Not If I See You First(42)

“Parker, is something wrong?”

Something’s definitely up. She isn’t using her normal questioning voice. She sounds suspicious, or guilty, I don’t know, like she knows I’m upset but doesn’t want to acknowledge it.

“No,” I say, impressed that I sound normal. “I’m just thinking about you and Rick.”

“It’s fine, really.” She sounds relieved. “Tell me about your date with Jason.”

“Actually, I was in the middle of something with Petey. I just wanted to make sure you were okay. I’ll tell you about it later.”

“Oh, okay. But it went fine? You’re going to see him again?”

“I think so.”

“Okay, well… talk to you later?”

“Yep.”

Silence.

“Are you sure nothing’s wrong?” she asks.

“Yep, all fine, talk to you later,” I say in my easy-breezy voice despite the ice-cold ache in my chest. I hang up.

And unless I’m forgetting something trivial from when we were little kids, it’s the first time I’ve ever lied to Sarah.





SEVENTEEN


I feel like I’m falling.

I’m told I’m not much of a bobber—the rocking many people do when they can’t see. People don’t realize how much their ability to stay still and upright is not just in their inner ears but also depends on seeing the room or the horizon. Maybe it was that I could see for the first seven years of my life, or maybe it’s the way I lost my sight, but I don’t feel floaty much.

Until now. I’m disconnected from Earth. I know I went into shock when Dad died, and by the time I came out of it enough days had passed that I could more or less transition to being normal, or at least seeming normal. I think I might be in a different kind of shock now. When Dad died I lost my main rock but I had Sarah and I hung on for dear life. How much of my stability is based on people I cling to? A lot more than I thought because now that I’ve lost my last rock, I’m physically dizzy… floaty… with an unpleasant swoopy-ness. Like falling.

I can’t call Faith. I mean I could, and she’d listen, and I don’t have secrets from her, but these days there’s plenty we don’t know about each other and it would take too long to tell her.

The rest of Sunday went… Well, it was weird… At any given moment it felt like time was crawling by, like night would never come, and when it did, it felt like the day had flown by. I mostly hung out with Petey, playing games and sitting in front of the TV like a zombie. When my phone quacked around nine, I didn’t answer and then I texted Sarah that I was busy with Petey and we could talk tomorrow and she said okay, which was an unusually short answer for her given how we never miss our nightly phone calls even though I’m often playing with Petey and usually just put the game on hold.

My Monday sprints were a mess. Twice I felt the grass by the sidewalk and had to slow to adjust my direction. Then on my first sprint I lost count of my steps. I run too fast to actually count all the numbers; I just count one to nine over and over, then say ten, twenty, thirty… except I lost track of whether I had just said forty or fifty…?

I assumed fifty so I wouldn’t run into the far fence, but when I finished the leg and walked to the fence it was farther than usual so I’d probably been counting right all along and just second-guessed myself. Like they say for taking tests, stick with your first answer.

The second sprint went okay but I lost count again in the third. After that I ran instead of sprinted, counting out real numbers, but even then I felt off so I quit and went home.

At school now I’m just standing here in the hall by my locker, bobbing, stuck.

I’ve heard that lying gets easier. Not for me. The lie I told Sarah yesterday is growing and I can’t figure out how to get around it. If I go meet her at the Junior Quad like always, either I pretend nothing is wrong and try to have a normal conversation, which feels like lying on a scale beyond my ability, or I tell her what’s wrong, which seems equally impossible. Yet if I don’t go at all she’ll definitely know something’s up.

I’m being childish. Selfish. Stupid. Something, I don’t know. Whatever it’s called, I’m making a big deal out of nothing. I just have to stop.

But I can’t. It’s not nothing. I thought Sarah was my best friend, not my psychologist. Not that I was her project. Not that I was someone she could keep in her pocket because it’s hard for me to get close to people and we’ve known each other so long she has a monopoly on me and doesn’t have to share anything really intimate to keep us together. That she could just peer into my life but keep me out of hers.

None of which helps me figure out what to do now. Stand here or walk… go left or right…

“Hey Parker,” Jason calls, some distance up the hall. “What are you doing?”

“Huh? Oh… just… nothing.”

He’s next to me now.

“That’s what it looks like. You coming or going?”

“Um… I’m done in my locker, if that’s what you mean.”

“Yeah. Do you have anywhere you need to be, or do you want to go for a walk?”

“Walk? Sure. Where? The track? Is that what you usually do?”