Chapter 3
I fold my binder closed and let out a sigh. The first day of school is supposed to be easy. For most of my life, it’s been easy. But not junior year, apparently. All of my teachers passed out this stupid “About Me” worksheet that they want us to fill out and return tomorrow.
There’s seven classes a day, and like twenty five students per class. I really doubt these teachers are reading every single worksheet about all their students. There’s just no way. And even if they did, it’s not like they’d remember everything. They give us this crap to torture us.
But now I’m finally done writing about my favorite food and color and other pointless things that will never matter in the classroom. Livi has been texting me nonstop ever since she got named on Instagram as one of the girls with the best hair. It’s so unbelievably stupid, but a couple years ago, these girls started rating people online, trying to make it into a thing. I guess now itisa thing. I’ve never been chosen for anything, which is fine by me. I’d rather not have the attention of everyone, either online or in person.
I grab my phone and reply to Livi’s text about if she should spend the money to get a blowout at the salon this weekend.
I tell her no, because her hair looks gorgeous naturally.
She writes back:um, excuse you. This isn’t natural…I work really hard on it!
I send her the eye rolling emoji.
“Clarissa!” my mom’s voice rings out.
I poke my head outside of my bedroom door. “What’s up?”
“Can you give me a hand?” She holds out two large bags from Home Depot. Inside are two dozen lights that plug into wall outlets. They’re motion sensors, according to the packaging.
“What is this?” I ask.
“Motion lights,” she whispers back. Whispering is what she does when she doesn’t want Grandpa to overhear. Now, it makes sense. He’s finding it harder and harder to move around the house now, even though he has the layout memorized.
“I’ll take this side of the house,” I say, ripping open the packages.
Together, we go through, placing a motion light in the outlets all around the house. Grandpa is sleeping on the recliner in the living room, so I tip toe around him and plug in some more lights.
By the time we’re done, we turn off all the lights in the house and then test it out. Like magic, as you walk down the hall, the lights turn on and light your path.
“This is pretty cool,” I say.
“I don’t know how long it’ll help,” Mom says, a frown wrinkling her lips. “But it’s something.”
We’ve barely talked about what we’ll do when Grandpa loses all of his sight. We don’t want him to go in a nursing home, mostly because it’s sad, and also because we know he would hate that. But it’s also scary thinking of leaving him here by himself while we’re at work and school. Sometimes at night, I’ll close my eyes and try to walk the house by memory. I’m much younger and more agile than Grandpa, and yet I still crash into things when I can’t see.
Mom thinks he’ll be fine if he uses a cane and just stays in the living room while we’re not home.
I worry that won’t be enough. I’d hate to come home one day and discover that he’d fallen and hurt himself.
After testing out the lights, I find Grandpa in the living room and I get him to hold my hand while I walk him around the house. He says he can see the lights, and they kind of help.
“Clarissa,” he says after our third trip around the house. “I think I’m ready for bed. Can you take me to my toothbrush?”
I walk him into his room, which is the master bedroom. Mom gave it to him when he started losing his sight, saying it’d be better for him to have a big room with its own bathroom.
Before I leave, Grandpa squeezes my hand. “Clarissa, I am so proud of you,” he says. I don’t know how much he can actually see of me, but his eyes look into mine with a grandfatherly sort of admiration. “Those kids are going to love that greenhouse.”
“Well, it’s not ready yet,” I say as dread weighs me down, making me sigh. “We still have to actually plant the flowers, and I have no idea how to keep something alive.”
Mrs. Bradley was excited about the greenhouse when I pitched the idea to her, but she also said I’d get to be in charge of the whole thing. She said she doesn’t have a green thumb, and well, I have no idea if I have one. I’ve never tried to grow anything. The first time I was given a bouquet of flowers, it died after a couple of days because I didn’t realize it came with flower food you had to mix into the water.
“You’ll do fine,” Grandpa says. “Get a pack of seeds, plant them, and water once a day. That greenhouse will be flourishing before you know it.”
I grin, and then put his hand on the bathroom door frame so he can feel his way around. “Goodnight, Grandpa.”
I know I won’t be able to fall asleep easily tonight, so I just lay in bed and stare at the blank TV screen in the corner of my room. I spend half an hour flipping through Netflix but nothing sounds good to watch. I can’t really describe the feeling in my chest. It’s something like a cross between dread and anxiety, and I don’t even know why.
