Blindsided (4 page)

“Who else is here then?” Natalie asked.

“A lot of younger kids and—”

A loud wail suddenly pierced the air, interrupting Serena.

“Those kids,” Serena said. “Over to your left.”

Natalie could see the wheelchairs gathered around several tables. It appeared that most of the kids were strapped into their chairs and were being fed by adult helpers who sat beside them. Now that she focused on it, she could see there was a lot of flailing about going on. And she realized that they were the source of the strange moaning.

“Obviously, eyesight isn’t their only problem. I think the state doesn’t know what else to do with them,” Serena said. “At least that’s what I’ve heard. First time I saw them, I was totally freaked. I thought, ‘Ho-
ly
! Is that going to happen to me?’ Besides being blind, some of them can’t walk or talk or anything,”

“Really?” Natalie couldn’t even begin to imagine what kind of life they had.

“You get used to having them here, though.”

“Gosh, I feel sorry for them,” Natalie said.

“Oh, yeah! Me too!” Serena agreed. “But still, they ought to warn you about it, you know? Anyway, that’s why we’re, like, in this parallel universe here.”

A parallel universe. Natalie tried to look around at the kids in her group. She knew next to nothing about the other students, other than a few first names. Serena, of course. Serena with her black clothes and, Natalie now realized, black nail polish. She was a little pudgy, but she had a round, pretty face and seemed to pride herself on being outspoken. At the first dorm meeting last evening, brief because not all the girls had arrived yet, Serena had been blunt about her feelings on a number of issues: About lights out at 10 P.M.: “That sucks!” About the tight schedule: “Where is my downtime? When will I watch Dr. Phil and Oprah? Y’all are going to stress me out.” And with regard to cell phone use only after 8 P.M.: “This is like prison!”

Natalie tried to get a better look at quiet Eve, who had just hooked two fingers over the rim of her glass and, with her other hand, was pouring water from a pitcher into the glass. So that’s how they did it, Natalie realized. Somehow, Eve had special permission to keep a bird in her room. Natalie had heard it singing last night. Odd, but it sounded like a red-winged blackbird—was it possible?—which only reminded Natalie of the creek back home.

How fast yesterday’s trip had gone, even though it had taken more than five hours for Natalie and her mother to drive across the state from Hawley, in Maryland’s western mountains, to Baltimore near the Chesapeake Bay. A black bear had been spotted in the hills that morning, not far from Natalie’s home, and her father thought it best to stay back and keep an extra eye on the goats. She and her mother shared tea from a thermos and nibbled on snickerdoodles that Meredith had brought over as a going-away gift. When her mother announced that they had arrived at the school, Natalie didn’t want to believe it.

“We’re here already?” She sat up as the car slowed for a speed bump. All Natalie could see outside were trees, lots and lots of trees clumped together in a grayish-green cluster. She swallowed hard. A knot had rooted itself in her stomach the moment they turned out of their farm’s rutted, dirt driveway, and it had grown with every passing mile. By the time they reached the entrance to the school in Baltimore, the knot had become so large that Natalie could barely breathe.

“Can we go get an iced tea somewhere first?” she had asked. “Couldn’t we just drive around the area a little first? Please?”

“It’s time
,
” her mother had insisted, her voice calm, but edged with fatigue. “You know it’s time. You need to learn these skills.”

But it couldn’t be time, Natalie thought to herself. New skills would only be necessary if Natalie went blind and that just couldn’t happen. Natalie did not want to lose her sight. No way! A world of darkness? A world alone?

“It’s going to be all right,” her mother reassured her as they continued up the driveway.

But Natalie wasn’t so sure. She slid down in the car seat and fixed her narrow gaze outside, saying nothing as her mother drove up the long, shaded entrance to the school.

Because sometimes when you’re scared,
really
scared, you just shut up and do what people tell you to do.

A
n argument suddenly erupted at the lunch table.

The two boys across from Natalie yelled and pushed away from each other. Natalie tried to recall their names.

“You got to be kidding me, man!” the taller, more slender one yelled. Sheldon, Natalie remembered. That was Sheldon yelling.

“No, I’m not kidding!” the other replied.

“You on a diet, JJ?” Sheldon was asking. “What for?”

JJ was the other boy.

“What you think I’m on a diet for?” JJ retorted, annoyed.

So it wasn’t really an argument. Just a loud conversation. Loud teasing. Now that Natalie was getting a better look, she could see that maybe JJ did need to lose some weight. She also noticed he had spilled some ketchup on his shirt. The large red blob and a thin, watery red dribble made it look as though he’d been shot in the chest.

“No seconds this year,” JJ told Sheldon. He didn’t seem to know about the ketchup stain. “And I’m walking around the track every day.”

Sheldon folded his arms on the table and dropped his head on them.

“I am getting a girlfriend this year!”JJ declared.

Sheldon’s arms and shoulders shook with laughter.

“What kind of girlfriend will you be wantin’ this year?” Serena jumped in, egging him on.

“A big girl,” JJ said seriously. “A Christian girl.”

“Well, I guess that leaves me out,” Serena quipped. “I suppose she has to be a virgin, too.”

Sheldon laughed harder and Natalie put a hand up to cover her own smile.

“Now watch,” Serena said quietly to Natalie, “JJ will get up and leave. He can only take so much.”

But he didn’t leave. Instead, JJ lifted his chin into the air at an angle. He had sunglasses on, so Natalie couldn’t see his eyes. “New girl,” he said.

Natalie cringed and felt the blood rush to her face.

“Hey, you—”

“
Natalie
. Her name’s Natalie!” Serena interjected sharply.

“Natalie,” JJ repeated softly. “I’m sorry. Welcome.”

“Thank you,” Natalie said.

“You have a nice voice,” JJ went on. “Do you have a boyfriend, Natalie?”

What? Was he looking at her as a candidate to be his girlfriend? How embarrassing! And what a personal question. Or was it? The truth was that Natalie had never had a boyfriend and JJ’s question struck at a core fear of Natalie’s. Because who would want to date someone who had trouble seeing?

“No,” she finally said in a small voice. “I don’t have a boyfriend.”

Sheldon sat up. “She’s too good for you, JJ,” he said, elbowing the boy beside him. “You got to lower your sights, man.”

“My sights? What are you talking about? You know I ain’t got no sight.”

Sheldon started laughing. And JJ laughed with him.

Were they kidding? Did JJ just make a joke about his blindness?

She turned to Serena for a clue, but the bored expression on Serena’s face hadn’t changed. “Don’t pay no attention to him, JJ,” she said. “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

JJ stopped laughing and stood abruptly. “I don’t want to be late to class,” he said.

But what about the ketchup? Wasn’t somebody going to tell him about the spill down his shirt? Maybe no one wanted to embarrass him. Natalie watched, uncomfortably, as JJ snapped open his folding cane, picked up his backpack, and left.

The whole strange scene at breakfast made Natalie even more homesick for her own friends. She couldn’t help but think of them because it was also the first day of classes back at Western Allegany High School. Meredith, Suzanne, and Coralee would be wearing their new jeans and the sandals that all four of them had bought on sale at Target. Natalie could almost feel their first-day excitement, the jokes, the confusion, the lockers slamming shut, the hustle and bustle in the hallways . . . the same hallways she and her mother had been in just a few days ago.

They had stopped at the high school one morning to pick up Natalie’s transcript from the main office. It was the week before classes started, so the locker-lined halls were empty and spotless, the floors newly polished. As they passed the cafeteria, Natalie could hear faint radio music and the muffled clanging of pots in the back as the cooks prepared for another year of pizza, subs, and Tater Tots.

“Hey, Nat!” A boy’s voice suddenly rang out, echoing in the empty hallway.

Natalie’s mother touched her shoulder. “To your right,” she said quietly.

“It’s Jake,” the boy said as he came toward them. “Jake Handelman.”

Natalie smiled. She liked Jake, who apparently knew how helpful it was when people announced who they were. She must have mentioned this once, how much she appreciated that.

“Hey. So what are you doing here so early?” he asked.

Natalie could see him then. The baseball hat on backward, the cheeky face and wide smile, the bulky black T-shirt. It helped that Jake was so big—as big as the tuba he played in the marching band. At the end of their freshmen year, she and Jake had been elected class representatives to the student council.

“Couldn’t wait to be back in school, huh?” he had teased.

Natalie’s smile began to fade. She did not want to have to tell him that she was leaving.

But Jake didn’t wait for an answer. “I was thinking,” he said, “that we need to get those proposals written up for the first student council meeting.”

Natalie felt herself sinking. They had both pushed for healthier food in the cafeteria as part of their campaigns. A lot of the kids wanted a daily salad bar and a machine that sold bottled water.

“We should get together one afternoon next week. Maybe Friday?”

“I can’t,” Natalie said. “I won’t be here, Jake.” She swallowed hard. “I have to go to a different school—”

When Natalie’s voice faltered, her mother moved in. “Her glaucoma, Jake. It’s at the point where there is nothing more we can do.”

“Wow. I didn’t know. . . . Yeah. . . . But my grandfather had glaucoma. He had to take eyedrops like every day. I guess I didn’t realize someone our age could get it, too.”

Natalie was nodding.
Eyedrops.
He didn’t have a clue! While memories of past surgeries flashed by, she sniffed and brushed the end of her nose with her hand, a nervous gesture. “Yeah, anyone can get it,” she said weakly.

Jake hooked his thumbs in the pockets of his baggy shorts. His lowered voice sounded sincere. “I’m really sorry, Natalie.”

“Thanks,” she told him. “Good luck to you, Jake.”

“And you, too,” he replied as they turned to go.

“Stay in touch, okay?” he had called after them.

Unbelievable. On the second floor of Norland Hall at the Baltimore Center for the Blind, a whole walk-in closet full of canes hanging on hooks surrounded Natalie like a stalactite nightmare. Natalie heard the voice repeating: “Find one that fits.” But her hands froze and the voice echoed in her head.

Definitely, absolutely, the worst thing so far, she thought. Forget the weird kids and a Braille lesson where she learned that there are six dots in a Braille cell and that different combinations of dots stood for different letters. A single dot, or bump, was
a
while
b, c, e, i,
and
k
all had two dots—but each set of dots was arranged differently! Impossible! How in the world were a bunch of bumps ever going to mean something?

But by far, the cane was her greatest fear because of all it represented—and all that it would strip away—like her freedom, and her anonymity. They may as well hang a sign around her neck, too: PATHETIC BLIND PERSON.

“Natalie, go ahead, hon,” urged the woman who was Natalie’s new cane instructor. “Lift a cane off the wall and see if it’s the kind you want.”