Not If I See You First

Every Friday is Bar-B-Que Day and I hate it. Rick knows the smell of Boston baked beans and scorched corn turns my stomach and he likes to blow the smell toward me.

“It’s hot,” he says with his smiling voice.

“For two years now,” Sarah says, “the food here’s never been hot.”

“Even the hot salsa yesterday wasn’t hot,” Molly says. “The mild salsa was probably just chunky ketchup.”

“Yuck,” I say. “That’ll teach you not to forget your lunch.”

“Excuse me,” says a voice I don’t know. Sounds like a male teacher standing over us.

No one says anything. I can’t even tell if he’s talking to us. I sip my C-6.

“I’m Coach Underhill. Can I talk to you a moment, Parker?”

I choke a bit and cough into the crook of my arm. “Me? I already fulfilled my P.E. requirements. Ask Coach Rivers—she’ll tell you.”

“It’s not that. I saw you running this morning.”

The hair on the back of my neck stands up.

“Running?” Molly says.

“Early this morning. I—”

“Way-way-wait a minute! Can we talk outside?” I stumble to stand up, grabbing my cane.

“Sure, of course. Sorry to interrupt.”

I lead him out into the hallway, moving slowly through the crowd. “Can you find a place where no one can hear us?”

A door squeaks open to my right. “This room’s empty.”

Once we’re inside, the door clicks shut.

“We’re alone? You’re sure?”

“Yes. Are you afraid of something? Or someone?”

Fear, no. Dread, yes. The thought of this P.E. teacher standing at the fence watching me run this morning is bad enough, and if word got out …

“Who told you?”

“No one. I live nearby, on Manzanita. Have you been running there for long?”

“Years. Please don’t … wait, have you told anyone?”

“No, but—”

“Please don’t!” Dread leapfrogs right over fear and lands square on near panic. Running in Gunther Field is a major ingredient in my sanity soup. If people find out and come to gawk, or worse, come in so I can’t even be sure the field’s empty … I’d have no way of knowing they were there. Like this morning. I’d have to stop.

“Is someone bothering you?”

“It’s just … private. And I’m not blind to the fact that it’s a freak show. I don’t want an audience. Please don’t tell anyone.”

“Okay, I won’t.”

“Why didn’t you say anything this morning?”

“You’d have had no reason to believe I’m a teacher instead of some random stranger talking to you with no one else around. I didn’t want you to feel unsafe.”

“I can handle strangers—I do it all the time. But I can’t see you so if you don’t say anything, I don’t know you’re there and it’s like spying on me.”

AKA Rule Number Nine.

“Isn’t that true of anyone walking by?”

“It’s different with people I know, or who know me.”

“I see,” he says, but I don’t think he does.

“It’s okay, you didn’t know. Just don’t tell anyone. Not even all my friends know.”

“It’s not a freak show. The only way anyone could tell you can’t see is that big blindfold flying out behind you like a banner. It’s quite a sight.”

“Exactly.”

“You’re a very confident runner. Have you ever had a guide dog?”

“Nope. Never needed one, not for what I do mostly. Maybe later when I graduate high school and need to get around in more strange and busy places on my own.”

“Do you mind if I ask who taught you how to run?”

I’m feeling better knowing the cat’s still in the bag, but this irks me.

“Why would someone need to teach me how to run?”

“Well, there’s running and there’s running. You look like you’ve had training.”

“Oh. My dad used to run. He taught me some things. How to breathe and stuff.”

“Have you ever thought about trying out for track?”

I laugh. “No. You understand why I run at six in the morning in Gunther Field, right? It’s big, it’s empty, it’s square. No lanes to stay in? No people around?”

“Plenty of runners have some degree of visual impairment. If you don’t mind me asking, how much can you see?”

“Um … I can’t see anything.”

“I understand, but I mean, you still see some light, right, but just can’t focus?”

I don’t like talking about this but decide to cut him some slack.

“Nope. All black. A car wreck tore my optic nerves. My eyes are fine, only … lights out.”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have assumed—”

“It’s all right. Most blind people can see a little. You were just betting the odds.”

“No, I mean, I thought you had light sensitivity issues because … why else would you wear blindfolds?”

I laugh. “These are just clothes. Like wearing a hat. A fashion statement no one can copy because if they did, they wouldn’t be able to see.”

He doesn’t laugh, which is sad, but then I hear a smile in his voice when he says, “I was just curious. Actually, in Paralympics all visually impaired runners wear blacked-out goggles so those who can see a little don’t have an advantage.”

“That’s … terrible.” I laugh.

“Anyway, they all have guide runners. If you wanted to run track, we could work something out.”

“No thanks,” I say, and to give it some finality I reach for the door but I find only air. I step toward it slowly, waving my arm.

“There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

I snort and my hand finds the doorknob. “Did I look afraid?”

“Not when you were running. You did a minute ago, when you thought people might watch you do it.”

Ah, well, that’s something else entirely.

*

Molly sits with me on the stairs, waiting for Aunt Celia. It’s routine now for her to walk with me to the parking lot to hang out till my ride comes.

We’re not talking. I think about this, like always. We’ve either run out of things to say after only a week, or she’s in a mood I haven’t been able to detect, or she’s working out how to ask an awkward question, or she’s—

“Do you know Scott Kilpatrick?”

Damn.

“I used to,” I say lightly. “At Marsh Middle School. Why?”

“You know he sits in front of me in Trig?”

“Yeah, I heard his voice. Do you like him or something?”

“I don’t know him well enough.”

“Plenty of people don’t let that get in the way of a good crush,” I say.

“He looks at you sometimes.”

I stiffen. I don’t want to have this conversation, yet I also don’t want to draw attention to this.

“I’m sure people look at me all the time. The Resident Hallway Obstacle. The Bull in the China Shop.”

“And your blindfolds do draw the eye.”

I’m wearing tie-dye today. I sense an opportunity. I grab the tail and hold it up.

“You like this one? I made it myself. What’s it look like?”

“You don’t know? I mean, no one’s ever told you?”

“Tie-dye is hard to describe. It’s like a Rorschach test. What’s it look like to you?”

“Mostly blues and greens and some aqua. Blotches of red, streaks of maroon, some purple. Parallel stripes, vertical but probably just how you folded it. Looks almost like you rolled up a hippie version of an American flag. What does that say about me?”

“Practical, objective, nothing fancy. Faith says things like burgundy and fuchsia instead of maroon. Some people say it’s swirly or project a lot of dreamy feelings into it.”

“How do you know that’s what you’re wearing?”

“It’s tagged, see?” I show her the tag at the end. “I make these plastic braille doodads and sew them in. Most everything I wear is tagged.”

“That’s cool. But that’s not why Scott looks at you.”

Damn.

My throat tightens. I’m getting warm again. I think Molly and I are becoming friends, maybe good friends, so she’ll find out eventually. If that’s true, I don’t want to spend ten times more effort now avoiding what’s inevitable.

“We were best friends since fourth grade. Then toward the end of the eighth grade we … started kissing. That’s all. It didn’t last long. We broke up and then went to different high schools.”

“Must’ve been some really bad kissing.”

I snort. “It sure wasn’t. But it … I mean he …”

I take a deep breath.

“We’d only been together a couple weeks. Then at lunch one day we went into an empty classroom we would go to, you know … then I heard snickering.”

My breathing speeds up. I can’t explain this without feeling it all over again, like it’s happening right now. The suffocating panic of trusting someone so completely, drinking them in, and having it suddenly turn to burning hot poison. I deepen my breaths to slow them down.

“There was someone else in the room,” Molly says.

“Seven someones. At first it scared the shit out of me and I jumped and Scott and I bumped teeth and everyone in the room started laughing. Then they were all talking at once. I don’t remember what they said, mostly congratulating Scott and jeering about how I’d been scammed. I pushed Scott hard and he knocked over a bunch of stuff, and I was halfway down the hall before he caught up with me, saying he was sorry, that he told them because they didn’t believe we were a couple, and other bullshit I don’t remember anymore. I ducked into a bathroom and waited there till class started. Then I went to the office and called home and my dad came and picked me up.”

Silence.

“Scott kept calling me … I didn’t answer and deleted all his messages without even listening. He kept trying to say he was sorry in school but I wouldn’t talk to him and my friends helped keep him away, especially Sarah and Faith. Then he came to the door and Dad sent him away—chewed him out, too—I didn’t hear what they said. After that he stopped calling or trying to talk to me. When we were in the same room at school I just pretended he wasn’t there. Then we graduated and went to different high schools and that’s really all there is to it. Ancient history.”

There. All the gory details, nothing hidden, casually delivered. Done. We can move on.

“I don’t know what to say,” Molly says softly. “That’s awful.”

The unexpected tenderness makes my heart pound.

“No big deal—just kid stuff,” I say and immediately wish I hadn’t. I don’t want this to turn into a big thing so I’m trying to toss it off lightly but not dishonestly. Saying it’s no big deal isn’t honest. It was a big deal. Still is.

“Are you kidding? It’s a nightmare. It’s horrible. You say Scott was your best friend before that?”

“For years. Actually four years: one, two, three, four.”

I’m getting dizzy. If she shrugged off this story like a trivial childhood drama I’d be fine, but hearing her voice, agreeing that it means a lot more than it sounds …

“Kissing you with seven guys secretly standing around watching? I’d have killed him. I want to kill him now.”

My chest tightens some more. I can’t talk about this much longer. I didn’t want to kill him when it happened; I wanted to kill myself. I saw a side of the world I knew existed but thought I could protect myself from, and in that moment I saw that I never could. There’s no absolute safety to be found anywhere. Not the kind I want anyway.

“So, yeah.” I sigh. “I knew Scott Kilpatrick. Or I thought I did. Then I found out I really didn’t.”

Because no one can know anybody, really. Not completely.

Molly shifts and jostles me a little. I feel her hand on my shoulder. I get it that she nudged me first so her hand wouldn’t be a surprise, to touch me without startling me and also without having to awkwardly ask permission. I’m so grateful for her understanding Rule Number Two this well after only a week, I wonder if I can keep it together.

I don’t have to wonder for long. Aunt Celia arrives and saves me. The irony almost makes me laugh. Almost.

*

Hey, Dad.

Pretty typical week. Good things happened, bad things happened, like always. I’m sorry we don’t talk after school anymore; it’s too hard to get time to just sit alone. Petey thinks I’m bored or at least not busy. From now on I think I can only talk to you right before bed.

I’m also sorry I’m talking to you like you’re actually listening. I know the universe doesn’t really work that way. If it did, if you were really watching, you wouldn’t need me to explain all these things. Still, this is how my brain wants to do it.

Now I wish I knew what you said to Scott that day you sent him away. Whatever it was, it worked. I don’t think I ever told you how grateful I was for that. If he’d kept after me like we were in some pathetic romantic comedy, I think I might have unraveled.

Except I did unravel. I know that. Mostly on the inside. Maybe you did, too. I could hear it in your voice, how after that you knew you couldn’t always protect me. I tried to get you to believe that it wasn’t your job. I don’t think I tried hard enough.

I cross my room and take the plastic pill bottle out of my scarf drawer, like every night. It’s the bottle of Xanax that was sitting empty on Dad’s nightstand the morning I found him. The bottle I didn’t know existed until that moment but had been hiding in plain sight for a while. The bottle the insurance company used to deny paying out his life insurance that would have kept the house in my name instead of Aunt Celia’s. The bottle I wanted back so much I punched the police detective over and over again until he promised to give it back once the case closed, which happened only a week later. The bottle Aunt Celia claimed proved what she’d always believed, that Dad was the weak one even though it was her own sister who drank too much wine that night and drove the two of us into that bridge support, killing her and making sure her screaming face would be the last thing I ever saw. And most important, it’s the bottle that taught me everyone has secrets. Everyone. No matter how much you love them and think you know them and think they love you back.

I open the bottle, take out a gold star, lick it, and press it firmly on the poster board hanging on the back of my door. A clean white rectangle filling up with stars that, when anyone asks me about it, I just say is tactile art, my Star Chart. Every night I get to add a gold star if I earn it. Tonight’s makes eighty-one gold stars. Eighty-one consecutive days without crying.

I know it was an accident. Oxycodone for your back, then some more when it didn’t work, along with some ibuprofen for swelling, plus some Xanax, and then a couple beers that made you forget you already took them and you took more, and extra Xanax because you were having a bad week, all adding up to stop your breathing sometime between one and three in the morning. I know you wouldn’t have left me here alone on purpose, no matter what the cops or the insurance people or my closest relatives say. I know it.

But I also know you kept your feelings inside, and they were bad enough to need all those pills. I don’t think it would have changed what happened, because I’m sure it was an accident, but maybe if I’d known I could’ve helped. Maybe you wouldn’t have needed the pills in the first place. Maybe.

I take off my scarf and tuck it and the pill bottle in the drawer and slide it closed. I brush the light switch to make sure it’s down—sometimes people don’t turn it off when they leave because it’s too weird for them to turn off the light when someone’s in the room—but it’s down so I know the room looks the same to everyone else now as it does to me. Or maybe not. I dimly remember how the moon and stars and streetlights keep everything from being as completely dark as it looks to me now.

I crawl into bed.

Good night, Dad.

Someone walks into the living room and flops down hard on the leather easy chair. It’s Sheila; she’s the only one who would throw herself down nearby without saying anything. Now she’s texting. I sit with my head back on the sofa, not really listening to the show. I’m not even sure what it is anymore but it doesn’t matter because I can tell by the sudden crazy electric guitar and synth explosion that it’s the closing credits.

Aunt Celia calls from the entryway, “You girls ready?”

“Going somewhere?” Petey asks, sounding hopeful.

Even Sheila can tell he’s angling to come along and she says in her bored voice, “The mall. Shopping. Clothes. You’d hate it. Then we’d all hate it.”

“You’re coming anyway,” Aunt Celia says. “Dad took his car in for an oil change.”

Petey groans.

“It’ll be fun,” I say. “I need new running shoes. You can help me get them.”

“But I don’t want to stand around for hours while Sheila tries on a million pants.”

“Nobody does, sweetie,” Aunt Celia says, walking into the room. “That’s why we’re dropping her off. We’ll come home after we buy Parker shoes.”

“Shotgun!” Petey shouts as we leave the house.

“Uh-uh, in the back,” Aunt Celia says. Dictators don’t follow rules they don’t like. “I’m up front with Sheila.”

“But if—” Petey says.

“It’s a provisional license,” Sheila says. “I can’t drive with anyone in the car unless Mom’s there sitting next to me. Get used to it.”

In the back with Petey, I hold out my hand and whisper, “One, two, three, four …”

He grabs my hand in the proper grip and whispers back, “I declare a thumb war.”

*

In the Ridgeway Mall parking lot, we meander around. I can’t tell if it’s crowded or she’s just trying to save walking five extra feet.

Aunt Celia says, “I thought you were meeting your friend at the food court? That’s way at the other end.”

“Yep,” she says. I have no idea who this new friend is.

Sheila parks and almost before the engine is completely off, she’s gone.

“Can I go to the video game store?” Petey asks.

“We’re not buying any video games today.”

“Just to look?”

Petey likes helping me but shopping is apparently a step too far, even for him.

“We need to help Parker get shoes, then we’re going straight home.”

“I don’t need help, actually,” I say. Not to stir up trouble; it’s just true. “We’re coming up on the door where the pet shop is, right? Once we’re inside, I’ll meet you back here in half an hour.”

“Great!” Petey says.

“No, no. Of course we’ll help you, Parker.”

“Thanks, but there’s really nothing for you guys to do. I know where I’m going and what I’m buying, and I have my credit card. I’ll text you if anything changes. If I get back to the pet shop before you guys, I’ll play with the puppies till you show up.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

That’s where it tips. I confess that suggesting the pet shop was a dig—the only thing more exhausting than Petey trying to get a video game is Petey trying to get a puppy—but the rest was an honest attempt to give her a chance. She blew it.

“I can’t buy shoes on my own for half an hour but Sheila can wander around all day?”

“It’s not the same, Parker,” she says in her world-weary voice.

“It’s exactly the same.”

“I’m sorry, but it isn’t. You don’t want to talk about it—”

“No, I absolutely want to talk about it. Why, exactly, do you need to be with me?”

“Well, it’s just easier when we—”

“I don’t need easier.”

“How are you going to pick what you want?”

“I already know what I want. I tell them, they get it, I give them my credit card, it’s done.”

“What if they overcharge you? Shouldn’t you pay in cash?”

“No. They scan the box and it goes straight to the credit card. If you pay cash, the register can say sixty bucks but the guy tells you a hundred; then he puts the extra forty in his pocket and you’re screwed with no proof of anything. With the credit card I check online when I get home and see if it cost what the guy said, then I only pay if it’s right.”

Silence.

Aunt Celia’s only been living with me three months and there are lots of things we haven’t run into yet. I didn’t figure today was the day to have a showdown over shopping alone, but I also didn’t figure on Petey pushing for the video game store, which he has every right to do.

“I only want to help,” she says.

She sounds like she means it. Like I’m hurting her feelings. But if someone’s feelings get hurt when they insist on giving me something I don’t want, I don’t see how that’s my fault. It doesn’t get us anywhere, though.

“Tell you what. Follow me if you want and you’ll see I’m fine. It won’t be any fun for Petey but it wasn’t going to be anyway.”

“You want us to follow you?” she asks. “Like ten steps back?”

“No, but I can’t stop you either. Do what you want. Just don’t interfere unless I’m doing something life-threatening. Either way, I’ll meet you back here in a half hour or I’ll text you.”

Sigh. “Fine.”

I cane my way over to the wall. In all the arguing I almost lost track of where it should be, but the sound of puppies to my left orients me. I know there are no benches or other protrusions along this wing of the mall so I cane along it easily, tapping hard enough for people who aren’t looking to hear me coming.