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PROLOGUE
Ihate blind jokes...I just can’t see the point!
Just kidding. I love blind jokes. Like...how do you find a blind man in a nudist colony? It’s nothard.
Or...a blind man and his guide dog walk into a bar. The blind guy starts swinging the dog around on the leash. The bartender yells, “Sir, stop! What are you doing!?” The blind guy says, “I’m just looking around!”
I mean, I have about a billion of these. I swear I’ve heard them all. And I love every. Single. One. You want to know how to tell the difference between a sighted person and a blind person? Tell a blind joke. The blind one will laugh and the sighted one will be offended.
Humanity is kind of screwy like that.
So, yeah. I don’t mind blind jokes, or jokes of any kind. How can I not when my entire existence is a joke? If I didn’t have just a little bit of a self-deprecating twist to my humor, I don’t think I would have survived, let alone be as awesome as I am.
Hell, I’m a motherfucking psychic detective, son!
One of a kind. Completely unique. And a total badass. Seriously, I have a badge and everything. Okay, so maybe not an actual badge. I’m more of a consultant, so it’s laminated instead of awesome. But hey, same difference, right?
While I might not be able to tell the difference between my bottle of laxatives and my bottle of sleep aids–and yes, that has given me quite a few eventful nights–I canseebits of the past and present in my mind.
I was gifted withthe sightat birth. It’s passed down on my maternal side. It usually skips every other generation, so my mother–who is decidedly not so maternal–never got it, but I did. From the moment I was born, my nana took me under her wing and trained me in the ways ofthe sight.
Many of her lessons ranged from hiding my favorite toys in difficult places, to staging fake crime scenes and making me work out what supposedly occurred. Holidays were her absolute favorite times to train me, too. While every other kid found their eggs in fairly easy places, mine were hidden like someone might hide their family’s prized jewels. In a bank vault. In a fresh grave. At the top of the Statue of Liberty.
And Christmas...don’t even get me started on Christmas with my nana. I never got to wake up and race to unwrap all of my presents. Nope. I had to find them first, then figure out what they were before opening them. And if I got it wrong, I had to donate them.
Now before you go thinking that my nana is cruel, or I’m complaining about her, just know that I’ve always thought it was the best thing in the world. Every single time I got something correct, found thatextremelydifficult-to-find egg, or guessed the right present; my nana would beam at me with her million watt smile and crinkled green eyes filled with pride and love. Ilovedthe challenge. I thrived on it. But her reactions to my success? They were so much sweeter.
I’ve never been a sore loser either. Whenever I couldn’t find an egg, or didn’t get the present right, she would smirk at me in that facetious way with an absolute challenge in her gaze and I would acquiesce to the loss, talking shit about how I would get her next time.
My childhood was greatbecauseof my nana. Without her, I wouldn’t have survived. I especially wouldn’t have survived the car wreck that took both my sight and my dad. I wouldn’t have learned to adapt and overcome without her support and love. In fact, she was the only person in my life that stuck with me and helped me through it all.
My mother, well…what can I say? I’m convinced she’s never loved me.
From the time I was born, she deemed me as a burden, ungrateful, and unable to amount to anything in life. Of course, she only ever spoke to me like that when my dad wasn’t around.Heloved me more than life itself. He was the one to pack my lunches for school, sign me up for whatever sports or club I fancied that month, and tuck me into bed with a story and a goodnight kiss. He was supportive of anything and everything I ever tried or did, and even when he didn’t understandthe sight, he still gave me every resource and ability to hone it and be all I could, right beside my nana.
I don’t think my mother ever did any of those things.
In fact, I don’t think she would have even kept me if my dad wasn’t so determined. But he did, and because he was the only thing in her life that she ever loved, she did too. Begrudgingly.
I was twelve when the accident took myactualsight, along with my dad, in one fell swoop. He was driving me to my favorite restaurant to celebrate my latest report card. I’d gotten all A’s, and he insisted we needed togo all outfor thesmartest kiddo he’s ever met. We laughed, joked, and sang silly pop songs throughout the drive. Just…having the time of our lives. That is, until there was an earth shattering bang, and the next thing I knew, the car was spinning through the air.
The last thing I ever saw was the wide-eyed terror on my dad’s face as we rolled and rolled, the crunching of metal sounding out with every arc. But he wasn’t scared for himself, he was scared forme. I could feel it as surely as I felt the pain in my face the next day, when all that was left was darkness and the sounds of machines and unfamiliar voices. So many voices.
But never my dad’s.
My mom didn’t come to see me, not once. She left me to rot after she got the call. I didn’t even get any answers about where my dad was until social services contacted my nana, asking if she would be willing to take me in.
I can still feel the calloused grip of her hands as she grabbed mine upon entering the room. Her warm, soft hug as she enveloped me in her arms while I cried a tearless sob into her chest is vivid to this day. Bandages covered the top of my aching head, an IV was stabbed into my vein, and bruises and cuts all over my body throbbed with the beat of my heart. But nothing hurt more than when she whispered the worst words in the world:He’s gone. I’m so sorry, Bell. I’m so sorry.
The memory was seared into my brain from that moment on.
It played on repeat for many years following, and it still does. I never got my sight back either. Too much damage done. Completely unfixable. And even though I had my visions tosee, nothing has ever been as clear or detailed as the night of the crash.
And nothing ever will be.
But enough sad and mopey shit. You’re not here to listen to me whine. You’re here because you want to hear about the awesomeness of life as a blind psychic detective.
So buckle in, bitches. It’s a wild ride.
