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“I love this place,” I say.
Anthony’s hand moves over my shoulder. “Then I’m glad I got it.”
My heart feels full of love for more than just his house, but I don’t say it. Not yet. The knowledge settles like warm honey in my stomach.
I rest my head against his shoulder and look up. The moon is a barely-there slice in the sky, surrounded by friends, their faraway light shining down on us in tiny pinpricks.
“Do you know any constellations?” I ask. “I’ve never been able to pick out anything apart from the Little and Big Dipper.”
Anthony doesn’t answer right away. When he does, his voice is thoughtful. “I can’t remember the last time I saw the stars.”
“You mean…”
“Yes,” he says. “One night, the stars went out for me, and they’ll never return. The night sky has gone dark.”
I’m glad for the darkness now, hiding the emotion on my face. My heart feels like it’s breaking for him.
“I’m thankful I saw you, at any rate,” he murmurs. “Before it all goes black.”
My eyes overfill. I don’t know how he knows, but he does, his free hand smoothing the tears away from my cheeks. “Don’t cry, Summer,” he whispers. “Not for me.”
I do anyway. “How can you bear it? How do you keep from despairing?”
He kisses my temple and pulls me close. “I don’t,” he says, the sound like a confession against my hair. “You just haven’t seen it yet.”
23
Anthony
I reach for the glass of scotch on my coffee table and nearly knock it over. The slippery thing has moved since I put it down last. It’s safer to keep it clutched tight in hand.
It burns going down my throat as I drain it.
It’s been a while since I last sat here, in this chair, in my own living room, downing booze. Racking my brain through the splitting headache is hard, but not impossible.
It was a few weeks before I met Summer.
Not terribly surprising, that. She’d been bright enough to drown out the darkness. Concentrating on anything else, including my own misery, was difficult with her around.
But she’s not around now. No elephant lamp in the corner of her apartment, no thick oriental rugs or the chamomile tea she makes.
Tea. I’d bought that for myself.
I look toward the kitchen, but making it feels like too much effort. It would help me sleep, but so will the scotch, and it’s closer at hand.
Perhaps it’ll also help me forget.
Accelerating. That was Dr. Johnson’s word this morning. Accelerating. I prefer it when it’s used in relation to fast cars and not mentioned in the same sentence as retinitis pigmentosa, vision degradation, blindness.
It’s like I’m in a fight, and I’m swinging, but my arms are getting tired. And I’m losing. And I know I’m losing, know failure is the only outcome, but I can’t for the life of me give up the fight.
Not yet.
I pour myself two more knuckles’ worth of scotch and lean back in the chair. Close my eyes. Blackness behind my lids. Will I see that, then, one day?
The doctor doesn’t know. There’s a ton he doesn’t know, as it so happens. Not how quickly I’ll lose my eyesight. Not how much of it I’ll lose. If I’ll retain the ability to differentiate between light or darkness. If I’ll maintain tunnel vision. Or if I’ll be blind as a bat before the year is out.
But he does know that it’s accelerating, oh yes. He was very sure of that.You’ve noticed the deterioration in your night vision?
