Blind (26 page)

“For what?” Sarah asked, fake confused.

“For saying that you never believed in anything good about anyone. And that you were self-involved or whatever.” Hearing it again didn’t make it better, and I could feel her bristle.

“I accept your apology,” she said.

Then I waited for her to apologize, too, for being such a bad sister that I’d felt compelled to say that to her in the first place. For calling Spark “that dog,” and never letting him into her and Leah’s room, which was hardly a spotless place of worship. I walked in, pushing past her, and sat on Leah’s bed.

Instead of apologizing, Sarah asked, “Why didn’t you invite me to your big parties?”

“What? They weren’t parties,” I said. “I mean, you saw—it was, like, a bunch of us trying to . . . and anyway it didn’t work. But it wasn’t like we were—”

“Whatever, Emma,” she said. She went over to her desk.

“I made these,” she said, handing me a fat envelope. “You can have them.”

I felt the cream color before opening the thing up and sliding out a bunch of smooth, loose pages.

“They’re printed on regular printer paper,” she said, “but they’re pictures of your thing from before you burned it. And two of the fire.”

“You took pictures of . . . Did Benji tell you?”

“Come on, Emma. You think Benji went out in his pajamas with a bucket of water alone?”

I thought about this. “You were there?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you say something?”

Her voice was quiet, maybe unfriendly, or maybe just hesitant. “I knew you would take it the wrong way if I—” I didn’t say anything. Sarah’s voice rose to a slightly more cheerful register. “Whatever. I just thought you’d prefer Benji. I didn’t want you to think I was trying to, like, criticize you or control what you wanted to do. So I sent him.”

“But you took pictures of my . . . ?” I was too embarrassed to call it “memoir sculpture,” or anything else at all, and my words seized up. But the truth is, I missed that stupid lump of clay with the chopstick white cane and the half-dog. Not to mention my L&E rule book. Now I’d never see any of it again. I shouldn’t have burned it.

Sarah said, “Show these pictures to Fincter to prove you did the work,” she said. “You don’t want to fail art. Take it from me.”

“Did you fail—” This seemed like the wrong question, so I started again. “But you took these before. I mean, why did you take pictures of that stupid, hideous lump of clay in the first place?”

Now her words were pinched flat and ashy. “It wasn’t stupid. It was good, especially the white cane and the wire eyes and everything. Mom loved it, of course.”

I didn’t know my mom had ever seen it. I hadn’t shown it to her.

“Did she ask you to take pictures of it?”

“No,” Sarah said in gray, annoyed way. “I was going to use them because I was writing about what happened, but I didn’t. Because like you said, I’m no Leah or you.”

“What were you writing?”

“Nothing,” she said, and I heard her stand up. “I didn’t do it and it doesn’t matter.”

Her college essay. She had been writing her college essay about my accident and she hadn’t been able to finish.

“Why didn’t you ask me to help?”

She didn’t answer, but I knew why. Because she’d been afraid I would be possessive about my story, or think less of her for being too stupid to write her essay herself. Both were possible.

“Maybe I could help now?”

Her teeth scraped against each other, and two opposing parts of my mind clamped shut on a thought like teeth on teeth: How much had my older sisters suffered? How scared or traumatized were they? I know this sounds crazy, but it wasn’t until I heard Sarah’s teeth make the sound that I really thought of it. My accident had seemed like mine alone, or mine and my mom and dad’s or something. But how terrible for me has Claire’s death been? And I’m as far away from her as anyone else who knew her from childhood or school or whatever small intersections there were between our lives. So isn’t it possible that my accident might have been life-wrecking for Sarah in more ways than just costing her our parents’ attention?

“Yeah, no thanks, Emma,” she said. “I have to write my college essay myself, you know.” In her voice was the same hiss of self-hatred I’d heard in Logan’s. I thought of the snake tattoo I would never see, moving up Sarah’s leg, hidden by socks.

“I don’t know about having to do it yourself,” I said truthfully. “I think most people have to ask for help in whatever areas they need it in. I obviously have a lot of those areas. And I get a lot of help.”

I slid the pictures back into the envelope. “I wish I could see these,” I said. “Thank you for taking them. Sometimes I wish so much I could open my eyes. I just . . . even just once, so I could, you know, take one last look at . . . well, at everything. Or stay friends with my friends. Or do any of the things that I should be doing. Like grow up, for instance. But I can’t. I can’t do anything right anymore.”

She didn’t argue with me, or offer stupid advice. She just said, “I’m really sorry.” And, “I can’t imagine.”

I shrugged. “Maybe you can.”

It stayed the hottest
spring in the history of the world, and the funny thing is, I felt relieved: not that we’re destroying the earth, but that summer was almost back. I wasn’t surprised or enraged, like last year. I guess that’s progress, because I’m glad that almost a whole year has passed since Claire, almost two since my accident. It makes me feel further away from both of those things, closer to something else, something better. Maybe just summer break, cheesy musical screenings on Lake Street, lazy mornings in the house. Maybe I’ll even make it to the lake with Logan. Or Seb and Dee.

Ms. Spencer told us this week in class about the pathetic fallacy, and how easy it is to think what’s happening outside of us is related to or representative of what’s happening inside of us. Then she read us a poem in English about how stupid spring is anyway, maybe to make us feel better about the fact that we’ll never experience it again. The poem was by Edna St. Vincent Millay, and I loved it, and I said in class that I liked it because it wasn’t cheerful or fake. Coltrane came up to me after and said he’d liked it, too. I was like, “Yeah. It’s almost good enough to forgive Spencer for making us read
The Inferno
,” and then I laughed a little too loud. He was quiet for a second, but then said, “I kind of liked that one, too, though.” And then I wandered off, feeling awkward—even though, why? I mean, shouldn’t it be okay to disagree with people some of the time? Why do I always feel like everyone has to see things the way I do?

I had a snack after school with Sarah and my mom. Leah was out with Jason again, and I’ve noticed that the more she’s out with him, the more Sarah’s around. And the more Sarah’s around without Leah, the more of an actual human being Sarah can be. She even walked home from school one day last week with me and the little kids, because Jason picked Leah up on his motorcycle, which our mom still doesn’t know about. Maybe it hasn’t been that easy for Sarah to be Leah’s terrible twin. I’d never really thought about it before.

On the first really hot Saturday, some of us met up at the cemetery. It was dusk, and the air was thick with sudden humidity, pollen, the steady hum of a cloud of gnats above us.

Zach and Josh and Logan and Blythe and Christian and Deirdre arrived, followed by a trickle of kids, including Amanda, David, Carl, and Coltrane.

“Mr. Hawes is here,” Logan said, grabbing my arm. “Weird.”

“And Mr. Aramond, Christian’s dad,” I heard Deirdre say. “Did someone tell the teachers?”

More adults were apparently gathering. Mostly teachers, from the whispering, and some parents. I didn’t know who, exactly, but my parents weren’t there. We just did what we had planned to anyway: took turns walking up to Claire’s grave and leaving whatever objects we’d brought. Logan whispered in my ear: now Blythe was unscrewing her nose ring and setting it down; Carl Muscan left a police badge his uncle had given him. Zach put a book down, and when Logan told me that, I didn’t ask what book it was, or even whether she knew.

“I’m going now, Em,” she said. “Do you want to come?”

“No thanks,” I said.

She let go of my hand and walked away from me, toward the grave. A little time passed, during which no one told me anything about what was happening. Then Logan came back and she picked up my hand. I felt bad for not walking up with her.

“What did you leave?” I whispered.

“My chemistry set,” she said, the one her dad had given her when we were little, when he and her mom were married; the one we’d made borax snowflakes with.

When it was my turn to go up, I asked Logan to come with me, and she said sure. She told me when we arrived at Claire’s grave, and I bent to touch the stone, letting go of Lo’s hand and passing Spark’s leash to her. Then I gently set down Mr. Hawes’s pen. I whispered my quiet thank-you—to Benj, because who but Benj would have thought to leave his most beloved possession for a dead friend? And then I said, silently, “I’m sorry,” to Claire.

Then Logan held on to me on the way back to the crowd of quiet kids. She touched my arm with the hand she wasn’t using to hold mine. “Why a pen?” she whispered. And I could hear that she was hurt even before she found out why it was that she wouldn’t know about an object I loved enough to have considered using it for this.

“Because Mr. Hawes gave it to me,” I said. “It was his in high school.” I heard her take this in. “I’m sorry I lied about it.”

She was quiet. Obviously her giant lies trumped my tiny ones, but she still minded. In a way, I was glad. Not to have lied to her, but that she still cared about our sad, lost pact, too. Eventually, while other kids filed up with their treasures, she said, “It’s okay. About Mr. Hawes giving you a present. I get why you didn’t want to tell me that.”

When everyone was done, Blythe went back up to the front and stood at Claire’s grave. “Hey, everyone,” she said. There was a buzz of hellos.

“So we’re all here,” she said shyly. Then she paused for a long moment, as if deciding something, and added awkwardly, “This is a vigil for Claire, who, um, as you know, committed suicide last June. We were all her friends, and so we’ve been talking about how to remember her life? So, she was my . . .” I could hear people crying, but I couldn’t tell who. I didn’t feel like I was going to cry, just felt really quiet and calm in a way I don’t think I’ve ever felt before. “She was my best friend, since we were kids, and my girlfriend, so . . . Anyway, we’ve left some things here today for her, and, um, if anyone else wants to leave something or say something, anyone who wants to can.”

Dima said, from behind us, “I do,” and she moved toward the grave while we waited. “So no one’s really said this out loud in the news or whatever, but we all know Claire was, you know, a wild one,” she said, and there was laughter, soft, in-joke laughter, like we all knew her and it’s okay, now that Blythe talked, to say she was wild. Dima’s voice blended with the air coming off the lake, slowly moving through the leaves and branches around the cemetery. Dima sounded nervous, unlike herself, and I wondered for a moment what her throat looked like, her jaw, her cheekbones. I had never seen her, and I wanted to. Dima was saying, “. . . pure fun, too. I guess we all know she was kind of crazy. In a good way, I mean. And I think she would want us to keep telling her story.”

Some people clapped awkwardly, but that seemed wrong, and then Dima walked back into the crowd.

Josh was standing behind us, and Logan whispered to him, “Hey, Josh, what’d you leave for Claire?”

“Nothing,” he said. “I mean, something, of course, but . . . well, forget it.”

I perked up, interested that he could be embarrassed. Spark barked for some reason. I reached down and petted him.

“No, come on, what was it?” Logan asked.

“Just an old note,” he said.

I smiled. “I save those, too,” I said, but he didn’t say anything else, and I turned my attention back to the ceremony. Logan let go of my hand, walked back up to the grave, and said that Claire and Blythe had taught her to be braver.

When she came back, she told me Amanda Boughman was walking up.

She started with, “I was always jealous of Claire,” but I didn’t hear whatever she said next, because I felt a hand on my shoulder and I turned. It was a boy’s hand. “Emma,” someone said, and I flinched. Christian Aramond.

“Um,” he said. “So, I, uh . . .”

“Yeah?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Why are you sorry, Christian?” I asked, trying to sound more patient than I felt, as always with him.

“I wanted to apologize for something I did.”

“Okay.”

“But I only did the thing because I wanted to fix it, not because I wanted to, you know, hurt anyone or . . . I know that sounds . . .”

In honor of the occasion, I tried especially hard to mask my annoyance. “What, Christian?” I asked, failing.

“So, um, my skateboard? I just . . .”

My voice dropped with my stomach, as if they’d been holding hands. “That was you?”

“You’re a fucking asshole, Christian,” Logan hissed.

He sounded like he was crying. “I didn’t want to—I just wanted to move it out of the way after, so you would know, you know, that it was there, and that I took it away, but then Logan—” Had he been trying to wound me? Or save me? Maybe this is weird, but I felt distinctly like I didn’t care.

“Fuck you, Christian,” Logan said. “How dare—”

“No, it’s okay,” I said. “Forget it, Lo—let’s drop it. Just . . . why did you even bother telling me?” I don’t know what I expected. That he’d been moved by our Mayburg meetings, or by Claire’s vigil?

“Mr. Hawes told me I had to . . . but Emma, it’s—”

“Forget it. Please.” I didn’t want to talk to him, or hear anything else about it. Ever again.

I turned to Logan. “Did you do something for your birthday?” I asked, as afraid of her answer as I had been about anything.

“No, I . . . I didn’t, because I—” she said, and her voice was broken into a lot of just-stepped-on pieces.

“Because you . . . ?” I asked, and even though I tried to sound worried and sad for her, the words were shimmering with relief and joy.

“I was waiting until we’re friends again,” she said.

“Shhh,” someone said from behind us. We shut up and I tried to listen. UFO-spotter Jason Kane was up at Claire’s grave, speaking now, and I felt bad that we’d talked over him, which probably seemed intentional and mean, especially given that he was saying, “. . . and Claire didn’t laugh. So, uh, I just wanted to say that. And neither did Blythe Keene. Okay. That’s all.” There was a silent pause and then some slow rustling, so I assume he walked back to wherever he’d come from. Logan put her hand in mine again.

Right as I started wondering why the quiet was lasting too long, a man said, “Hello, kids,” and I knew. The quiet changed then, became thousands of feet deep, went blue and almost solid. It was so silent that I wanted to put my hands over my ears. I felt the air moving behind the man, through the trees that lined the side of the cemetery facing the street. I thought I could hear, almost see, the grass against his shoes, parting and flattening where he stood. I imagined his shoes were black and polished, and thought of Sebastian, unloading flowers at his graveyard job last summer. I thought of Claire, underneath where we were standing, dead; how the word
underneath
doesn’t come close to the literal thing.

“I just wanted to stop by and say hello,” the man said. “Mrs. Montgomery couldn’t make it, but, well, we both wanted to say we hope you kids have a good summer, okay? Be safe.”

“Thank you, Mr. M.,” Amanda Boughman said. I wondered what Blythe was doing, whether she was looking at Claire’s dad, or holding hands with Dima, or looking down at the ground. Then Amanda asked, “Um, Mr. M.? Is it okay if we keep on with our vigil?”

I didn’t hear anything; maybe he nodded, or maybe he shook his head. Either way, people were too shy to keep talking about Claire in front of her father, so then Josh said a little too loud, “Well, maybe now is a good time—for our quick dip in Claire’s honor.”

Then I heard Josh grin, I swear. And I remembered suddenly that I’d seen his dimples when we were kids, and that they were uneven—the right one up by his cheek, the left lower. “Ready?” he asked us. We headed toward the woods. I checked the band on my sunglasses and held on to Logan as we walked, a group of us, back into the woods until we were at Point Park Beach. We shed our clothes and I decided not to think about the fact that I couldn’t see anyone; figured Logan would tell me later who swam in what. She and I had bathing suits on under our shorts and T-shirts. We stood for a short beat, facing the darkening lake: Logan, Amanda, Blythe, Zach, Josh, Carl, Coltrane, Deirdre, and a bunch of other kids, although I didn’t know exactly who. It smelled like water moving, grass and flowers in a riot of sunshine and spring, the world ramping up for another round of living and dying. I could hear people shouting, but not their words. I thought of Claire’s dad’s voice, his
hello
, his
kids
, his
be safe
, the sound of wishing so desperate and blindingly bright in each word that my eyes hurt.

I thought about
be safe
as we all felt for each other’s hands—if I’m being totally honest, I was hoping to be next to Coltrane, so I could hold his hand, but I was disoriented and ended up between Josh and Logan. I held tight. Then we ran, our feet crunching twigs and leaves until the ground turned to sand. I held my breath, trusting Josh and Logan to keep hold of my hands. When our feet hit the water we let go. We were laughing, splashing, running shallow until the lake deepened and slowed us down, swept us up. The water came to meet me, and I braced for a moment before I dove under, to the quiet, dark blue. I held my breath, pushed my arms forward and my legs back, stretched and moved and sliced through the water so smoothly and powerfully that it gave me a surge of courage. When I came up for a breath, breaking through the cool surface into the air, I said Claire’s name out loud. And then I listened to the other voices nearby, like lightning bugs in the dark, little flashes of remembering. And I turned and swam, supported by the water and my own breath, back toward my friends.

• • •

It’s staying light later, and last week we went to the Mayburg place even though there was no reason except that as usual, we have nowhere else to hang out. At least nowhere that our parents aren’t hovering above us. A bunch of us stayed at the Mayburg place through dinner; we decided to order pizza and have it delivered to the closest highway exit. Then we were eating pizza and it was dark out and our being there morphed from whatever we’d been calling it—a meeting, I guess—into a straight party. It was like a shift in the color of the night, and as soon as it happened, I wanted to go home.

I was standing in the doorway, wondering how I’d get home alone—I knew Logan wouldn’t want to leave and I didn’t even want to ask her. I was also worrying about whether I’ll always hate parties, when an orange voice asked, “Can I get you a drink?”

Josh Winterberg. I said, “Sure, of course, yeah, thanks,” embarrassed that I had been standing there like a terrified animal about to get plowed down in the road. Not to mention, why had I felt the need to use so many words when I could have just said “yes, please” like a normal human being? But he didn’t seem to notice, just handed me a cool, plastic cup of something, which he must have already been holding. It smelled pink, like lemonade, icy, sparkling. It smelled like summer. I took a cold sip—it was some kind of Kool-Aid or juice, and I thanked him again and then he said, “So, uh, do you want to go outside for a minute?”