn’t interrogated Rider again. He’d graduated to silently stuffing his face during those meals while Rosa kept the conversation going. So that was a plus.

  And things with Rider had been more than good.

  They had been...new and exciting and fresh. Fun. And when I did something kind of crazy two weeks ago, he hadn’t gotten mad or uncomfortable.

  As seniors we had to meet with the guidance counselor to discuss colleges and future plans, and while I’d been in the office, I’d picked up an SAT application. Not for me. I’d taken mine already. I’d picked it up for Rider. That same day, after school, I stopped at an art supply store and bought a generic, cheap portfolio. I’d given both things to Rider that night, after dinner, and he’d stared at them for so long, at first I feared I’d made a mistake. But then he’d smiled and thanked me.

  I just wanted him to see that there were options for him and that he should be proud of his work. College shouldn’t be off the table if he did want to go.

  The next day he had taken me to the art gallery in the city where his painting still hung. And just as I had the day he’d first taken me to the abandoned factory, I found myself transported. Five feet tall and nearly as wide, the painting reminded me of the first one he’d shown me. It was a boy, but this time he wasn’t looking at the sky. He was looking straight out, staring everyone in the face as they walked by, daring them not just to look at him, but to see him. I marveled again at the fact that he’d done this with spray paint.

  Like before, it had been hard to look away from the painting, and even after we’d left the gallery, I couldn’t forget the look of...settled hopelessness. The kind of look that said no one expected anything to change.

  It stayed with me, even as I picked up the ball of paper Rider had tossed.

  The first drawing he’d done while we’d studied was of the Baltimore skyline. I’d made him put it in the portfolio and his face was red the entire time. It was cute. There were at least two more lying on my bed right now that would be perfect for the book—the sketch of a sleeping golden retriever and the one he’d drawn of a mustang.

  I carefully opened up the ball of paper. My mouth dropped open in amazement and I looked over at him. “You drew this in a couple of minutes?”

  He shrugged a shoulder as he twirled his pen. “It was more like ten.”

  “Ten minutes? That’s still unbelievable.”

  Awed, I lifted the piece of paper. In the time it had taken me to write a single sentence, he’d sketched me as I was right that second.

  He’d captured the messy bun atop my head and replicated my profile as I stared at the speech I was working on. Brows lowered in concentration. I must’ve been biting my lower lip. There was even the freckle under my right eye. Every detail etched in blue ink. It was me, but it didn’t look like me. This girl appeared older and more mature. The slope of the shoulders sophisticated. Sounded weird, but as I stared at the sketch, it was like seeing a different version of myself. A better version of myself.

  Did I really look like that to him?

  Perched on my shoulder was a butterfly. I thought that was a strange addition until my gaze lifted from the drawing and traveled to the desk. The butterfly carving that I’d started well over a month ago sat unfinished there.

  It was finished in his sketch.

  I laid the piece of paper on my textbook and carefully smoothed out most of the wrinkles. This one wasn’t going in his portfolio. I was going to keep this forever.

  “You like it?” he asked.

  “I love it.”

  He chuckled, and when I glanced over at him, the pen was moving over his notebook. “Have you written anything for the speech?”

  “Of course.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Rider,” I sighed.

  He looked up through his lashes. “It won’t take me that long to write something up. Besides, this is a better use of my time.”

  “How so?”

  “The drawings make you smile,” he replied with a grin. “Working on the speech doesn’t do anything.”

  That...that was so sweet, I wanted to hug him tight, kiss him, too. “Working on your speech will make me smile, too.”

  His brows lifted and then he flipped his notebook closed. “I know what else will make you smile.”

  “What? You actually doing some homework?”

  “Nope.” He glanced at the door again and then rose. “I think me sitting closer to you will make you smile.”

  The boy knew me well.

  He took a step closer. “I think holding your hand will make you smile.”

  I straightened as I watched him.

  “And I think...” He sat on the edge of the bed and twisted his body toward mine. “I think kissing you will make you smile, too.”

  Oh, dear. I’d totally lost control of this conversation, but I liked it. The corners of my lips tipped up. “I think you’re right.”

  “I know, but...” He placed his hand over mine and lowered his voice. “If Rosa comes up here and catches me making you smile in that way, it’ll end badly.”

  “You’re not worried about Carl coming up here?”

  The right dimple appeared a
s he shook his head. “Rosa scares me more.”

  Laughing, I shoved his arm.

  “What? She’s pretty scary. Like badass scary,” he replied. “She looks like she knows how to fight ninja-style.”