“All right, boys and girls, I guess I should have told you this earlier, but I was trying to respect Will’s privacy. Seems I made a mistake. Anyway, Will, our new transfer student, is blind.”
There are several loud gasps. It’s a stronger reaction than I’m used to.
“Don’t worry, people, it’s not contagious,” I say.
But no one laughs.
“All righty, then, big first day,” says Mrs. Everbrook. “I guess this is as good a time as any to let you all know that Victoria is going to be our editor in chief this year. Her duties will include, among other things, chasing down crying staff members. Victoria, would you please see to it that Cecily is all right?”
“No problem,” says a voice I assume belongs to Victoria. She marches efficiently out of the room.
Mrs. Everbrook approaches my desk and says quietly, “Will, you were staring at Cecily.”
“I thought we just established—”
“Yes, I know that, but she didn’t. So she thought you were staring.”
“And that made her cry?” I ask.
“I’m sure you’ve heard before that some people are sensitive about being stared at,” says Mrs. Everbrook. “Cecily is… she’s just one of those people. Do you understand?”
“I guess.”
But I don’t, not really. I feel my face getting hot, and I wonder if the other students can see the temperature change on my skin. Are they all staring at me right now?
Mom hates it when people stare at me. Especially when I was little, before the Incident and thus before I went to the school for the blind. She would take me grocery shopping or whatever, and I’d be walking down the aisle with my little tiny white cane in one hand, the other holding her by the wrist—she always insisted I grip her like that instead of holding hands so that I would grow up comfortable with being guided—and some other kid would look at me funny, and Mom would go all Mama Bear, roaring, “If you stare, you’ll go blind, too!” And the kid would run off crying.
She’s always been that way. Overprotective. Not for my sake as much as for hers. I think she wants my life to be easy because it will make her life easy. She can’t let me fail because then everyone would think she failed as a mother.
So that’s why she yells at people for staring. And why she tries to make me “fit in” so they don’t stare in the first place. She’s actually always wanted me to wear sunglasses in public.
And I guess she was right about that one, because here I am now, making some girl cry because she thought I was staring at her. Wouldn’t have happened if I had been wearing the glasses.
? ? ?
After journalism is lunch. Mr. Johnston invites me to eat with him in the staff lounge, but I decline. He deposits me in the cafeteria, where I stand holding my cane in one hand and a bag lunch in the other. Is the entire room staring at me? Or am I invisible to them? I don’t know. All I have to go on is the sound of hundreds of people talking at once, the voices blending together so that I can’t pick out individual conversations.
The noise of the cafeteria is not unlike the smell of the cafeteria. It combines the long list of foods that are being consumed today, or have been consumed in this room at some point in the past, into one overpowering yet nondescript odor that welcomes you like a smack across the face.
I walk forward until my cane clinks against the metal legs of a chair. Further cane taps determine that the chair is already pulled out from a circular lunch table.
“Excuse me, is anyone sitting at this table?” I ask the void.
In return, I get nothing but the chattering voices of the room.
“No one?”
No response.
So I sit. But instead of a chair, my butt makes contact with another animate life-form. A pair of legs, I think. I jump.
“What the—” I holler, completely startled.
“AHHHH!” comes from the owner of the legs.
I drop my cane.
Mrs. Chin always said that a blind person losing a cane is like a sighted person dropping a flashlight and having it turn off after it hits the ground in a dark room. Not only will I have to find the cane, I will have to do so on hands and knees because I’ve lost the very thing that normally helps me detect lost objects.
“Dude, let me get that for you,” says the owner of the legs. With enviable quickness, he retrieves the cane and places it in my hand. “There you go. Sorry, bro. So sorry. That was majorly awkward and totally my fault.”
“It’s all right. But, I mean, did you hear me ask if anyone—”
“Yeah, yeah, I heard you. Like I said, I’m sorry, it was totally messed up not to answer you. I just… I don’t know, I saw you walking over here and froze. Look, you wanna sit down? The chair next to me is empty.”
I hesitate.
He says, “I swear, no surprise occupants.”
I sit down. “Okay, sure, thanks.”
“I’m Nick, by the way.”
“Will.”
I reach my hand toward his voice, and he shakes it. (Side note, Mr. Johnston: I am perfectly capable of shaking hands.)