Love and First Sight(17)

“What?”

“That I will never be in a relationship,” she says. And then she adds quickly, “If I was, you know, traveling that much.”

A few seconds later, the grilled cheese arrives. Cecily is right. It does taste better this way.

“Are you going to audition for the morning announcements show?” I ask, mouth still partially full of grilled cheese.

“On the school TVs?” she asks. “Definitely not.”

“Not your thing?”

“No. I mean, there’s a vote. You know that, right? The school elects the next semester’s hosts based on the audition.”

“So?”

“I just don’t think I could ever win a vote like that.”

“How come?”

“Weren’t there popular kids at the school for the blind?”

“Sure, there were.” In fact, I was one of them. But I don’t tell her that. “That doesn’t matter, though. I think you have… well, a really nice voice. I would vote for you.”

“Why don’t you audition?” she says.

“Me?”

“Yeah, why not?”

“I can’t read printed text. I mean, I assume they are reading scripts or something, right?”

“Oh,” she says, her voice dropping. “You’re right. They read off teleprompters that scroll the words in front of the camera.”

“So yeah, there’s that. I mean, it would be cool and all, but I just don’t think it would work.”

“But what if—what if we could find a way to make it work?”

“Like what?”

“Like, I don’t know. I could read the announcements into a little microphone that would play them into an earpiece you were wearing. Something like that?”

“No way,” I say, imagining all the ways that could go wrong. “It would never work.”

“Whitford is pretty good with tech stuff. Maybe he can figure out a way that you could read the script yourself.”

I’m not sure how this conversation got so turned around. The point was that I thought Cecily should try out. She’s the one with the beautiful voice.

“Fine,” I say. “I’ll make you a deal.”

“What?”

“I’ll try out if you will.”

“But I’m really not—”

“That’s my offer,” I say.

She hesitates for a while.

“Fine. We’ll both audition.”

“If we figure out a way to make it work for me.”

“We’ll find a way. Don’t worry. I’ll help you.”





CHAPTER 8


Dr. Bianchi, the doctor who is doing the experimental surgery, works in an office building at PU’s med school. True to our agreement, Mom drops me off at the curb after school on Thursday.

“There’s a revolving door,” she warns. “You sure you don’t want me to guide you in?”

“I’m sure.”

“How will I know you made it safely to your appointment?”

“I’ll text you when I’m there, okay?”

“If I don’t hear anything within ten minutes, I’m going to come inside and find you.”

“Fine.”

I try to walk at a normal pace from the car to the building; I don’t want Mom to see me hurrying to beat her ten-minute deadline. Once I’ve navigated the revolving door, however, I hustle across the lobby to the elevator.

Because of the way the braille numbers are staggered on the inside of two columns of buttons, it’s not entirely clear which button corresponds to the twelfth floor.

I press one, and the elevator goes up. When it stops and the doors open, I walk across the hall, only to discover that the first door I come to is 602. I’m looking for office 1239.

I quickly review my training with Mrs. Chin, hoping I can fix this problem before Mom helicopters in, no doubt with a full SWAT team in tow to rescue me.

If the braille was lined up better, I could use a basic blind ninja trick: hold my hand on the button I pressed and wait till the doors open and then start to close, then press it again to see if they reopen.

Of course, it’s possible that I pressed the wrong button in the first place. It’s also possible someone on the sixth floor pressed the Up button, but when my elevator stopped for him and he saw a blind guy standing in it, the guy froze, not wanting to infringe on my space, but also not wanting to make noise, lest I detect his presence and think him blind-phobic.

I get back on the elevator and press the Lobby button, which is helpfully embossed with a five-pointed star. From there I press every single button and count the number of times the doors open. I am painfully aware of how each wasted floor is another few seconds closer to Mom’s humiliating arrival, but it’s the only way to be sure I’m on number twelve.

I find the office, and a receptionist ushers me into an examination room. I sit and wait on a soft bench covered with crinkly paper. I check my phone. Good news: That elevator ordeal took only five minutes. Bad news: I get no service in here and can’t text Mom. So to prevent her from bursting in at some point and making me look like a child in front of my new doctor, I have to make the only slightly less childlike request of using the receptionist’s phone to call her and say I made it to the office safely.