“Will, I need you to trust me on this one. You can see replicas of the greatest wonders of the world in Vegas,” says Nick. “Stuff you’d have to travel the entire globe to see otherwise.”
I hate to delay us, but it occurs to me that if my eyesight regresses, I’ll never get to see any wonders of the world. This might be my only chance. Even if they’re just replicas. But what difference does it make, if they look just like the real thing?
So I agree, and we make our way to Vegas.
He points out the attractions in front of the casinos as we drive south. First we pass two pirate ships floating in a small harbor.
“How do you know they are pirate ships and not, like, sailboats or navy vessels?” I ask.
“Those all look really different from each other. And basically all old ships look like pirate ships,” he says.
At the next block we see a casino surrounded by water, like the Italian city of Venice, I’m told. Next, a casino with stone sculptures and giant pillars modeled after ancient Rome. I find the sculptures kind of creepy. To my untrained eyes, they look too much like real humans. I keep expecting them to hop down from their pedestals and start talking or walking.
One block later we reach a casino with a Paris, France, theme.
“Can you guess what that is?” asks Nick, pointing.
“The Eiffel Tower?” I ask.
“Yep. An exact replica, built at half scale.”
“Wow,” I say. “Probably the closest I’ll ever come to seeing the real thing.”
“What do you mean? Maybe you’ll go to Paris someday. Who knows?”
I try to stifle a wince.
We keep driving past a casino replica of New York City. Nick points out the towers of the Empire State Building and Chrysler Building. Then we get to a half-sized model of the Statue of Liberty.
“It looks so much like the real thing that a couple years ago the US Postal Service accidentally issued a stamp with a picture of this sculpture instead of the real one in New York,” said Nick. “They ended up printing billions of those stamps with the wrong statue.”
“Billions?” Whitford laughs.
“For real. Look it up,” says Nick.
We pass a casino shaped like a castle, and finally reach one named for a city in Egypt.
“It’s a triangle,” I say, thinking of Cecily.
“A pyramid, actually,” says Nick. “Which is like four triangles laid—”
“I know what a pyramid is,” I interrupt. “I just don’t always recognize what I know.”
“My bad. Well, here’s something you probably won’t recognize: In front of the pyramid is a model of the Great Sphinx.”
“Half scale?”
“No, actually. This one is double the size of the original.”
“How do you know all this stuff?”
“You don’t get to be captain of the academic quiz team without an ability to store an endless number of useless facts.”
We stay in a cheap hotel in the old downtown that night.
In the car the next morning, Ion asks, “You nervous?” Today’s the day we reach LA.
“About Cecily?”
“Yeah.”
“Terrified.”
“I don’t blame you. It’s a big conversation.”
“I just hope I say the right thing.”
“It’s not about what you say, Will.”
“What’s it about, then?”
“Listening.”
I nod. “I guess.”
She continues, “And it’s a good thing you can see now, because listening is about a lot more than just what you do with your ears.”
“Thanks. Just what I need. More stuff to worry about,” I say.
“You’ll be fine,” says Ion. “Just remember: Don’t talk. Listen. With your ears and your eyes and your heart.”
“Don’t worry, I’m already soaking up everything I can with my eyes these days.”
“What do you mean?” she asks.
I look around the car. “There’s something I haven’t told you guys.”
I close my eyes and run my fingers across my eyelids, wishing there was something I could do to get rid of the swelling behind the corneas. “My body is rejecting the transplant. There’s a good chance I will go back to being blind.”
“Oh, man,” says Whitford.
“Will, I’m so sorry,” says Ion. “What are the chances—”
“Fifty percent,” I say. “A fifty-fifty chance I go back to the way I was before.”
“Doesn’t matter to me,” says Nick.
I start to protest that it does matter quite a bit whether I can see or not, but he catches his own poor choice of words.
“Sorry, that came out wrong. What I mean is, it doesn’t matter to our friendship whether or not you can see. We were friends before, we’re friends now, we’ll be friends whatever happens.”
“Thanks, man,” I say, reaching for his shoulder. “That means a lot.”
“Who knows?” adds Nick. “If you’re lucky, maybe we’ll even let you join the academic quiz team.”
“What? And be stuck at nerd tournaments with you losers?” I say to lighten the mood. Everyone laughs.
CHAPTER 30
We finally arrive in Los Angeles, where traffic slows us to a crawl.
“So, how exactly are we going to find her?” asks Nick.
“Cecily said her dad lived near Venice Beach. Six blocks from the ocean,” I say.