Blindsided (21 page)

 

It was later in the week that Bree got weird. Really weird. By Teen Group on Thursday, her mood had plunged. She wasn’t even speaking to anyone again. Natalie understood how people had their ups and downs, like Paula’s blue funk, and Bree had complained about a headache, but there was something more, Natalie could feel it. It seemed to be catching. Sheldon was bummed out at Teen Group, too, although he at least had a reason: one of his friends had just gotten his license. Not even Eve could seem to cheer him up. Driving—and the fact none of the kids here would ever do it—was a tough fact of life for all of them.

“Who cares?” Murph asked in a perky voice. “I don’t! Not driving means I don’t have to take the driver’s test! I won’t ever have to pay for car insurance. And I won’t ever have to pay for gas—at four dollars a gallon!”

Natalie could tell she was echoing something the social worker had said.

On the way back to the dorm, after Teen Group, Bree called out to Natalie, then grabbed her arm and asked her to step aside for a minute. “Can I talk to you?”

“Sure,” Natalie said.

“It’s Kirk—my boyfriend.”

“What is it?”

“Well, he’s pretty upset about me telling him where to get off. He needs to see me immediately, like
now
, or he’ll do something drastic.”

“Oh, come on, Bree, don’t believe that—”

“No. I have to talk to him. He’s coming to pick me up right now,” she whispered urgently.

“What do you mean
right now
? You can’t leave campus on a Thursday afternoon!”

“I know. That’s why you can’t say anything, Nat. Please. I’m going to go stand by the circle and wait for him. Tell everybody at dinner that I went to the health clinic because I didn’t feel good, okay?”

“What if one of the counselors asks me who escorted you?”

“Tell them you took me, okay?”

Natalie did not want to lie.

“
Please.
Just this once. I need to talk to Kirk.”

Natalie hated the sound of this plan. But she agreed.

So the deal was this: It was 4 P.M. Natalie would cover for Bree for two hours max. Natalie also agreed to keep her cell phone on, just in case.

She never expected her phone would actually ring (Natalie had set it to vibrate) at five thirty, just as they returned from dinner.

“Bree?” she whispered as soon as she was inside her room.

“Natalie, you need to help me!”

“What’s wrong?”

“You need to come and get me, Nat! Please!” she pleaded.

“Where are you?” Natalie asked.

“I’m at that place in the shopping center where you and Arnab ate.”

“What? The Parthenon?”

“Yeah. Kirk and I came here and now he’s gone. He got ticked off. He said if I was so damned independent with my stupid cane, I could find my own way back to school. But I can’t. You know I can’t. But you have that pass, Nat. Can you come and get me?”

“Oh, my God, Bree! I can’t walk all the way down there by myself!”

“But you can! That’s what that pass is for!”

“Bree, I just got that pass!”

“So it means you can do it!”

“But it’s getting late.”

“Yeah! Since when does
that
make a difference? Come on, Natalie! They’ll kick me out of school if they find out I left. If you come, we can both walk back together. And if you do it now, we can be back in an hour. No one will even know we were gone.”

Natalie held the phone away from her ear. She tried to envision walking all the way down to the shopping center. She would follow the driveway and turn left at Dunbar. The intersection at Pace would be scary, but she knew what to do—then the three streets, the utility box, a left into the shopping center . . .

“Please, Natalie. I’m so scared. I don’t know what else to do.”

“This isn’t free time, Bree, you’re going to get us both kicked out of school—”

“Nat, you are the only friend I have right now.
Please.
”

Natalie knew this was a bad idea. She could feel it in her gut. On the other hand, maybe it was exactly the kind of thing she needed to do so she wouldn’t be afraid the rest of her life. Bree
was
her friend. And Bree needed her. So why not? If those blind teenagers in Tibet could climb a mountain in the Himalayas, Natalie could walk a mile to the Forestville Shopping Center!

Couldn’t she?

Y
ou’re nuts!” Serena exclaimed. “You are absolutely insane!”

“Thanks for your confidence,” Natalie said. “Look. If I’m not back in two hours, go ahead and tell somebody, okay?”

Leaving the dorm was not hard. A lot of kids went places after dinner. Natalie simply headed down the driveway, hoping that no one would stop and ask her what she was doing out there so late. If they did, she’d tell them she was on her way to the library and got lost. She knew a lot depended on luck. Only one car passed her on the driveway, and it didn’t stop.

At Dunbar, Natalie turned left and let her cane follow the edge of grass, shorelining up the hill. At the intersection, she pressed the button and waited for traffic in front of her to stop. Her heart was already thumping double time, but she forced herself to listen carefully. She was so focused that this time she even heard the click of the traffic light changing. It was just past rush hour, so there wasn’t a lot of traffic on Dunbar. The cars in front of her came to a halt while cars to her right began moving. She didn’t hesitate. If she started thinking about it too much she’d chicken out. Quickly, she tapped three times in front of her and headed out across the road.

When she got to the other side, she heaved a sigh of relief, but kept moving. Up Dunbar. Past the barking dog. When she heard voices approaching, she kept to the left, keeping the arc of her cane as narrow as possible and walking with as much confidence as she could muster. “Good evening,” someone said. It was a man’s voice. He sounded older, educated, like a nice person. Natalie had to judge quickly. She nodded. “Good evening,” she replied, continuing on her way. When she heard his voice moving away, she focused forward again, tripping over the same darn crack in the sidewalk.

A
whap
! against the utility box told her she’d practically made it. So far, so good, she thought. Unbelievable. Natalie couldn’t help but smile.

The supermarket was busy. Natalie could hear the jangle of metal carts being pushed over the pavement and smelled the exhaust from cars moving slowly past her. She moved her cane carefully, but still managed to bump into something—a newspaper box? A young woman offered her help. “No thank you,” Natalie said. “I’m fine.”

Past the liquor store. She heard the rattle of bottles. The nail salon would be next. Yes. The smell of wet polish. Then the Raven’s Nest Bar. Natalie heard country music and smelled acrid cigarette smoke. Two men—it sounded like they were outside the bar—were coughing and laughing. There would be two more storefronts before the Parthenon. A bench was to the right of the door. Natalie found the bench, then opened the door. Pizza never smelled so good, she thought.

Inside the restaurant, she stood, unsure of what to do next.

“Bree?” she called softly.

“Natalie! I’m here in the front near a window.”

“Keep talking,” Natalie said.

“Here. I’m here. I’m standing now. I’m tapping the table.”

Natalie heard the
tap, tap, tap
. When she got to Bree, the two girls embraced, and Bree squeezed Natalie’s hand. “Thank you so much,” she said. “I knew you could do it.”

“All right.” Natalie was in no mood to chitchat. She knew that probably a good thirty to forty minutes had passed. “Here’s what I think we ought to do. Let me sweep with my cane. You hold my left elbow and just do sighted guide. I mean, we can’t have two canes out there going at the same time.”

“Fine,” Bree said. “My bill’s paid. Let’s go.”

“Excuse me.” A woman’s voice. Close to them. The waitress? “Do you girls want me to call a cab or something?”

Natalie had not even considered that possibility.

“I have, like, two dollars left,” Bree said.

Natalie patted her pockets. She hadn’t brought a purse. “I don’t have any money at all,” she said, suddenly regretting it. A cab would have been a good idea. But which cab company to call? She’d overheard Miss Karen talking about cabs one day, how she always used the same company and asked for Len or Jerry, because she knew they wouldn’t cheat her. But Natalie wouldn’t have a clue what cab company to call.

“We’ll be fine,” Natalie said. “Thanks. We don’t have far to go.”

“You’re sure?” the young woman sounded concerned. “I can call the school for you.”

“No!” Natalie responded. “Please don’t! We’re supposed to be doing this on our own. Really, it’s no problem,” she assured her.

The smell of beer and smoke quickly identified the bar as the girls headed back down the sidewalk.

“Hey, lookee there.” A man’s loud, husky voice. “Where you girls headed?”

Judging from the sound of his voice, Natalie figured he was standing in the bar’s doorway.

The girls ignored the question and walked by.

“That there,” the man joked, “is the blind leading the blind.” He and another man laughed heartily.

Cruel comment, but it was true, wasn’t it? It
was
the blind leading the blind. And they were doing just fine.

In front of the supermarket, Natalie bumped into an empty food cart and set it rolling. She tried to reach out and stop it, but it got away from her and she had to let it go, cringing when she heard it smash into something. At the entrance to the shopping center, the two girls turned right and walked several blocks down Dunbar. Traffic was light now. Almost no cars at all, which not only meant rush hour was over, but that it was dark out.

Natalie slowed down so she could listen. Then she had a bad feeling and stopped.

“What is it?” Bree asked.

“Shhhh,” she said. “Be quiet.”

A truck with something rattling in its cargo bay passed them on Dunbar. The sound dissipated as the truck continued down the road. For a while, nothing more—until, from behind them, a cough broke the silence. Then Natalie thought she could smell cigarette smoke.

She swallowed hard and felt in her jacket pocket for the cell phone, knowing that up ahead was the long quiet stretch near the cemetery.

“Natalie, what’s wrong?” Bree asked again.

“Let’s keep moving,” Natalie whispered. “Someone’s coming up behind us.”

W
hat? You think we’re being followed?”

“Shhhh!” Natalie warned Bree. “Don’t talk so loud!”

“What do we do?”

“I don’t know. Just keep walking.”

Bree pressed close and her grip tightened, while Natalie’s mind spun. Should she yell for help? Blow the whistle attached to her cane? But what if no one heard them?

Maybe they should wave down a car. But then what if they weren’t really being followed? It would be embarrassing. They didn’t want to make a scene for nothing.

Was she trying to talk herself out of gut instinct? Weren’t you supposed to go with your gut?

Keep walking. Keep walking
. It was all Natalie could think to do.

She tried to listen to the sound of her cane on the sidewalk, but it was difficult with her heart pounding in her ears.
Tap, tap, tap
. The cane didn’t sound very loud. Did this mean an open space? The stretch of sidewalk past the cemetery? If so, then there wouldn’t be any houses close by. No one to hear them scream or see that they were in trouble. Their only hope was that someone would notice them from a passing car. But where was all the traffic she normally heard on Dunbar?

Suddenly, a husky voice behind them said, “Hey there.”

Natalie stopped and Bree pressed closed beside her.