“It was all the things,” I say unhelpfully.
There’s no school on Monday because it’s a professional development day for the teachers, so I sleep for fourteen hours. When I finally wake up, I stay under the blankets for most ofthe afternoon, as I still can’t read or study or even look at a screen with my eyes so wonky, and the idea of hanging out or talking to anyone just makes me think about Richard. My surroundings are in a haze, sort of like they’re all melted together, and I’ve got a mishmash of thoughts to match. I go down a music rabbit hole after listening to thePitch Perfectsoundtrack, searching for all the weird a cappella covers I can find, which somehow leads me to listening to some super sultry Argentinian tango music. Who knew the accordion could tap into my soul?
My mom has decided I’m sick, probably as much to soothe herself as to take care of me. She doesn’t know what to do with brooding, but she knows what to do with sick. She brings me Tylenol and feels my forehead. Sometimes I pretend to be napping when she comes in, and then she dims the lights and turns the music down. At one point, Asha must have called or stopped by, because I find a Post-it on my nightstand in my mom’s perfect printing that says,Call Asha.
The person I want to talk to is Mason. He saw me on that mountain—he’s the only one who could understand. But this isn’t a movie; I don’t have a magical phone that accesses the afterlife, and I don’t know how to reach him. Wanting him in no way leads to getting him. So I call Asha.
She picks up on the first ring, like she’s been waiting for me.
“There you are! Hatts, you gotta tell me next time you’re going to be gone all weekend. I mean, for Christ’s sake, I thought you—” She stops suddenly, and I know she was about to saydiedbefore she caught herself. “I thought you’d run away,” shefinishes. Hearing my friend who always says the right thing get caught in a moment of mortal doubt makes my insides feel hollowed out.
“I called you, you didn’t answer,” I say, almost too weary to get the words out.
“So you leave a message. You text. You know how phones work, right?”
I envision the text I could have sent:New boy was too thirsty—let me down just like the ghost said he would. Also, now half blind.Um, no.
“Anyway,” she plows ahead, “so I hear you’re skiing now? We should get a whole Beaver Bunch ski trip together. Oooh, that would be so fun! Jeff can teach Lucia, you can teach me, and Nolan can— Well, you know Nolan. He’ll probably go snowmobiling or something. Maybe over winter break!”
“I can’t,” I say.
“Hattie, you’re not going to be one of those girls who gets a boyfriend and then disappears, are you?”
“I told you, he was never my boyf—” I start, and then stop before I start to cry about how freaking sad that is. Just answer the question. “No, definitely not.”
“Okay, good. So why no ski trip?”
“It did not go well.”
“Hatts, it was your first time! You just need practice, and—”
“No.” I say it too loud. I clear my throat. “No, I mean it was really bad. I’m not cut out for it. I just can’t.”
“All right, I hear you. Hard pass on skiing. But I’ve gotanother invite for you and I won’t take no for an answer. Beaver Bunch hangout at my house on Thursday. My whole family will be out, so we can do whatever we want.”
“I’m in. But, Ash, I’ve got to go.” Normally, I love that Asha is a planner because without her and Lucia, the Beaver Bunch would probably never do anything but sit around the lunch table, but today it feels like pressure. Pressure to be normal. No, better than normal. Pressure to be together, sharp, fun. Pressure to be like Asha. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”
There’s a beat. Then she says, “Bye, Sweets.”
“Bye.”
Fortunately, everything changes when I open my eyes Tuesday morning. I almost yell, “Let’s go!” but that would be very loud at six thirty a.m. Instead, I wriggle around in my sheets, letting the relief flow into my arms and legs. The weird film over the world has evaporated, and I can see the way I’m used to again. Not perfectly, not even that well, I guess, but regular for me. No random fireworks and fuzzy raindrops, no halos and haze. Just my white metal daybed, my lilac walls that Mom and I painted when I was in third grade, and my flowered curtains that let in most of the gray light of an early winter morning.
I feel like I’ve been in a cocoon since I got home. During that time, I thought I was grieving about Richard, but considering how much better I feel now, I guess I was mostly scared about not being able to see. And it’s better!
For the first time, I let myself think about my diagnosis in a way that isn’t all doom wrapped up with a pessimistic bow. SoI can’t see perfectly. So I’ll need some extra accommodations along the way. But I can see most things right now, the important things, like faces and nature and really good streaming shows. And maybe I’ll hold on to that vision even longer than my dad held on to his. Maybe by the time I start to not be able to get around or read, there will be a cure. Maybe I’ll volunteer for a clinical trial and I’ll help in that cure’s discovery! Okay, so it’s unlikely I’m going to be freaking Marie Curie, but there’s a shift. The cocoon of fear is broken and I am emerging a butterfly. No, nothing that beautiful. More like a moth, plain and dusty but still able to fly.
When Mr. Pinski calls me to his office after third period, I’m not super freaked out the way I would be with any other administrator. Mr. Pinski has only been our principal for a year and a half, but I liked him from the first day.
Before Mr. Pinski, I always felt nervous around someone in his position, like they were a big spider in the garage and I didn’t know enough about arachnids to tell if they were poisonous or not. But Mr. Pinski is known to call kids in for “State of the Union” visits, meaning he’s going to ask you a gabillion questions that may or may not reveal if you’re being bullied or whatever. I figure it’s going to be that. When my mother interrogates me, I want to claw my own skin off, like I need to exfoliate her presence. But that’s because she’s got an emotion or a judgment about every single word that comes out of my mouth. Mr. Pinski usually nods, says, “Tell me more” or, if something is even remotely good, he says, “Outstanding.” He doesn’t even raise his eyebrows. Very nonthreatening.
I breeze into the office, still celebrating how easy it is to navigate around furniture and through doorways when it doesn’t feel like my vision needs to go through the car wash. The office clerk, Ms. Wendy, doesn’t look up from the red accordion folder she’s flipping through when I appear, just says, “Go on in.” The door is ajar, so I pad silently to his desk. I bypass the armchairand perch on the roly-poly stool, enjoying the little game of Don’t Fall on Your Ass that it requires. I think it was bought for kids with attention issues, but it seems like the stuff they make for ADHD is actually awesome for everyone. That’s why half the girls I know still have fidget key chains hanging on their bags.
Mr. Pinski is looking down at his phone, which gives me a full-frontal view of his baldness. Not his best look. When he presses send on whatever he’s typing and raises his attention to me, my intestines start to pretzel. He’s looking graver than I’ve ever seen him. What the fuck?
“Hattie, thanks for coming. I’m having something of a dilemma.”
“Sure, of course,” I fail to say comfortably or naturally. “What’s up?”
