The One Thing (29 page)

“Didn’t I tell you? I don’t like surprises,” I told him.

“Too bad.” I could hear the smile in his voice without even looking out the window.

I exhaled into the phone. “Okay. Give me a minute to get dressed. And Ben? Nice jammies.” I hung up before he could answer me.

It was so much easier to get dressed when I could see what I was doing. I pulled on shorts and a T-shirt and padded downstairs, slipping out the front door and running soundlessly across the
driveway. My troubles were still there, churning somewhere under the surface, but for now I was skipping over them—a rock dancing across the top of a lake.

“Hola!”
Ben said loudly as I came to a stop in front of him.

I clamped my hand over his mouth. “Shhh. Gramps can hear like a bat. And jeesh, aren’t you warm in that getup? It’s, like, seventy-five degrees.”

“I’m waaaay hawt, Thera,” he said against my palm.

I couldn’t help but smile. Looking up at Mason, I said, “It’s only fair to warn you: I’m not exactly a morning person. And it’s so early that it’s practically
yesterday.”

Mason held both palms up toward me in innocence. “Not my idea, Maggie. Blame my brother.”

Wally was in the back of the car. Head hanging through the open window and tongue lolling out of his mouth, he was wearing one of those monstrous dog-smiles. I shot him a look that said
If
you stick your nose in my crotch, you’re dead
.

We climbed into Mason’s car and headed out of my neighborhood. Ben said from the front seat, “So. Thera. The thing is? I have to blindfold you.”

I snorted. “Seriously?”

“Serious as a heart attack,” said Ben.

I looked back and forth at the profiles of the two boys. “Am I the only one here to see the hilarity of blindfolding the blind girl?” Neither of them answered me. They both gave me
identical sidelong looks of impatience. “Just saying,” I mumbled. “Fine. Whatever. Blindfold me.”

Ben handed me an obnoxiously orange bandanna and instructed me to put it on. We drove for what felt like hours, although it was probably only fifteen or twenty minutes. When I couldn’t
take it anymore, I said, “Where—”

“Patience, Thera,” Ben said to me, sounding like some sort of guru.

After bumping down a dirt road, we finally came to a stop. Everyone was quiet. Even the morning seemed hushed, as though it didn’t want us to know it was there.

“We’re here,” Ben announced.

“By ‘here’ you mean...?”

“Richardson’s Cove.”

I’d never heard of the place. “Oh, well, of course. That explains everything,” I said.

When Ben cracked open his door, a scent washed over me—all briny and seaweedy and thick. In the not-too-far distance, I could hear waves crashing against the beach. I slid out of the car.
My flip-flops sank into sand. “Okay,” I said. “So we’re at the beach. Can I take off the blindfold now?”

“Nope.”

I rolled my eyes. My lashes brushed against the blindfold.

“Mason. Take her hand so she doesn’t fall,” Ben said. “I’ve seen her fall, and it isn’t pretty.”

I’d just opened my mouth to spew out a retort when Mason took my left hand. My snappy comeback flew off into the sea breeze.

We walked over a course of sand-covered mounds before heading up a steep incline. My feet slid out of my flip-flops, so I plucked them off and carried them up the hill. I could hear Ben
struggling along in his crutches. Mason slowed me to a stop and let go of my hand. Suddenly, I felt untethered. “Can I take off the—”

Ben huffed. “You’re so impatient, Thera. Okay. Fine. Take it off.”

I took it off.

“Ta-da!” he said with a flourish.

I was standing on top of a sand dune, looking over a tiny cove. It was probably dead dark there, but, thanks to Ben, I could see the area as though a spotlight were blasting over it. The place
was small—Wally could race from one side of the cove to the other in about fifteen seconds, tops—and it was private, protected by an army of sky-high trees on one side and the ocean on
the other. It was perfect.

“Wow,” I said. “It’s really beautiful here.”

Ben shot Mason a pointed look. “Told you she’d love it.” To me he said, “Dad used to take us here when we were little. We fished off that point over there. Off the rocks?
So anyway. This isn’t actually the surprise.” He nodded at Mason.

For the first time, I noticed that Mason was carrying a dark-colored backpack. He swung it off his shoulder and unzipped it, producing a checkered blanket. He spread it on the sand.

“Lie down and shut your eyes,” Ben instructed.

I growled and said, “You sure are bossy at zero dark thirty.” When he pursed his lips and pointed with his eyes to the blanket, I heaved a sigh and lay down, promptly shutting my
eyes. “Okay. Fine. They’re closed.”

There were some rustling noises, the sound of a zipper, the clink of Ben’s crutches as he took them off and collapsed to my right, an enormous
swoof
as Mason sat on the other side
of me, the clearing of Ben’s throat, and then—

“Okay. Open your eyes,” Ben said.

I didn’t know what I was expecting. I guess I wasn’t expecting anything in particular, which was why I was so surprised when I saw...stars.

Ben was holding a mirror in front of my face. He had it pointing up to the sky at just the right angle, so the glittering reflections of dozens of stars were scattered across it. I hadn’t
seen stars in so long, it was as though they had stopped existing for me. Emotions crowded in my head. They were joy, sorrow, and wonder, all crushed into one. It took me a minute to find my voice.
“Ben, I—”

“Shhh. Wait. There’s more.” He was still sitting beside me, holding the mirror, his expression bright and elated with whatever he saw in mine.

I lay there in silence—Mason on one side of me and Ben on the other—and watched as dawn crept across the sky, snuffing out the stars, one by one, and replacing them with fine, wispy
clouds and the magentas and oranges of sunrise.
Hi, Gran,
I thought, reminded of all those sunrises I’d seen on the beach with Gran. I could almost feel her quiet presence.

Weeks ago, I’d told Ben that I missed the sky. The stars. The colors of sunrise. He’d remembered. It was so sweet and so touching and so
Ben
that I had to shut my eyes for a
moment. I felt as if I were too big for my body, as if I might split somewhere in the middle and leak out all over the sand.

“Mason,” Ben whispered. “Um. Is Thera crying?”

I didn’t hear Mason’s response, but he must’ve nodded.

“Is that good or bad?” Ben said in a low, concerned voice.

His voice rich and goose bump–inducing, Mason said, “Good, I think.”

I felt a finger poke against my shoulder. I opened my eyes. Ben was hovering over me, worry etched into his features. “Thera,” he said, “you look funny when you cry.”

I laughed, sending tears scuttling down my cheeks, and then I wiped them off with the back of my hand and smiled up at him.

I
stayed on my back, watching the sky until the yellows took it over. Ben had gone to sleep beside me. He looked several years younger in his
cowboy pajamas, his mouth cracked open and his limbs spread indelicately across the blanket. Wally—caked with wet, course sand—was lying dutifully beside Ben, watching him as though
standing guard, his muzzle supported by Ben’s leg and his nostrils working. Mason sat on the other side of me, resting his elbow on his propped-up knee while he stared at some unknown point
on the horizon. He looked as if he were in a photo shoot for
Rolling Stone
magazine. The thing I was discovering about Mason was that he didn’t try to be larger than life, and this
was what actually made him larger than life. He was so understated and so simple that he was grandiose.

All around us were signs of morning, seagull cries and golden light glinting off the sand and horns of nearby boats. But I felt lazy, peaceful, as though I’d just collapsed into my bed
after arriving home from a long trip.

“It must’ve been difficult to lose your sight,” Mason said. There was something about the way his words slid out of his mouth, not with pity but with understanding. The sort of
understanding you only get from people who have suffered in life.

I didn’t bother trying to lighten up the moment. “Yeah, it’s been tough,” I said. “I’ve had to change an awful lot of things about my life that I never
thought I’d have to change.”

He sat up, leaned toward me, and, suddenly looking rather boyish, said, “Are your other senses, like, supersharp now?”

I swallowed.

Jesus.

I should have told him that blindness doesn’t sharpen your other senses as much as it makes you use them more, and I should have told him that my hearing was still a little sketchy
compared to my sense of smell, and I should have told him that I was still lousy at telling the time of day from the way the sun felt on my skin, and I should have told him thousands upon thousands
of things. But there were only a few inches between us right now, and I seemed to have lost my ability to pull a sentence from wherever sentences come from.

Realizing that I was sitting there with what I assumed was an extremely enchanting look of idiocy on my face, I finally snorted and choked out, “It doesn’t exactly work like that. I
just pay more attention to my other senses now.”

Our eyes met for a moment and then twitched away. Needing something to do with my hands, I adjusted the mirror on my lap. And that was when I saw myself for the first time in seven months. Sure,
I’d seen my passing reflection here and there since meeting Ben. But I’d never taken the time to actually look at myself. Not like this. I barely recognized the girl blinking back at
me. My hair was darker and longer than it had been the last time I’d seen it. It fell in shiny ringlets. My nose was dusted with tiny freckles. Had I always had freckles? I wasn’t sure.
I was struck by how much I resembled Teddy’s little sister, Samantha. She was just a young me—stubborn and obnoxious and fiery. But what shocked me most were my eyes. There was a
realness there that I’d never seen before, something honest and naked. Unnerved, I placed the mirror beside me.

After a space of several breaths, Mason gestured to the mirror and said, “I understand why you love the sky so much. There’s something about it that gives me the impression that
there’s more out there. Stuff I can’t see. Stuff I can’t understand. It’s as though the universe has a huge secret, and if I look at the sky long enough, I’ll figure
it out.” He turned to me. “Have you ever gone skydiving?”

“Skydiving?” I repeated blankly. He was sitting so close to me that I could practically fold into his scent.

Mason laughed. “Yeah, you know,” he said, “jumping out of a plane and free-falling at a hundred and twenty miles per hour?”

Suddenly I remembered the skydiving pamphlets I’d seen in his room. At the time, they hadn’t fit the image of Mason I’d formed in my mind. But now I could see how he’d
appreciate the absolute freedom the sky offered, if only for a minute or two. “No. Never,” I said, finally answering his question. Back when I could see, I probably would have pounced
on the chance to skydive. But now? It felt unnatural to even consider it.

“You’d love it,” he said. “People who really love the sky? They love to skydive.”

“What does it feel like?” I asked.

His face lit up. “Like nothing else. At first, your stomach completely leaves you. Then you hit terminal velocity and you’re weightless. There’s this tremendous wind hitting
you in the face and you’re just...there, you know? For forty-five seconds or so, you are nothing, but you are everything.”

“Wow. That sounds...”

“Perfect,” he supplied. His eyes slid down my face, clear to my lips. Suddenly I got the impression that he wasn’t talking about skydiving anymore.

We looked at each other for longer than the acceptable amount of time, and then I jammed my toes into the sand and blurted, “Were you scared? The first time you jumped out of a
plane?”

He blinked. Cleared his throat. “No. I did it for Dad,” he said. When he saw the question mark in my expression, he went on. “Dad always wanted to go skydiving, but he died
before he had the chance.”

I felt as though I should say something to him like
I’m sorry for your loss
or
My condolences
or something, but those responses seemed cheesy and canned. After a
substantial pause, I said quietly, “It must’ve been really difficult.”

“Yeah. It sucked,” Mason said, his voice wavering a little. “The worst thing? Watching my mom go through losing him. It sort of made me crazy, you know? I knew she was hurting,
but there was nothing I could do. Nothing. And Ben...” His words trailed away and he shook his head. The pain in his expression was so intense that I felt as though I should turn away. But I
couldn’t. So I just nodded.

Mason fidgeted for a moment, glanced at his watch, and then gave Ben a little poke. “We should probably start heading home, buddy.”

Ben’s eyes opened to slits. “Yup. Home,” he repeated, his voice gummy from sleep.

Mason helped Ben to his feet. He was right in the middle of saying, “Ben? Why don’t I just carry you—” when a terrible cracking sound punctured the morning. Ben’s
eyes slowly, horrifically, rolled back into his skull. And he collapsed face-first into the sand.