Love and First Sight(4)

I hear quick footsteps as someone walks in late.

“Do you have a note for being tardy, Xander?”

“No.”

I recognize the sound of his voice from the morning announcements that played on the television in English during first period.

“Then don’t let it happen again.” She continues to the class, “As I was saying. In my English classes, you all are always asking me how diagramming sentences will help you in the real world. Well, I’ll let you in on a little secret: It probably won’t. But everything we do in this class is real world. We’re running a real business funded by the real money from the ads we sell. Our end product is a real print publication. Plus, as the school’s most esteemed group of student journalists from each grade, some of you will play a role in producing the morning announcements show at the start of every day. You can even audition to be one of the hosts if you want to try to end the three-year streak of our tardy friend Xander and his cohost, Victoria.”

I hear her get up from her desk and step in front of it.

“This is your staff handbook and our publishing schedule for the year. Take one and pass it on.”

Something heavy thuds onto a desk several arm lengths in front of me. Sheets slide off, and I hear another thud, this time a little closer, on the desk in front of me. Paper is removed, and the pile hits my desk. It’s not like I can do much with a printed handbook, but I don’t want to stand out for not taking one, so I tug at the top sheet, and it pulls with it a stapled packet about ten pages thick. I pick up the remainder of the stack, which is big and heavy enough to require both hands, rotate in my seat, and drop it on the desk behind mine.

Only, there’s no thud. I suppose if you calculated the acceleration due to gravity, you’d find that the time the stack traveled to reach the floor was inconsequentially longer than it would have had to travel to reach a desk, but in that millisecond, I live a thousand lives and die a thousand social deaths. The thump when the pages finally hit the ground—since apparently I am at the end of a row—is followed by the racket of pages bouncing and sliding off the pile.

The class erupts in laughter. After all, they don’t yet know that I can’t see. If they did, they probably wouldn’t find it funny.

“Calm down, everyone, all right, that’s enough,” says Mrs. Everbrook. She’s coming toward me, and she squats to rake up the pages. “That could happen to anyone on his first day at a new school. This is Will. He’s… well… as you can tell, he’s… a transfer student. So be nice to him.”

She sets a soft hand on my shoulder as she walks by and returns to her drill sergeant voice.

“Now, some of you”—she pauses and repeats herself, projecting to various sections of the room—“some of you took this class because you thought it sounded easy… or maybe even fun. Well, it’s only fun if you like hard work, because it certainly ain’t easy. And yes, I know ain’t isn’t proper grammar, but we ain’t in English class anymore. This here’s journalism. So if you’re looking for an easy A, go to your guidance counselor today and switch to one of those ‘fun’ electives”—she makes fun sound downright offensive—“like finger painting or basket weaving or yearbook or whatever they are offering these days.”

There are some snickers, but they are interrupted by a shriek from directly across the room.

“Stop staring!” shouts a female voice.

I hear a chair push back with a screech before someone runs by me and out into the hall, crying.

“All right, boys and girls, I guess I should have told you this earlier, but I was trying to respect Will’s privacy. Seems I made a mistake. Anyway, Will, our new transfer student, is blind.”

There are several loud gasps. It’s a stronger reaction than I’m used to.

“Don’t worry, people, it’s not contagious,” I say.

But no one laughs.

“All righty, then, big first day,” says Mrs. Everbrook. “I guess this is as good a time as any to let you all know that Victoria is going to be our editor in chief this year. Her duties will include, among other things, chasing down crying staff members. Victoria, would you please see to it that Cecily is all right?”

“No problem,” says a voice I assume belongs to Victoria. She marches efficiently out of the room.

Mrs. Everbrook approaches my desk and says quietly, “Will, you were staring at Cecily.”

“I thought we just established—”

“Yes, I know that, but she didn’t. So she thought you were staring.”

“And that made her cry?” I ask.

“I’m sure you’ve heard before that some people are sensitive about being stared at,” says Mrs. Everbrook. “Cecily is… she’s just one of those people. Do you understand?”

“I guess.”

But I don’t, not really. I feel my face getting hot, and I wonder if the other students can see the temperature change on my skin. Are they all staring at me right now?

Mom hates it when people stare at me. Especially when I was little, before the Incident and thus before I went to the school for the blind. She would take me grocery shopping or whatever, and I’d be walking down the aisle with my little tiny white cane in one hand, the other holding her by the wrist—she always insisted I grip her like that instead of holding hands so that I would grow up comfortable with being guided—and some other kid would look at me funny, and Mom would go all Mama Bear, roaring, “If you stare, you’ll go blind, too!” And the kid would run off crying.