Blind Read online

  “The rabbit?”

  “I don’t know. That too, I guess.”

  “Yeah.” She thought for a minute. “It’s been kind of a rough year.”

  “Unlike last year?” I said, and she laughed. Last year, we both almost died of misery. But then Claire actually died, and now here we were, still alive. Logan’s laugh wasn’t a happy one; she always snorts when she’s actually laughing—right at the end of her laugh—and she sighs when she’s not.

  She sighed. “Yeah, that was crazy, too. Maybe we’re due for some good luck.”

  “I don’t want luck,” I said. “I just want to know what’s going to happen some of the time. Instead of getting shocked to death constantly.”

  “We should get a crystal ball,” Logan said. “Or try out some of your magical rabbit-finding powers on the future.” She pulled the curtain back and hopped off the bed, went to turn on some music. “How about ‘Sweetness’?” she asked.

  “Whatever you want,” I said. Logan’s always introducing me to music, but I prefer the terrible stuff my parents play, Simon & Garfunkel and Tom Petty. Maybe because embarrassing music played by old people reminds me of being a baby, makes me feel safe or something. No one knows about my horrible musical taste except Logan. And when I pretend to be cool in front of other people, she never rats me out. Lately, I do so much listening that I prefer not to have any music on, but how un-fun do I really want to be, even with Logan?

  I lay back and put my feet up flat against the bottom of Naomi’s bunk, stretched my legs. “I wonder what it would be like to be in charge.”

  Logan bounced back onto the bed and my legs bent. “Of what?” She sounded kind of surprised.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Anything. How we live? What we do? Whatever.”

  “I think there’d be major problems,” Logan said. “Like, who’d go to school?”

  “I would,” I said. “And so would you. We’d all probably do the same things we do anyway; we just wouldn’t feel like prisoners about it.” I reached down and felt for Spark’s head, rested my hand on his lovely skull, scratched behind his ears.

  “No way,” Logan said. “No one would follow rules if we didn’t have to. Everyone would be having sex in the streets and eating Twizzlers three meals a day. Including me.”

  Logan loves red candy, which I find really weird and gross. She has a thing about fake cherry flavor, even though she hates actual fruit, including cherries.

  “That’s not true. You could already do that when your mom’s not looking, and you don’t.”

  “But if I got to make up the rules for everyone, we’d all be crazy, sugar-eating sluts. Maybe I’d say there’s a rule we have to be.”

  Logan has been obsessed with sex since we were thirteen. Or with virginity, depending on how you look at it, since neither of us has had sex yet. Her third favorite shtick, after my parents being rabbits and my family “the Silver circus,” is this thing she came up with in seventh grade about our virginity. We were talking in social studies about destiny and free will, and Logan decided that whom we’re going to lose it to is preordained, so the universe already knows and we just haven’t found out yet. She can’t decide if what we do will or won’t change the outcome. I doubt the question of whom we’ll lose our virginity to was supposed to be the central focus of Ms. Paton’s unit on free will, but it’s very Logan to take something academic and make it sexual. Of course, destiny’s plans have gone kind of badly for me, so maybe I just have less faith in the universe than Logan does. I’d rather make my own plans than rely on anyone or anything else, fate included.

  “Forget it,” I said. “Let’s take Spark for a walk.” He perked up, barked.

  But Logan went to the window and opened it, and cold rain blew in sideways. I had heard it anyway, hitting the window and the bushes outside.

  “You don’t have to drench me. You could just say it’s raining.”

  “Maybe we should do a story,” Logan suggested.

  “I don’t feel like it.”

  Logan and I sometimes write stories where I come up with a few lines and then she writes a few, but her lines always make the stories into weird, sci-fi ones. We’ll have a great character, fighting her way through the regular impossibilities of being a girl, or even a warrior or whatever, and then it’s Logan’s turn and the girl grows horns or wings or an alien lands on her head and wants to have sex with her in outer space, and I have to quit before the story is ruined forever. So we never finish any of them.

  I felt incredibly restless. “I wish everyone weren’t so full of shit all the time,” I said. “Do you think Claire killed herself on purpose? Do you think they know what happened, or why, and just aren’t telling us?”

  “You know I have no idea. We’ve been over this. And anyway, who’s they?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Her parents? The cops? Why do we keep having to have these bullshit meetings at school? Why can’t we have our own meeting, where we tell the truth?”

  “You want to have another grief meeting?”

  “No, not a grief meeting. Not hideously fake, with the weird other version of us that we all become in those meetings. I hate those conversations.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  I couldn’t resist. “They make me feel crazy, like we’re all robots. Or in a terrible play.”

  “I know.”

  “I guess I just feel like everyone’s so apathetic and full of it. Claire was by herself, taking ‘recreational’ drugs for no reason? And now she’s dead for no reason? And we’re all just going to live with that and move on, with our parents and the school even more all over us than ever? It just seems—”

  “Unfair,” Lo said. “Yeah, it’s unfair. But what’s new?”

  We heard Benj start crying again, followed by banging. Leah must have set up a pot-and-pan band to distract him from Bigs.

  “The world is a very stupid place,” I told Logan, picking up speed. I felt choppy and staccato, excited.

  “Yeah? And how do you propose we make the world less stupid?” Logan asked.

  “I don’t know. What if we talked about Claire for real, for one thing? About what she did—and if it’s what I think, why. I mean, how could she . . . we have no control over anything that happens. What if we—”

  “But we do,” Logan said. “Have control, I mean. If she killed herself, then that’s the ultimate control, right? Or even if she fell into the lake drunk or high or whatever, she made the choices that got her to that point—some people are super fucking crazy. Maybe Claire was just way crazier than we realized.”

  I was fretting about what this might mean for me and my accident, what I considered my own secret insanity, when I heard the little clicking sound Lo makes when she chews her hair.

  “Why are you nervous?”

  “I’m not.”

  “Stop chewing your hair.”

  “I can’t. I’m biting the split ends off.”

  “Why don’t you just get a haircut?”

  “I’ll get one if you do.”

  I didn’t respond to this. When my mom came home, she gathered us in the living room and said Bigs was “going back into the earth so that other things can grow and live.” Jenna was crying, either because she was old enough to make sense of this tortured description or because the vet had been more straightforward.

  But Benj asked, “Did Bigs die?” directly, so my mom was forced to say yes. He did not cry, just stood there, swallowing and holding his breath. I could feel him quivering with sorrow. Apparently Bigs had eaten something that poisoned her. Naomi asked what, and my mom paused before saying, “Maybe part of a lily plant in the living room?”

  Her voice was candy pink and pitched up, maybe because she was lying and didn’t want whoever’s toy it had actually been to die of guilt. I imagined a rabbit-shaped X-ray with a matchbox car or Le
go, a Polly Pocket doll head or foam block in the stomach. I knew instantly that my mom had picked the lily because it belonged to her and my dad and it was sitting on the floor, so the rabbit would have only herself to blame if she had snacked on it. My mom is a good and kind liar.

  I told Benj what I hoped was the truth, that someday it would be okay. Naomi was comforting Jenna. Then I asked my mom if Logan and I could go out for a walk, and she said if I didn’t mind, she’d rather we stayed in. I did mind, but I didn’t argue. Logan and I went up to Leah and Sarah’s room, since they were out, and talked about what the rabbit ate, whose fault it might have been, and why lie. Logan cares more than I do about blame; she blames her dad for leaving her mom, and whenever she mentions him, she uses her lime voice and I can hear her face squeeze tight and sour. She’s an only child, and since he moved to California she only sees him on school vacations, in huge week- or month-long doses, which is just really awkward—like, for example, she got her period for the first time while she was visiting him last year. She was the last to get it by an entire year, and she would have been totally thrilled except she didn’t want to tell him, so she had to come up with an excuse to go running to the drug store. And when she got home and told her mom, her mom cried because she hadn’t been there for it, and Logan ended up comforting her mom instead of her mom comforting her. Logan’s mom works all the time because they need money, and her dad doesn’t have much, either. And he’s never on time with anything, including sending checks. When her mom’s not working she’s out “making friends,” so she won’t die of loneliness, which I think is really selfish, because who cares if she has friends? Once you have kids, it’s your responsibility to take care of them until they’re old enough to be alone.

  Obviously my parents can’t stop blaming themselves for what happened to me, especially my mom. Which is, I bet, how Claire M.’s parents feel. They were so strict; maybe she picnicked on drugs at the beach to punish or escape them. Or maybe they’re the types who think—as you have to, if you want to survive—that there was nothing they could have done. There was nothing my parents could have done about my eyes, either, but they still blame themselves, in a general, feel-like-shit-forever way. I wish they would stop, but I’d probably be furious if they did, too.

  Sunday morning, Naomi woke Logan and me, knocking on Sarah and Leah’s door. When I answered it, she said, “I waited forever to wake you guys,” even though it was only seven thirty.

  “What’s up, Nomi?” I asked.

  “Why did you want to get away from me last night?”

  “What?”

  “How come you and Logan never want to sleep in our room when Logan is here? Can I play with you?”

  I sighed. “We didn’t want to keep you up, okay? And yes, you can play with us. Let’s go have breakfast.”

  We headed to the kitchen, where Baby Lily was babbling and shouting and crying. Benj, apparently recovered from the loss of Bigs, was racing a plastic dump truck manned by Champon, a dirty stuffed toy turtle he definitely meant to name Champion but got wrong. Jenna was dancing and singing—kind of beautifully, actually—to a princess video called “Bella Bella Dancerella.”

  Naomi hustled over to the fridge and then from there to the electric mixer. Apparently she had lost interest in playing with Logan and me, but I couldn’t tell what she was working on with the mixer; either one of her “science projects,” which usually involve food coloring and cornstarch; or hopefully pancake batter. She used to make me help her with all her experiments and I found it annoying, but now I feel bad that she never asks me anymore.

  The phone was ringing and Leah came in from the back door, home early from her sleepover. She kissed our mom hello and said hi to me while mom ran to the phone. The kitchen felt bubbling and orange, and I liked it. Because it’s what I’m used to, because it’s cheerful and tastes like cooking sugar, and because it doesn’t change. Having six siblings has its drawbacks, obviously, but there are good things about it, too, like there being a high likelihood of at least some of us liking each other. If you’re in a room with six other kids, you might be friends with one of them, whereas if you’re in a room with just one other kid, there’s more than a 50 percent chance that the kid will be a total asshole and you’ll hate him—and what if that person is your only sibling?

  I listened tightly to my mom’s phone voice, organizing a funeral for Bigs. She was sniffling. The turtle dump truck Indy 500 had stopped, so Benj was listening, too.

  “Right,” my mom said. “In the back garden.” She paused. “I can bring one.”

  Benj’s boots shuffled over to where I was. “Emma? That rabbit will get bernied,” he told me. He reached up and put his sticky left hand in mine. Spark barked and Logan shushed him. I could feel Benj lift his right hand and use it to wipe his nose—with something he was holding. Champon, probably.

  “Buried,” Naomi said, from the counter. She had turned the mixer off. “Not bernied, Benj. Buried.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I knew what you meant.” I squeezed his little hand, and wondered if my being on his side had made Naomi feel bad. She was just trying to be a big kid, showing off her vocabulary. I moved closer to where she was, and smelled butter.

  “Are you making pancakes, Nomi?” I asked.

  “Yeah, do you want some?” she asked hopefully.

  “I would love some, thank you.”

  “Buried,” Benj said to himself, practicing, getting used to it. “Bigs will have to get buried.” I felt him tense his body, trying to get the word right, trying not to cry again. The princess music stopped and Jenna came into the kitchen, her feet sweeping—ballet slippers.

  “Can I help?” she asked Naomi in a whisper, upset that our mother was crying.

  “I’m done with this part,” Naomi said to Jenna. Then I heard Naomi step down carefully; heard the stool squeak, which meant she was probably carrying the giant mixing bowl full of batter over to the stove. “Can I help with the next part?” Jenna asked.

  Naomi sighed impatiently.

  “Be nice, Nomi,” I said. “And wait until Mom gets off the phone to turn the burner on.”

  “I’ll do it,” Leah said, and she touched me on her way to join them. I tensed, waiting for the sound of the gas, the flame catching it, the smell. Logan started clacking plates around, setting the table, and then I heard the gas ignite, the fire turn colors, the batter sizzle on the griddle. I inhaled, exhaled, sat, with Spark at my feet and Benj pulling up a chair on my right, coming closer and closer until he was practically on top of me, then taking my hand again while we waited for our mom to hang up, calm down, come back to us. I could feel the flame under the pancakes, and my mom, dropping her voice to a whisper I’m pretty certain only I heard, said, “Uh, yes, in the freezer.” Focus in, I told myself. Focus in. Breathe. I tucked my head and rocked a little at the table. Was the dead rabbit in the freezer? Had Claire been in a morgue, frozen? Had her parents come to identify her? How did blind people identify their loved ones? Did you have to feel the face of a corpse?

  Weirdly, I felt a flutter of colorful hope. Maybe Lo and I could at least talk about something meaningful, like what Claire had done and why, whether there was any way to keep ourselves or each other safe, maybe take some control over our own lives or stories, anyway. Before it was too late and we were adults, with other people relying on us to pretend we could keep them safe.

  • • •

  Before my accident, I thought I knew a lot. I used to take endless notes in a little book I made, with a pencil holder and an eraser holder and a bunch of paper taped in. I spied on my family, and my parents and Leah and Sarah called me Mata Sasha Silver, after Mata Hari. I hid with my ratty notebook under the dining room table while everyone else was eating and talking and talking and talking. That’s after I was done with my food, and had already asked quietly, “Can I be excused?” And my mom had said, “Sure, Emma, sweetie,”
and my dad had said, “May I. May I be excused.” And I had nodded, repeated his words like the sweet, obedient parrot I was. And then slipped off my chair, and vanished. I loved that feeling, of being safely unseen. There are so many of us, and there was always such a storm of chaos; I got to organize a little bit, even if only by recording boring descriptions of my parents. I guess I was trying to understand something about us, even back then. Or maybe it was more than that. Maybe I was storing up information, even though I didn’t realize I would need it. Because I do. The spying trained me to pay attention, and I still have, locked into myself, most of what I learned when I was other-Emma, Emma with my working eyes. I can still see the blur of all my sisters whirling up from dinner into dishes, bath times, pj’s, last snacks, singing, shouting, toothpaste, stories. I’m still listening, even if I can’t disappear beneath the table with its curving legs and toed feet that almost match the ones on our upstairs bathtub. I know those cold bath feet well, and now they’re how I understand white. Our round, wooden table is what brown feels like; the scratch of the couch fabric, gold. There is nothing in our house I haven’t touched, both when I was a spy and now that I’m blind—no surface, no pillow velcroed to the sofa, no part of any wall or windowsill. Now I have to focus in all the time, so my mind and I can stay sharp and alive without eyes. I have no choice.

  The tablecloth I used to flutter up and peek out from has dark blue flowers that are an ink-soaked cartoon in my memory. Deep blues can be as scary as water where it drops off to too-deep, but sometimes those same blues are cooked and delicious. Sometimes they’re the hot berries my mom pours over Naomi’s pancakes, when the smell of the room goes indigo.

  Some blues have ice-cube edges, and gray itself smells like smoke. Now the lake, which used to be sunny and layered, is all wrong, gray and dangerous. Now our town, which was fresh-cut green before Claire, has a cracked outside and a scarlet, pulsing center. It’s volcanic, like my fear.

  -4-

  Logan said we should ask Zach Haze to meet us for coffee at the Bridge Café downtown, and ask what he thought about maybe getting some people together to talk. I agreed, of course, because he’s the future love of my life and also reasonable and smart. So she pulled him aside after lunch at Lake Main, and we stood outside the cafeteria for a few minutes. My back was against the wall, which made me feel steadier, safer, slightly less nervous. Zach smelled light blue, clean like chlorine—maybe the pool that morning, or some sky he had carried in with him, or a bleachy T-shirt. There was also peppermint gum, and the forever-chemical-fruit scent of Logan’s hair. People moved in a constant rush down the hall, and as soon as there was a pause, I spoke into it: “So, uh, Zach, we wondered if you wanted to meet us for coffee to talk about an idea we had—about maybe getting some people together for a, um, conversation about . . .” This was a sad imitation of what I’d practiced at home, even recorded and played back to myself twice. I hate speaking. I wanted to open my eyes, check what was happening. I pressed my right palm flat against the wall.