Not If I See You First
He trots down and sits on the third-from-the-bottom step next to me.
“Boring.”
“You’re too young to be bored at school. You’re not supposed to get bored until the fourth grade.”
“I was bored in the second grade, too,” he says proudly.
“So was I,” I whisper.
“Why are you sitting here?” he whispers back, probably just because I whispered first.
This truth I don’t want to tell, not to Petey anyway. It’s a tough enough situation as it is, my house filled with relatives—who I used to only cross paths with every couple years—now sleeping in my dead dad’s room and home office. I don’t want to tell him how I miss talking with Dad on the ride home from school, or how we wouldn’t be done when we got home so we’d sit at the kitchen table and talk some more, drinking iced tea, until he finally had to get back to work. I don’t want to tell Petey how I didn’t think about this until I climbed into Aunt Celia’s car today, when the silence—which I created and now can’t break—sucked all the air out of the car until I thought I’d pass out. How I want to sit at the kitchen table and talk to Dad now, but if I do everyone will think it’s weird, me sitting alone in the kitchen doing nothing. I don’t care if people think I’m weird, but they would bug me with questions.
Like Petey’s doing now, because sitting on the stairs doing nothing is weirder than sitting at the kitchen table. But I don’t want to tell him that instead of sitting in my room having a one-sided conversation with my dad where no one can see, I want to do it in a place where I feel him: in the kitchen, in his office (off-limits, since it’s my cousin Sheila’s room now), or at the base of the stairs, where I never sat with him in life but sometimes do in my dreams.
“I’m just resting. It’s been a long day.”
“Wanna play Go Fish?”
Not particularly. But I can’t do what I really want to do either. “Sure thing, Little P. How about Sheila?”
“Her door’s closed.”
We both know what this means. Do Not Disturb.
“All right, you get the cards, I’ll pour the drinks. Last one done has to deal.”
He pounds up the stairs. I sit a moment longer. Aunt Celia makes Petey pick up his room every night before bed but he just throws everything on shelves and never puts anything in the same place twice. He has a few decks of cards but only one braille set he got from me, so it’ll take him a few minutes to find it.
I don’t know if they’re going to let me just sit quietly to talk to you every day, Dad, but I’m sure as hell going to try. I might need to go into my room and close the door like Sheila, because you’re right, everyone has secrets, and that includes me.
*
Dinner is pork chops—too dry like always—mashed potatoes, applesauce, and canned peas. All of Aunt Celia’s meals are cartoons, like something you might get if you were a captive in an alien zoo and they fed you what they thought people ate from watching TV.
I didn’t offer to help because Aunt Celia always says no thank you. Which would be fine except she only says it to me. She tries to be nice about it with different reasons, sometimes hinting that she’s cutting me a break since I’m “having such a hard time.” It’s really because the best way to help is chopping and she can’t stand seeing a blind girl holding a knife. Whatever. Everything we’re eating tonight is stuff I can prepare in my sleep. I’m glad to have less work if that’s what makes her happy.
“Parker, did you and Sheila see each other much at school today?” Uncle Sam asks.
“Dad!” Petey says, mortified. “Not cool.”
“What?”
I know what my junior protector means. “It’s okay, Little P. The word see can mean a lot of things, like bumping into someone, or dating them, or understanding them. So no, I didn’t see Sheila today. Maybe she did see me, though, if you see what I mean.”
Petey laughs. No one else does.
“We don’t have any of the same classes,” Sheila says in her why-do-we-have-to-talk-about-this voice. “And our lockers are nowhere near each other.”
Uncle Sam doesn’t point out the small size of the school or the possibility of sitting together at lunch or ask how she knows where my locker is if she didn’t see me. I’m glad. He usually knows when to stop.
“How’s Molly working out?” he asks.
“It always takes a while to break in a new buddy, but she seems promising. She has a lot of Rules to learn.”
Sheila snorts. Well, a burst of expelled air, definitely the eye-rolling kind. I let it go.
“Little P has a good story to tell,” I say.
“Yeah—” he begins, but Aunt Celia interrupts.
“Please don’t call him that, Parker. I’ve asked you before.”
“He likes it, don’t you, Little P?”
“It was my idea! Right, Big P?”
“He won’t like it later, and by then it’ll be stuck.”
“The day he asks me to stop calling him Little P, I will, that’s a promise. I only call him that at home so if anyone else hears it, it won’t be from me.”
“It’s just … it just doesn’t sound … It’s not appropriate.”
“Your concerns have been heard,” I say lightly. “Go on, Little P, tell your story.”
I expect a pause for everyone to have an eyebrow conversation about my defiance but Petey can’t hold back and jumps right in describing how a fishbowl in his class got knocked over. The fact he’s excited doesn’t necessarily mean the fish survived—it could have gone the other way and he’d have told the story in pretty much the same tone.
While Petey describes the drama of saving the tetras in chaotic detail, I map out my pork chop with short stabs of my fork and dull knife and then saw the meat away from the bone. I’d caused a minor uproar when they first moved in because after I cut my food I don’t switch my fork to my right hand for each bite. This is a concept that (1) had never occurred to me, (2) is common etiquette supposedly, at least among people who still obsess about things like this, and (3) is something I find utterly bizarre. Even stranger was how Aunt Celia not only disapproved of this, and my dad for letting me do it, but also had some half-baked notion of stopping it. Uncle Sam saved us from the most ridiculous argument imaginable by saying the way I eat is how they eat “across the pond.” While this didn’t make it optimal to Aunt Celia, it somehow made it legitimate enough for her to let it go and save face. It was my first glimpse of what it would be like living with Aunt Celia under my roof.
*
I’m on my bed with my laptop, reading with the help of Stephen Hawking’s voice. I rarely read actual braille books and only occasionally use a braille terminal. A lot of the time I listen to audiobooks or browse the web with text-to-speech software, and what better way to learn stuff than hearing it from the smartest guy in the world?
I’m on my nightly Wikipedia crawl, enjoying the irony of reading about cuckoo birds. They lay their eggs in other birds’ nests and then those birds raise the cuckoo chicks as their own, like nothing odd is happening. In my house it’s the other way around.
My phone rings with Sarah’s ringtone: quack quack quack …
I disconnect my earbuds from the computer and plug them into my phone. “Hey.”
“Hey,” she says. “Any fires tonight?”
“Nope. Just a few sparks when Aunt Celia told me again to stop calling Petey Little P.”
“It’s a terrible nickname.”
“Not appropriate, she said.”
“You know that’s Celia-speak for she thinks it’s perverted, and it is. He’ll hate it later when he figures it out.”
“Jesus, Sarah, he’s eight. And if you think Little P means his dick, then Big P—wait, never mind. Should have thought that through.”
She chuckles and it warms me. Sarah hardly ever laughs.
“Sheila still not talking to you?”
“No change there. None expected.”
“My theory’s holding; I figured she’d steer clear.”
“I’m not the best one to show her around anyway. I can’t point out much and I doubt she’s interested in how many paces it is from the cafeteria to the nearest bathroom.”
“True. How’s Molly?”
“Not sure yet. I’m hopeful. Probably won’t be a disaster. Ask again later.”
“Sure thing, Magic 8 Ball.”
“Okay, tell me what you know.”
It begins, our nightly recitation of what was observed and inferred throughout the day. My list is always much shorter than Sarah’s of course, since she’s the eyes of this operation and I’m the mouth, but no one can deny that when I shoot it off, it’s very well informed.
We used to be systematic, working through the day class by class, hallway by hallway; now we jump around without missing anything. She describes what people and things look like and I list times and places and describe voices and sometimes sounds and odors so she can zero in on who I’m talking about to get a visual and other info later. I tell her about D.B. from Trig because I suspect he’ll be a pain and I might need more tools to deal with him. I mention the calm voice that shut down D.B.’s heavy jock voice and how it sounded familiar yet still not anyone I knew, like how listening to someone with an accent sounds like the other person you know with that accent even though they have different voices.
During a pause where I expect Sarah to jump in, she doesn’t. I let the silence go to see how long it lasts. After a few more seconds I know something’s up.
“What?”
“I’m waiting for you to tell me about it.”
“About what?”
“You really don’t know?”
“Know what?”
“That voice? You don’t know who it was?”
“Do you? You weren’t even there.”
“Kay was. She said she was ready to hold up her math book like a shield but you were smooth as glass.”
“Kay said that? Smooth as glass?”
“Of course not—it was Kay. She had verbal diarrhea for five minutes. Do you want to hear all that instead of my perfect three-word summary?”
“Jesus, Sarah—”
“It was Scott.”
“Scott? Scott? It didn’t sound …”
The floor vanishes. My stomach twists and I’m falling and I slap both hands on the bed and push my spine into the headboard.
“His voice changed,” she says. “Last time you heard him was in the eighth grade. He was only thirteen.”
We’d talked about how we’d know some of the immigrants from Jefferson—quirks of geography had us going to the same elementary and middle schools but different high schools. Some of them had been on my shit list before but my list is so long I wasn’t worried about a few old names reactivating. Somehow all this didn’t include realizing Scott Kilpatrick would be one of them.
“Parker?”
I grab my phone. “Gotta go.”
“Wait! Don’t hang—”
I hang up and yank the cord to pull the buds out of my ears, too fast and at a bad angle and it hurts.
Scott Kilpatrick. Biggest asshole on the planet. Absolute top of my shit list. Exclamation points. ALL CAPS.
Quack quack quack—
I switch off the ringer. My throat is closing, aching like I have a cold, and my face is getting hot.
Scott Kilpatrick. Breaker of Rule Number One. Forever subject to Rule Number Infinity.
Bzzz bzzz bzzz …
I bury the phone under my pillow.
Scott Kilpatrick. Parker Enemy Number One.
Rule # 1: Don’t deceive me. Ever. Especially using my blindness. Especially in public.
Rule # 2: Don’t touch me without asking or warning me. I can’t see it coming, I will always be surprised, and I will probably hurt you.
Rule # 3: Don’t touch my cane or any of my stuff. I need everything to be exactly where I left it. Obviously.
Rule # 4: Don’t help me unless I ask. Otherwise you’re just getting in my way or bothering me.
Rule # 5: Don’t talk extra loud to me. I’m not deaf. You’d be surprised how often this happens. If you’re not surprised, you ought to be.
Rule # 6: Don’t talk to people I’m with like they’re my handlers. And yes, this also happens all the time.
Rule # 7: Don’t speak for me, either. Not to anyone, not even your own friends or your kids. Remember, you’re not my handler.
Rule # 8: Don’t treat me like I’m stupid or a child. Blind doesn’t mean brain damaged, so don’t speak slowly or use small words. Do I really have to explain this?
Rule # 9: Don’t enter or leave my area without saying so. Otherwise I won’t even know if you’re there. It’s just common courtesy.
Rule # 10: Don’t make sounds to help or guide me. It’s just silly and rude, and believe me, you’ll be the one who looks stupid and ends up embarrassed, not me.
Rule # 11: Don’t be weird. Seriously, other than having my eyes closed all the time, I’m just like you only smarter.
Rule # INFINITY: There are NO second chances. Violate my trust and I’ll never trust you again. Betrayal is unforgivable.
A charley horse stirs in my left calf—clearly my body will not be ignored. I sit up and pull on my toes with one hand and massage the unhappy muscle with the other. Not enough oxygen, not enough water, not enough time, not enough space.
I manage to avoid a major spasm and stand up. I don’t know how far I am from the fence; I don’t normally stop mid-sprint. After a few dozen steps I slow down and hold out a hand until I touch it.
Damn it, I don’t know which side of the gap I’m on. I choose left and walk, dragging my fingers along the chain link, bump bump bump bump bump. After a dozen steps I think I probably went the wrong way. I don’t like this—I don’t usually get disoriented here. I turn and walk back. Fifteen steps later I find the gap. I had just missed it.
I wipe my face with the bottom of my shirt—both are damp but the shirt less so and it helps. The air is cool but I’m burning up. I try deep breaths to calm my heart, my lungs, my stomach. It starts to work. I feel control returning.
He knew who I was but didn’t say anything to me directly. Did he realize I didn’t recognize his voice? Or did he just know I wouldn’t talk to him, smooth as glass?
I should like that, being smooth as glass, shouldn’t I? Unaffected, unconcerned. That’s exactly what I want to be. Why should I suddenly hate it that some people might think that about me? Why should I care what anyone thinks anyway?
I don’t. I was just caught off-guard, that’s all. And only Sarah knows it. Not that I’d care if anyone else did, because I wouldn’t. I don’t.
*
I sit down in the cafeteria with Molly, who also brings her lunch, and start eating. Thinly sliced turkey, Swiss, light mayo and mustard, like always. Sarah will show up in a few minutes after filing through the hot-lunch line with Rick Gartner, her Sort Of Boyfriend. I told Molly last period she was welcome to join us—I don’t know what she did yesterday since I spent that lunch period working out logistics with audio textbooks at the office. I warned her that a lot of people call us the Table of Misfit Toys but not in the ironic complimentary way. She said she wasn’t worried about labels. I said that was both wise and foolish. She agreed.
“What do you mean, Rick is sort of Sarah’s boyfriend?” Molly asks. “Is he or isn’t he?”
“Do they seem like boyfriend-girlfriend to you?”
“I met them yesterday for all of five minutes.”
“If I hadn’t told you, would you have worked it out?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“There you go. You can call him Sarah’s Maybe Boyfriend. I know they’re sometimes more than friends so I call him her Sort Of Boyfriend.”
“They break up and get back together a lot?”
“Not exactly. So much for not worrying about labels.”
“It’s not the same thing. I’m not worried, just catching up. Here they come.”
“Parker. Molly.” Rick clatters his tray and silverware onto the table. Sarah does the same only quietly.
“Hey, Rick,” I say. “Have a good summer?”
“Not really. Hung out with losers mostly.”
“Me too.”
Molly must look bewildered because Sarah says, “We all spent the summer together.”
“Is that all you’re eating?” Rick asks.
“It is,” Molly says. “It’s not much or I’d offer you some. Do you like coleslaw?”
“He likes being an asshole,” Sarah says and almost sounds like she means it. “Eat your lasagna.”
“I was going to offer her some,” Rick says. “Not that I’d be doing you any favors, unless you like cardboard soaked in tomato sauce.”
“Thanks anyway,” Molly says.
“I haven’t seen Sheila yet,” Rick says, taking one of his classic conversational left turns.
“I haven’t seen her either,” I say.
“Hilarious. How about some new jokes this year?”
I smile. “It wasn’t a joke. You need some examples? This is a joke.” I grab a button on my vest, I think the one that says: Have I seen you here before? NO!
“You’ve truly opened my eyes, Parker.” Rick chuckles. “Now that I know what jokes are, will sitcoms make me laugh, ’cause, man, they just put me to sleep.”
“No promises. And no, I haven’t bumped into Sheila here. Only at my house. Don’t know why you care, though … she’s got a boyfriend … you’ve sort of got a girlfriend …”
“It’s just weird. I know you guys are, well … whatever. It’s just that you’re the only one she knows here.”
“It’s complicated,” Sarah says.
“You mean it’s a girl thing?”
“Rick,” I say with my tolerant voice. “We let you sit here because you’re sort of Sarah’s boyfriend, not because you’re one of the girls. If you don’t understand, just accept the confusion. Or embrace it.”
“Confusion requires giving a shit. Making nice with your stuck-up bitch cousin isn’t high on my list—it isn’t even on my list at all. I get it that she’s in a new school and that sucks for her but it sure as hell wasn’t your fault. She needs a sense of proportion or at least some fucking compassion.”
I smile. “I don’t care what you say, Sarah; this guy’s A-Okay.” I hold out a fist and feel a knuckle-bump. “Maybe he can be my Sort Of Boyfriend, too. Or all of ours.”
“I’m still window shopping,” Molly says. “No offense.”
“None taken,” Rick says. “I knew it already when you turned down my ketchup-covered cardboard. Which I need to wash down. Anybody want a drink?”
“My usual—a can of C-6?” I say.
No one else speaks and he leaves. I say, “I’m pretty sure I haven’t been complaining about Sheila. Not around Rick anyway.”
No replies.
“Sarah?”
“I didn’t tell him much. Just what you’d expect about moving to a new town in the middle of high school.”
I shrug. “There’s nothing else to tell. We also don’t get along generally but I don’t get along with lots of people.”
“Because they don’t follow The Rules?” Molly asks.
“Because they’re mindless overly complicated drones who don’t say what they mean and get bent out of shape when I do. And they don’t follow The Rules. Which shouldn’t even be called Parker’s Rules anyway. It’s just a lot of common sense that common people commonly lack.”
Rick sits back down. “Here.” He brushes my fingers with a cold can.
“Thanks.” I pull the tab with my palm over the top to block the light burst of foam and then take a sip. Mmmm … pure C-6 goodness. Cold Carbonated Caffeinated Caramel Colored Cane sugar. Completely delicious.
“I just saw Sheila,” Rick says. “Near the cashier talking to the Dynamic Trio—well, Faith and Lila anyway, I didn’t see Kennedy. She didn’t go sit with them.”
“It might take longer,” Sarah says, “with all the clique-clash-chaos.”
When someone new comes to school, they get tested, cataloged, processed, and absorbed pretty quickly, often into the same group they just left. With whole schools combining, however, it’s way more complicated. Every king-of-the-hill from Jefferson brought a whole entourage and we have no idea what will happen with the school clique-scape. Sarah and I think Sheila will become part of the Cream, topped by the Dynamic Trio—Faith, Lila, and Kennedy—but we don’t know whether it’ll be the Jefferson Cream or the Adams Cream, if they remain separate, which seems unlikely, or if they combine, which seems even more unlikely.
“We’ll see,” I say. “At least we’ve resolved Rick’s confusion.”
“Nope, still confused. Trying to embrace it.”
“Any one of the Dynamic Trio has more in common with Sheila in a random lunch-line encounter than I do after a whole summer with her. I couldn’t discuss designer jeans if you put a gun to my head. I don’t think it matters, though.”
“Still confused.”
“I don’t think Sheila will become a long-term member of the Dynamic Trio because under all that lip gloss and style and bitchy backstabbing, Faith’s a dark horse. She has hidden depth.”
“Still confused.”
“Well, go back to embracing it then. But if Sheila joins up and they become the Dynamic Quado or whatever, eventually she’ll say the wrong thing about me and when she does, Faith will burn her to the ground and salt the earth where she stood.”
*
Quack quack quack. I answer my phone.
“Hey.”
“Hey. It’s been exactly twenty-four hours. You ready to talk now?”
“Wow. How about a kiss first? And how was your afternoon, Sarah?”
“It kind of crawled by if you really want to know. So how about it?”
“You didn’t give me twenty-four hours. We just didn’t have any time alone.”
“Doesn’t matter. It’s been twenty-four hours. We’re alone now. What happened?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing. Nothing at all.”
“That’s right, nothing happened. I didn’t talk to him and he didn’t talk to me. I’m not sure he was even there. I never heard his voice today.”
“That’s …”
“Impressive, I know.”
“I was going to say a familiar song.”
“I have an advantage over you full-featured models: if you don’t make accidental eye contact, it’s not awkward.”
“What the hell do you know about accidental eye contact?”
“What you’ve told me many times. And don’t forget I had seven years of twenty-twenty before the accident. I had plenty of awkward eye contact in the second grade. Remember Patel?”
“We’re not going to talk about him. We’re talking about—”
“Nothing happened. Nothing’s going to happen.”
“He’ll be in your Trig class every morning from now till June. You’re just going to pretend he isn’t?”
“That isn’t as hard as it sounds—”
“It’s not hard, it’s crazy. He’s going to come talk to you eventually. Then what? Give him an Amish shunning?”
“It worked at Marsh.”