Chapter 17
What?! Why? Has Mr. Williams chosen me for human sacrifice to make a point?
I climb over Jeff and drag my feet, which now feel extremely clumsy, down the aisle.
Every pair of eyes on the bus is turned up to my face, some with sympathy, others with sheer curiosity.
Every pair of eyes, that is, except Richard’s.
I can’t help noticing that he’s looking out the window instead of in my direction.
“What’s up?” I say when I get to the front, like everything’s normal.
Mr. Williams doesn’t respond, just jerks his thumb toward the door and goes back to his book.
I look down the stairwell as the bus driver slides the door back open to see a very appealing five o’clock shadow on a handsome jawline. It’s my waiter!
“What are you doing here?” I ask, taken aback by how delighted I sound.
“I thought I’d come home with you. Meet your folks.”
That quote from Alice in Wonderland suddenly runs through my head, when things get “curiouser and curiouser.” “Really?” I squeak out, like the definition of gullible.
He chuckles. “Would be nice, but can’t. This place would fall apart without me,” he says, sweeping his hand toward the resort building behind him. Then he digs into his pocket and pulls out a familiar purple puffball. “You forgot your hat.” He holds it up the stairs toward me.
“Oh, wow. Thanks.” Usually, I hate it that my bad eyesight causes me to constantly leave things behind, but in this particular case, it’s worked out in my favor.
“You really didn’t have to do that.” I come down two steps and take the hat from him, then pull it back on my head.
I’m still a step up from the ground so our faces are about even. I grin and bite my bottom lip.
“Well, I figured you’d want it. It looks good on you,” he says. He stuffs his hands back into his pockets, and I notice that he doesn’t have a jacket on. He must be freezing. I resist the urge to hug him.
“Let’s get to moving,” Mr. Williams says now. The rest of the bus, which I had temporarily forgotten existed, is waiting on me. I blush.
“Okay, well, thanks again. I appreciate it,” I say as he starts back toward the café.
“No problem. Glad to see that hat back where it belongs,” he calls. It’s clear to me that this boy has never been embarrassed in his whole life, which is one hell of an awesome superpower.
The door slides closed in front of my face.
I turn, mumble “Sorry, Mr. Williams,” out of the corner of my mouth, and move back to my seat.
By now, even Richard is looking at me. Feeling emboldened by the receipt of a recent hat compliment from a cutie, I return his gaze.
I even smirk a little bit, like I’ve got a juicy secret, challenging him to say something.
Instead, he exhales through his nose and shakes his head a little, like he’s disappointed in me.
I keep my head up, but my smile fades. Somehow it seems like he won that round, too.
As we finally get on the road, the bus is silent.
The quiet combined with the rocking motion of the drive works like a sedative, and soon I’m pretty sure everyone but me is asleep.
For a while I rerun the conversation with the waiter on a loop in my mind, trying to hold on to the glow I felt when he looked at me, but the torturous energy of Richard’s presence four rows in front of me overwhelms anything yummy.
I wince whenever I peek over the seat back to see the top of his head still there, unmoving.
Is he asleep, too? Or is he aware of my eyes on him?
Is he sitting there silently mocking me?
Thinking about what an inconvenience I was/am?
If I’m being honest with myself, he’s probably not thinking about me at all.
The pinch of that truth makes me squeeze down lower in my seat.
I will myself not to think about Richard the rest of the way home.
It’s about as effective as saying, “Don’t think about elephants. ”
When my mom picks me up, I avoid all her questions by pleading exhaustion.
This is a fact, I am exhausted, but I can talk until sunrise at a sleepover, so I still feel a little guilty.
Especially since she looks like she’s starving, and any piece of information from me is a big juicy hamburger with extra pickles.
“You could tell me whether you had a good time or a bad time, at least,” she says.
“It was all the things,” I say unhelpfully.
There’s no school on Monday because it’s a professional development day for the teachers, so I sleep for fourteen hours.
When I finally wake up, I stay under the blankets for most of the afternoon, as I still can’t read or study or even look at a screen with my eyes so wonky, and the idea of hanging out or talking to anyone just makes me think about Richard.
My surroundings are in a haze, sort of like they’re all melted together, and I’ve got a mishmash of thoughts to match.
I go down a music rabbit hole after listening to the Pitch Perfect soundtrack, searching for all the weird a cappella covers I can find, which somehow leads me to listening to some super sultry Argentinian tango music.
Who knew the accordion could tap into my soul?
My mom has decided I’m sick, probably as much to soothe herself as to take care of me.
She doesn’t know what to do with brooding, but she knows what to do with sick.
She brings me Tylenol and feels my forehead.
Sometimes I pretend to be napping when she comes in, and then she dims the lights and turns the music down.
At one point, Asha must have called or stopped by, because I find a Post-it on my nightstand in my mom’s perfect printing that says, Call Asha.
The person I want to talk to is Mason. He saw me on that mountain—he’s the only one who could understand. But this isn’t a movie; I don’t have a magical phone that accesses the afterlife, and I don’t know how to reach him. Wanting him in no way leads to getting him. So I call Asha.
She picks up on the first ring, like she’s been waiting for me.
“There you are! Hatts, you gotta tell me next time you’re going to be gone all weekend.
I mean, for Christ’s sake, I thought you—” She stops suddenly, and I know she was about to say died before she caught herself.
“I thought you’d run away,” she finishes.
Hearing my friend who always says the right thing get caught in a moment of mortal doubt makes my insides feel hollowed out.
“I called you, you didn’t answer,” I say, almost too weary to get the words out.
“So you leave a message. You text. You know how phones work, right?”
I envision the text I could have sent: New boy was too thirsty—let me down just like the ghost said he would. Also, now half blind. Um, no.
“Anyway,” she plows ahead, “so I hear you’re skiing now? We should get a whole Beaver Bunch ski trip together. Oooh, that would be so fun! Jeff can teach Lucia, you can teach me, and Nolan can— Well, you know Nolan. He’ll probably go snowmobiling or something. Maybe over winter break!”
“I can’t,” I say.
“Hattie, you’re not going to be one of those girls who gets a boyfriend and then disappears, are you?”
“I told you, he was never my boyf—” I start, and then stop before I start to cry about how freaking sad that is. Just answer the question. “No, definitely not.”
“Okay, good. So why no ski trip?”
“It did not go well.”
“Hatts, it was your first time! You just need practice, and—”
“No.” I say it too loud. I clear my throat. “No, I mean it was really bad. I’m not cut out for it. I just can’t.”
“All right, I hear you. Hard pass on skiing. But I’ve got another invite for you and I won’t take no for an answer. Beaver Bunch hangout at my house on Thursday. My whole family will be out, so we can do whatever we want.”
“I’m in. But, Ash, I’ve got to go.” Normally, I love that Asha is a planner because without her and Lucia, the Beaver Bunch would probably never do anything but sit around the lunch table, but today it feels like pressure.
Pressure to be normal. No, better than normal.
Pressure to be together, sharp, fun. Pressure to be like Asha. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”
There’s a beat. Then she says, “Bye, Sweets.”
“Bye.”
Fortunately, everything changes when I open my eyes Tuesday morning.
I almost yell, “Let’s go!” but that would be very loud at six thirty a.m. Instead, I wriggle around in my sheets, letting the relief flow into my arms and legs.
The weird film over the world has evaporated, and I can see the way I’m used to again.
Not perfectly, not even that well, I guess, but regular for me.
No random fireworks and fuzzy raindrops, no halos and haze.
Just my white metal daybed, my lilac walls that Mom and I painted when I was in third grade, and my flowered curtains that let in most of the gray light of an early winter morning.
I feel like I’ve been in a cocoon since I got home. During that time, I thought I was grieving about Richard, but considering how much better I feel now, I guess I was mostly scared about not being able to see. And it’s better!
For the first time, I let myself think about my diagnosis in a way that isn’t all doom wrapped up with a pessimistic bow.
So I can’t see perfectly. So I’ll need some extra accommodations along the way.
But I can see most things right now, the important things, like faces and nature and really good streaming shows.
And maybe I’ll hold on to that vision even longer than my dad held on to his.
Maybe by the time I start to not be able to get around or read, there will be a cure.
Maybe I’ll volunteer for a clinical trial and I’ll help in that cure’s discovery!
Okay, so it’s unlikely I’m going to be freaking Marie Curie, but there’s a shift.
The cocoon of fear is broken and I am emerging a butterfly.
No, nothing that beautiful. More like a moth, plain and dusty but still able to fly.