Love and First Sight Read online

  “That would be wise, of course. There are other obstacles, though. You’d also have significant frustration while adjusting. Your visual cortex has developed atypically.”

  “Dr. Bianchi said that my brain could rewire itself,” I counter.

  “Maybe. But only after a very difficult adjustment period. Listen, Will, I don’t want to come across like I don’t believe in you. I think you have adapted tremendously well, and that’s exactly why you don’t need this surgery. For instance, where are we right now?”

  “What?” I say, confused by the sudden topic change.

  “Where are we in the neighborhood?”

  I’ve been keeping track of the route as we ride. “The front gate is coming up on our left,” I say.

  “Correct,” he says in a Proud Father voice. “And you know this without ever having seen a map of these streets. You know our location by estimating the distance and our speed and tracking our turns. You already have a rich life, and you are perfectly capable of functioning in society.”

  “I guess,” I reply, as if to say, So what?

  “I myself figure out where we are by looking up from the handlebars and taking in the entire scene all at once. That’s the thing, Will. You’re a skilled navigator now, but if you have the surgery, it will be like starting over.”

  “What do you mean?” I say.

  “When a blind person sees for the first time, it’s not like he can suddenly process everything going into his brain. He can’t identify faces, people, shapes, or colors. You’ll have no point of reference for understanding the images. Slight left.”

  “So it’s like a foreign language, then?” I ask, adding, “People learn new languages all the time.”

  “Not exactly. For an adult born blind, learning to see would not be like learning a new language, it would be like learning language itself for the first time.”

  Dad alerts me to an upcoming bend in the road. But I’m not paying much attention and find myself startled when the bike tips and accelerates through the turn.

  “And, Will,” he adds, “that’s if the surgery is successful at restoring your vision, which still requires immunosuppressant drugs that could allow you to die of something like a cold or the flu.”

  That seems to be his trump card. Not only will the surgery not work, but even if it does, I might die of the flu. Really subtle, Dad. “Well, I guess we know which side you are on here.”

  “I’m on your side, Will.”

  We coast a bit in silence, and I feel the breeze biting my face.

  He adds, “I think you are a tremendous son, and I couldn’t be more proud of you. I just don’t know why you’d want to risk everything on this operation when you already have so much going for you. Think about it this way: What if instead of giving you sight, this operation made a clone of you. The clone had functioning eyes, but in order for it to live, you had to die. Would you agree to that?”

  This strikes me as kind of extreme. “Come on, Dad, that’s totally different!”

  “Is it, though? Because currently you are a blind person. With sight, you would be a sighted person. If you gained your sight, by definition, you’d be a different person than you are now.”

  “I guess,” I agree reluctantly.

  “So the Will that is riding this bike with me would no longer exist. You would be a different Will. Who would that Will be?”

  I count out a few seconds as we ride, his question hanging unanswered in the air.

  “We’re home, aren’t we?” I ask.

  “That’s my son. That’s my Will. See what you can already do? What would you need this operation for?”

  I go back to my room and lie on my bed and think it over. When I first heard about this procedure and had my initial appointment with Dr. Bianchi, I immediately thought, Yeah, I want that. But after what my dad just said, I’m not so sure.

  CHAPTER 12

  As I waste stomach space ingesting large quantities of pointless beta-carotene at lunch the next day, my friends and I discuss the homecoming dance. Ion suggests I go with Cecily.

  Be the only blind person at a school dance? Um, no thanks.

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I say.

  “Why not?” she asks.

  I don’t want to tell her that I’m afraid of the event itself, though, so I share a different problem. “Well, for one thing, I came to public school to learn how to live independently. I don’t have time for a girlfriend right now.”

  “Who said anything about a relationship? You can just go as friends. But if it makes you feel any better, Cecily doesn’t want a boyfriend.”

  “Why not?”

  “You’d have to ask her that,” says Ion. “But seriously, what could better demonstrate how well you’re mainstreaming than taking a girl to homecoming?”

  “You have a point,” I concede. As an afterthought, I add, “What does Cecily look like?”

  “What do you mean?” asks Ion.

  Her hesitation is a surprise—usually people jump at the chance to paint word pictures for me.

  “You know, like, is she pretty or whatever?” I clarify.

  “Does it matter?” asks Ion.

  “If she’s pretty? No, not really.”

  But sort of. I mean, I know it shouldn’t matter. I’m just curious. And the way Ion’s stalling, I’m beginning to think the answer is no.

  Whitford jumps in. “It’s not like that. Cecily is more of a sister to all of us. We don’t see her in that way.”

  It’s obviously a nonanswer. Even if you don’t think of her like “that,” you would still notice if she was pretty. Wouldn’t you? I think so. Isn’t that how eyesight works?

  I always kind of assumed Cecily was pretty. Her voice is pretty enough. But maybe I was wrong. Again, it’s no big deal. I’m just curious.

  Nick says, “If you guys won’t do it, I’ll be the one to tell him.”

  Ion tries to interrupt. “Wait, Nick—”

  “She’s hot,” he continues, undeterred. “Totally.”

  There’s a pause.

  “Yeah, all right,” chimes in Whitford. “It’s true. I mean, I’ve only got eyes for my girl Ion here, but if I was single, I would definitely look twice when Cecily walked by.”

  “Ion?” I ask.

  “Cecily is lovely,” she says slowly, carefully.

  “So you think she’d say yes? If I asked her to homecoming?”

  “I don’t know, actually,” says Ion.

  “So you are trying to set me up with a girl who might reject me?”

  “Didn’t you just say you are trying to learn to live independently?”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Well then, find out for yourself.”

  • • •

  Two days later is the first round of auditions. I wear my new blue button-down shirt.

  The announcements begin as normal. But after three minutes, Xander says, “Well, my fellow students, we have reached that exciting point in the year when you all decide who will have the distinct honor and privilege of bringing you your announcements every morning beginning in the spring semester. This year there are three teams of potential cohosts: team one, which is myself and Victoria; team two, Will Porter and Cecily Hoder; and team three, Tripp Atkinson and Connor Forthright.”

  I feel so nervous it’s like there’s a balloon expanding in my stomach and pressing against my insides. I told Cecily, and she said not to worry about it. Being nervous was perfectly understandable. I was shocked by how calm she sounded. Honestly, I wanted to drop out. But her voice brought me back, and here I am, getting ready to go on camera.

  “And now team two will take over the next section of today’s announcements. Good luck to all the teams!” says Xander. He sounds sincere. Almost.

  Cecily and I take our seats at the anchor desk. I feel heat from the studio lights on my face. I angle my head in that direction, knowing the lights are positioned near the camera. I’m wearing my glasses so people will assum
e that I’m making eye contact with them on their screens.

  “Good morning, I’m Cecily.”

  “And I’m Will.”

  Cecily begins a flawless read of her first announcement, about the canned-food drive next week. I’m filled with dread. I know I’m going to screw this up for us. I’ll probably puke all over the camera.

  My fingers are in the ready position on the braille terminal. This is it. I’m about to read my first announcement.

  When Cecily finishes the details about the food drive, I hear her hand move quickly to the iPad in her lap, where she scrolls the teleprompter to the next announcement. As she does, I feel the braille letters refresh under my fingertips.

  I begin to read aloud, like a kindergartner nervously sounding out words for the first time. “Tickets for the homecoming dance are—”

  At this point, there’s a gap in the text where the next word should begin. Three empty characters instead of one space. Which is weird.

  “—still for sale in the main—”

  The line of text refreshes, but it begins with another set of three blank spaces. It’s quite distracting, these typos.

  “—office for only ten dollars. Get yours—”

  I hit another empty slot where a word should be. What’s going on here? Reading braille aloud is difficult enough if you are, say, in your bedroom all by yourself. But I’m on camera in front of a thousand pairs of eyes for an audition. And now I have to deal with problems in the script? Is there a glitch in the program? Or is Cecily not scrolling correctly?

  “—today so you don’t miss out on an unforgettable night this Saturday.”

  I hope my face doesn’t show how upset I am. I’m speaking like a person who barely knows the language.

  Everyone probably thinks I’m nervous. Like I’m stuttering because the whole school is watching. Or maybe they think I’m a slow braille reader.

  I want to stop reading from the script and say, This is not my fault! I don’t know what’s going on here, but there’s something messed up with the script, not me!

  I knew this wouldn’t work. I knew I shouldn’t be auditioning for a position where my performance is entirely reliant on other people to hold their own. Lean on others long enough, and eventually you’ll fall. And in these auditions, I’m falling hard, crashing and burning in front of the whole entire school.

  It also occurs to me that if I could see, none of this would’ve happened. My reading would have sounded just as smooth and confident as Cecily’s.

  As soon as our part of the broadcast is over, we return next door to Mrs. Everbrook’s classroom. Cecily and I sit together while we wait for the announcements to end. Tripp and Connor begin their audition on the classroom television.

  I whisper to Cecily, “When you were scrolling through my script, could you see those gaps between words?”

  I’m trying not to sound as accusatory as I feel.

  She pauses, then whispers back, “Those weren’t gaps.”

  I’m confused. “They felt like gaps on my braille terminal. I wasn’t sure what to say. I don’t understand. What were they?”

  “Don’t worry about it, Will,” she says, as if she’s speaking to a child or something. Which only makes me feel worse. First I look stupid on the announcements, and now Cecily acts like she’s doing me a favor by not telling me why?

  “What were they?” I repeat, frustration creeping into my voice.

  “They were images,” she finally says.

  That’s not the answer I was expecting. “What kind of images?”

  “They were, like, emojis. But not the normal ones,” she says reluctantly.

  “Meaning?”

  She shifts uncomfortably in her desk. “They were, I guess you could say, X-rated emojis. Of, like, human… anatomy and stuff.”

  “Why did they show up as blanks for me?”

  “Maybe your terminal doesn’t translate emojis.”

  I consider this. “That’s probably lucky. If it had, I would’ve read…”

  “Some very inappropriate-sounding announcements, yes.”

  None of this makes sense. “But why were they only in my script? I can’t even see them. Why not yours, too?” I ask.

  “Oh,” she says, “they were in mine.”

  “But your reading was flawless! How did you read them without getting distracted by the, um, you know…”

  “That’s the advantage of being bullied all your life, I guess. You get pretty good at tuning that kind of thing out.”

  I feel ashamed. Here I was, partially blaming Cecily for my audition going poorly when it had probably been much more distracting for her.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. The words aren’t really enough, but they’re all I can think of. I’m sorry about everything—sorry that I was awkward in our audition, sorry that I was blaming her for it, and sorry that she, apparently, has had to put up with stuff like this for years. “I’m really sorry.”

  “Don’t be.”

  We sit there quietly for a moment, listening to Tripp and Connor read from their own script. Now that I’m paying attention, I hear tension in their voices, like they are about to burst out laughing. Could be the nerves. Or maybe their script got tampered with, too.

  “You think they have the same problem?” I whisper to Cecily.

  “Looks that way,” she agrees.

  I sit back in my desk and wonder if maybe I did a better job reading the announcements because I couldn’t see the images. Maybe my blindness actually helped me rather than hurt me. For once. And maybe there are other times in my life when this happens without me even realizing it.

  I ask, “Did Xander and Victoria’s script have the images? They sounded normal.”

  “Yeah, but they’ve got a few years of practice, you know?”

  “So who would’ve done it?” I ask.

  “Probably just some hacker wannabe trying to impress his hacker wannabe friends.”

  But then Xander walks by—all three of the teams have been hanging out in Mrs. Everbrook’s classroom this morning during tryouts—and he leans in between our desks.

  “Nice try, noobs,” he says. “In live broadcasting, you have to be prepared for anything. I hope you learned that lesson today.”

  “Wait,” says Cecily. “You put those in the scripts on purpose?”

  “Who, me? I didn’t say that. I just said I hope you learned something today.”

  After he walks away, I whisper to Cecily, “You think we have any chance of making it to the final round next week?”

  “Honestly? Not really. Not with me—”

  I interrupt, “Don’t say stuff like that. You were great.”

  Cecily doesn’t answer at first. Then she says, “Thanks.” It sounds like the compliment really meant something to her. I decide to seize the moment and take Ion’s advice.

  “Hey,” I say, “you got any plans Saturday night?”

  “Um… no,” she says.

  “Want to go to homecoming? With me, I mean?”

  “Uh, yeah, sure.”

  “Just as, you know, friends?”

  “As friends?”

  “Or cohosts. If you prefer.”

  “Whoa, let’s take things one step at a time,” she says. But I can hear that she’s smiling.

  CHAPTER 13

  On Saturday, as she is driving to my house to pick me up before homecoming, Cecily calls my cell.

  “Are you all ready?” she asks.

  “Yep.”

  “Wanna just meet me outside?”

  “My mom really wants to get a photo of us together. Can you come in? Just for a minute?”

  “Oh…” She pauses. “Yeah, sure, of course. Okay, I’m parking in the driveway now.”

  She hangs up, and I go to the front foyer. The doorbell rings, and I reach out and turn the knob. My parents are crowding in right behind me, apparently in a competition to find out which one of them can make this situation more awkward.

  I swing open the door.
>
  “Wow,” says Cecily. “You look great.”

  I’m wearing a suit and tie. I even allowed Mom to comb my hair for the occasion.

  “So do you,” I say. “At least, I assume so. Let me ask my parents. Cecily, I would like you to meet my mom and dad.”

  They don’t say anything. This is awkward. So, so awkward. What’s wrong with them?

  “Oh,” says Mom. “Hi there.”

  Hi there? Seriously?

  “Hi,” says Cecily quietly.

  “It’s so very nice to meet you,” says Mom, trying to recover.

  I guess Mom and Dad are just as nervous as Cecily.

  “Well, how does she look?” I ask, trying to bring back the festive mood I would’ve expected in this conversation.

  There’s another pause. Dad says, “She looks gorgeous, Will. Absolutely gorgeous. It’s wonderful to finally meet you, Cecily. We’ve heard so much about you.”

  I hear them shake hands.

  “We’ve got a dinner to get to,” I say. “Mom, you want to get that picture?”

  “Wait, I brought you a boutonniere,” says Cecily. “Want me to pin it on?”

  “Sure,” I say.

  She comes close. Her perfume floats in through my nostrils and fills my whole body.

  “Careful, don’t poke him,” Mom says. I feel her lean toward us.

  “Would you… like to do it?” offers Cecily.

  “If you don’t mind,” says Mom.

  Cecily steps aside as Mom’s perfume enters my personal space, filling me with quite different emotions than Cecily’s did.

  “There,” says Mom. “You look so handsome. And here’s Cecily’s corsage.”

  I reach my hand out to accept the floral arrangement, but instead hear Mom sliding it onto Cecily’s wrist herself.

  “Can we take the picture now?” I ask, feeling increasingly eager to ditch my parents.

  Mom arranges us in a few different poses and, once satisfied with her photo collection, dismisses us.

  “Be safe,” she says.

  “Have fun,” adds Dad.

  We go out to a fancy dinner with Whitford and Ion, and then go to the dance, which is in the school gym.