Not If I See You First

Copyright

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2016

HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd,

HarperCollins Publishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Not If I See You First

Text copyright © Eric Lindstrom, 2016

Cover artwork © Liz Casal

Eric Lindstrom asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008146306

Ebook Edition © NOVEMBER 2015 ISBN: 9780008146337

Version: 2017-02-02

For all who love,

Especially

Shannon,

You got me started

Rachel,

You made me finish

Susan,

You keep me going

Be fearless

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Acknowledgments

Keep Reading …

About the Author

About the Publisher

I crank open the window and stick out my hand. Cool, misty, but not too humid. Probably overcast. I pull on clothes—sports bra, sleeveless shirt, shorts, track shoes—without bothering to check anything, since all my running clothes are black.

Except my scarves. I finger through them, checking the plastic tags, gauging my mood. I feel strangely unsettled, so I pick one that might help: the yellow cotton with embroidered happy faces. I tie it around my head like a blindfold, settling a smile on each of my closed eyelids.

The rising sun is warm on my cheeks; the sky must be clear, at least at the horizon. I lock the front door and slip the cold key into my sock. Where the path turns to sidewalk, I turn right and start to jog.

The three blocks to the field are programmed into my feet, my legs, my equilibrium. After seven years of this I know every bump, every crack, every exposed root in the sidewalk. I don’t need to see where I’m running; I can feel it.

“Parker, STOP!”

I stumble to a halt, waving my arms like I’m at the edge of a cliff. And if a backhoe came yesterday, I very well could be.

“I’m so sorry, Parker!” It’s Mrs. Reiche’s suffering-suburban-housewife voice calling from her porch. Now she’s trotting down the driveway, keys jangling. “Len’s brother came last night …”

I try not to imagine running into the side of his van. I walk forward, hands out, until I touch cold, dew-covered metal. “You don’t have to move it.” I trace my fingers along the slick car body as I walk around.

“Of course I’ll move it. It’ll be gone when you get back.”

I find the sidewalk again and continue as the van growls behind me. I wait at the corner until Mrs. Reiche shuts it off to listen for traffic. I hear nothing but chattering birds, so I step into the intersection.

When I touch the chain link fence of Gunther Field I turn right. Fourteen steps to the gap and a left turn through it, one hand slightly forward in case today is the first time in years I misjudged the distance. I pass straight through, like always.

The field is over a hundred yards across. If any new obstacles have shown up since yesterday chances are low I’ll find them with a single walk-through, but as crazy as it is to run here at all it’s even crazier without walking it first.

I reach the far fence at one hundred and forty-two steps. Pretty typical and all clear. After a few more minutes of stretching, I’m ready to run. Seventy-five strides at a fair pace, a couple dozen walking steps to touch the far fence, and back again.

After five turns, it’s time to sprint.

Sixty strides gets me within two dozen walking steps of the far side. Then sidestep a bit to line up again because of drift. The still air is warmer than yesterday but feels cool as I fly through it. The worst heat of summer is weeks away.

Ten sprints and I’m done. After crossing the street I jog to cool down, but I slow to a walk near the Reiches’ driveway. I heard the car move but once a problem occurs to you it takes a while to forget it. On the other side where the driveway slopes up to become sidewalk again, I speed up.

The instant I open the front door I know something’s wrong. I don’t smell any breakfast. Even cereal days include toast. In the kitchen I hear only the normal sounds of a sleeping house: refrigerator humming, clock ticking over the stove, my breathing, and when I stop that to listen more closely, my heartbeat.

I head for the stairs and stumble on something in the hall. I squat and find my dad lying on the floor, wearing flannel pajama bottoms and a T-shirt.

“Dad? Dad! Are you okay?”

“Parker,” he says, his voice oddly flat. Not strained or injured.

“Did you fall? What happened?”

“Listen,” he says, still sounding nothing like he should if he were really lying at the base of the stairs. “Everyone has secrets, Parker. Everyone is a secret.”

That’s when I wake up, like always, but it’s exactly what really happened last June third, the week after school let out and two weeks after my sixteenth birthday.

Well, except for two things. One, I really did almost run into the Reiches’ van, but that was a different day a couple weeks later. And two, my dad wasn’t lying at the bottom of the stairs. I found him still in bed, and he’d been dead for hours.

“And then he … he … he didn’t …” Her deep voice almost sounds like grunting.

Pathetic. And she’s smart, too, except about Owen.

“Can’t you guys talk to him?”

I don’t reply and neither does Sarah. We offer good advice—for free even—but never get involved. We’ve told Marissa this countless times; it would waste oxygen to say it again. We just have to wait for her to dry out. There’s nothing to do till the bell rings anyway.

Last school year this scene repeated itself every few weeks. Marissa rarely speaks to me otherwise. I can’t clearly remember what she sounds like without wailing, snuffling, gasping, coughing on tears and snot, and really needing to blow her nose.

It’s a common belief that losing your sight heightens your other senses, and it’s true, but not by magnifying them. It just gets rid of the overwhelming distraction of seeing everything all the time. On the other hand, my experience of sitting with Marissa consisted almost entirely of hearing everything her mouth and nose were capable of in sticky detail. That’s what unrequited love sounds like to me. Disgusting.

“Parker? Can’t you do something?”

“I am. I’m telling you to find someone else.” I pause, per the usual script, so she can interrupt.

“Nooooo!”

I’m the reigning queen of not giving a shit what other people think, but Marissa’s indifference to a Junior Quad full of people—on the first day of school no less—seeing her imitate a shrieking mucus factory … it humbles even me.

“Marissa, listen, soul mates don’t exist. But if they did, they would be two people who want each other. You want Owen, but Owen wants Jasmine, so that means Owen is not your soul mate. You’re just his stalker.”

“Wait … Jasmine?” I enjoy a moment of peace as the surprise of this information, which we told her last spring, quiets her for a moment. “Isn’t she …?”

“Yes, Jasmine likes girls, but she hasn’t found one in particular yet, so Owen stupidly thinks he has a chance. That makes him following her around only slightly more pointless and sad than you following him around. In fact—”

Sarah clicks her tongue and I know what it means but at some speeds I have too much momentum to stop or even slow down.

“—the only thing you and Owen have in common is being in love with someone who doesn’t love you back, someone you don’t even know. Have you ever even looked up words like love or soul mate or even relationship in a dictionary?”

The silence that follows is the perfect example of the thing I hate most about being blind: not seeing how people react to what I say.

“But …” Marissa sniffs productively. “If we spent some time togeth—”

Saved by the bell. Her and me both. But mostly her.

*

“Well, if it isn’t PG-13 and her All-Seeing-Eye-Dog.” The familiar screech is to my left and accompanied by a locker door clattering open.

“Please tell me her locker isn’t right over there,” I say to Sarah in a stage whisper. “I found out over the summer I’m allergic to PVP. Now I have to carry an EpiPen in my bag.”

“Oh,” Faith says in her snippy voice. “I’m PVP? That’s … People … People …”

“Polyvinylpyrrolidone. Used in hair spray, hair gel, glue sticks, and plywood.”

“Well, I think PVP means People … who are … Very Popular.”

I laugh, breaking character. “Fay-Fay! Did you just think that up?”

“Of course I did! I’m not as dumb as you look.”

The odor of kiwi-strawberry tells me what’s about to happen and I brace myself. I’d call it a bear hug except Faith is too skinny to do anything bearish. I hold on a bit too long and then let go.

“Do you really have an EpiPen?” she asks.

“God, Fay,” Sarah says. “Do you even know what that is?”

“My nephew’s allergic to peanuts. And do you know you’re a pretentious, condescending bitch?”

“Yes, I doooof!” The rush of air and Sarah’s answer tells me Faith gave her a hug, too.

“Can you believe all these strangers?” Faith says, making no attempt to whisper. “This place is a zoo.”

“At least it’s them invading us,” Sarah says, “and not the other way around.”

All true. The town of Coastview can’t support two high schools anymore, so Jefferson closed and everyone came here to Adams. The halls are so jammed with people who don’t know The Rules, and not just the freshmen, that I had to hold on to Sarah’s arm to get through the chaos to my locker. Breaking in this many newbies will be messy, but at least I don’t have to learn the layout of an entirely different school.

“Oh, hey, here comes another one,” Faith says, closer and softer, this time remembering Rule Number Two, and she hugs me again. “I’m sorry I was stuck in Vermont all summer. You know I’d have come if I could, don’t you?”

“I’m fine,” I say quickly, hoping that will end the subject.

“Did I see you guys talking to Marissa this morning? Was she crying?”

“New year, same bullshit,” Sarah says.

“Please tell me it’s over a new guy. Really? No …”

I imagine various facial expressions and nods and eyebrow waggling filling in the gaps.

“That’s what you spent the morning talking about? Pretty selfish of her … Wait.” I can hear that Faith has turned to face me. “Does she even know? Didn’t you tell her?”

“Right,” I say. “Oh, Marissa, while you spent the summer crying over some complete stranger, my dad died and my aunt’s family moved here because my house is better than theirs.”

“So …” Faith says. “That’s something you just thought, or you actually said that?”

“Jesus, Fay. I’m honest but I’m not mean.”

“Some exceptions apply,” Sarah says.

“I have to go.” I unfold my cane. “With all these noobs in the way, it’s going to take a while to get to Trig.”

“Haven’t they assigned her a new buddy?” Faith asks Sarah as I tap down the hall. “Who is it? Didn’t Petra move to Colorado or somewhere?”

I’m grateful they can talk about my buddy without sounding awkward. It can’t be one of them—Faith is too busy socially (translation: popular) and Sarah doesn’t qualify because she’s not taking enough of my honors and AP classes. But there’s a girl from Jefferson who’s in all my classes, and she was willing, so the choice pretty much made itself.

*

As soon as I settle into my usual seat for every class—in the back right corner and reserved for me with a name card—it starts.

“So you’re blind, huh?”

I cock my head toward the unfamiliar male voice, coming from the seat directly in front of me. Low-pitched, a bit thick around the vowels. The voice of a jock, but I just keep that as a working hypothesis awaiting more evidence.

“Are you sure you’re in the right class?” I say. “Calculus for Geniuses is down the hall. This is just Trig.”

“I guess you’re in Kensington’s class? Isn’t it kinda early for this?”

I don’t know what this means, or who Kensington is. A teacher from Jefferson, maybe.

“Hey, douchebag,” says a male voice to the left of Douchebag. “She’s really blind.”

Interesting. The second voice is softer, and calm in a way you don’t often hear insulting big heavy jock voices. It’s familiar but I can’t place it.

“No, Ms. Kensington does this thing where you need to pretend—”

“I know, and she doesn’t hand out canes. Besides, it’s first period on the first day.”

“But if she’s really blind then why would she wear a blindfo—”

“Trust me, dude; just shut up.” Harsh words but said with a friendly voice.

For my scarf today I chose white silk with a thick black X on each eye. It was that or my hachimaki with Divine Wind written in kanji, but I didn’t want to confuse the noobs with a mixed message. Either way, I know I made a mistake leaving my vest at home.

I usually wear a frayed army jacket, arms torn off, covered with buttons that friends bought or made over the years. Slogans like Yes, I’m blind, get over it! and Blind, not deaf, not stupid! and my personal favorite, Parker Grant doesn’t need eyes to see through you! Aunt Celia talked me out of it this morning, saying it would overwhelm all the people from Jefferson who don’t know me. She’s wrong, it turns out. They need to be overwhelmed.

I hear shuffling and the creak of wood and steel as someone sits down hard to my left.

“Hi, Parker.” It’s Molly. “Sorry I’m late. I needed to stop by the office.”

“If the bell hasn’t rung, you’re not late.” I try to sound casual but actually let her know that being my buddy just means helping with certain things in classes, not life in general.

“Hey, so your name’s Parker—” Douchebag says.

“Awww,” I interrupt him with my sweet voice. “You figured that out because you just heard someone say it. And I know your name for the very same reason. Douchebag isn’t very nice, though, so I’ll just call you D.B.”

“I’m—”

“Shhh …” I shake my head. “Don’t ruin it.”

The silence that follows is the perfect example of the thing I love most about being blind: not seeing how people react to what I say.

“I—” D.B. says, and the bell rings.

*

“The stairs down to the parking lot are ahead,” Molly says.

I sigh inwardly. Actually, I’m tired; maybe I sighed outwardly, I’m not sure.

Classes let out a while ago but Molly and I worked out a schedule to do our homework in the library after school for a couple hours and afterwards I call Aunt Celia to pick me up. Molly’s mom is a teacher who also came over from Jefferson—she teaches both French and Italian—and they carpool.

“Good,” I say. “Those stairs have been there at least two years now. I bet it’d be really hard to get rid of them with the entire parking lot being five feet lower than all the classrooms.”

Silence.

I consider reminding her of Rule Number Four, understanding that it hasn’t been long since I gave her the list, but it’s been a tiring first day and I don’t have the energy.

I don’t need a chaperone anywhere on school grounds. I know exactly where the handicapped parking space is and two years of Dad parking there trained the unhandicapped people to stay the hell out of it. Molly insisted she was walking with me just because, but I knew better. The combination of blind people, stairs, and cars terrifies the sighted, but it’s actually pretty safe. Cars are only dangerous when they’re moving, and they only move in certain ways and places, and they make noise you can hear, even hybrids. Stairs are like bite-sized paths that your feet can feel the size and shape of all the time.

“You know, Parker …” Molly blurts out with some energy, maybe impatience, but then doesn’t continue. She sighs.

“What?”

“Never mind.”

I want to let it drop, too. I haven’t spent enough time with Molly to know if I’m going to like her or just tolerate her—the amount of energy I’m going to put into this depends a lot on which it’s going to be—but either way we’re going to be with each other more than with anyone else, all day, every day, all year.

“You can’t take it back,” I say, just as a fact, not an accusation. “I know there’s something in there now. Spit it out before it gets infected.”

I can hear her breathing. Thinking breaths. I calculate whether to prod her more or wait her out.

“It’s just …” she finally says. “I know we only just met …”

Another breath.

“Do you want me to help you?” I ask. “Or let you flounder around some more?”

Molly blows air out her nose. I can’t tell if it’s the laughing kind or the eye-rolling kind.

“Yeah, sure, help me out.” I hear a little of both. A good sign.

Embedded in the concrete path under my sneakers is the bumpy metal plaque describing the founding of John Quincy Adams High School in 1979. I know exactly where I am.

“Here.” I hold out my cane. “Fold this up for me?”

She takes it. “Why?”

I turn and walk briskly toward the stairs, arms swinging, counting in my head … six … five … four … three …

“Parker!” Molly scurries after me.

… two … one … step down …

I march down the stairs, counting them, hitting them hard and confident, legs straight like a soldier, each time sliding my foot back to knock my heel against the prior step.

At the bottom I keep marching and counting silently till I reach the curb where I know Aunt Celia’s car will park. I stop and spin around.

“Cane, please?”

It touches my hand. She didn’t collapse it like I asked. I do and slide it into my bag.

“Maybe you’re thinking I’m a stereotypical blind girl who’s out to prove she doesn’t need anyone’s charity. But instead of being nice to people who are just trying to help her, she’s a bitter and resentful bitch because she’s missing out on something wonderful that she thinks everyone else takes for granted.”

Now I’m starting to wonder if Molly is just a loud breather, though I didn’t notice it in the library and it was pretty quiet in there.

“Am I warm?” I ask.

“Not very. But not everyone has to be.”

It takes me a moment to get it—which isn’t like me at all—and now it’s too late to laugh.

I smile. “Touché.”

Aunt Celia’s car pulls up and stops.

“I suppose you can tell if that’s your aunt’s car, just by the sound?”

“Pretty much, yeah.”

“My dog can do that, too.”

I turn my head to face her, something I don’t often bother doing.

“I’m starting to like you, Molly Ray. But believe me, it’s a mixed blessing.”

“Oh, don’t worry. I believe it.”

The car door thunks open. Aunt Celia calls out, too loudly, “Parker, it’s me, hop in!”

I sigh, definitely outwardly.

School was okay. Better than it could have been. Even though half the people didn’t know the other half, everyone knew enough people so it wasn’t too awkward. It’ll take time to get all the noobs up to speed on The Rules, but I have plenty of help.

Some people I don’t know very well were helping me with the noobs. Maybe just to be nice, or maybe it makes them feel important telling other people what to do. Or maybe they were protecting me like I’m the school mascot. That would really suck. I’m nobody’s poster child.

The ride home was quiet, just how I like it now. I don’t know what cars are like when I’m not in them but I get the idea people talk at me more because they think I’m bored sitting there without any scenery. My view never changes, but other than different people and cars on the street every day, I don’t think their view changes much either.

I told Aunt Celia a couple months ago she didn’t need to entertain me while driving; now she doesn’t talk in the car at all. She’s black or white about everything. I said it nicely—I wasn’t telling her to shut up or anything—but she clammed up anyway. Maybe her feelings got hurt but it’s not my fault if people don’t like the truth.

“Hi, Big P,” my cousin Petey calls down from the landing.

“Hey, Little P. How was school?”