Blind Spot Read online

  She caught me staring at her and held out the can. “Want some?”

  “No. I’m good.” I tuned in to the “academic” conversation Dellian and Jeffrey were having.

  “But who would win a fight between Han Solo and Indiana Jones?” Jeffrey asked.

  Mr. Dellian glanced at his watch. “Indiana Jones, I suppose, unless Han Solo used the Force.”

  “No! Han Solo isn’t a Jedi,” Jeffrey said. “He can’t use the Force.”

  JJ, the guy in the wheelchair, snorted at this. I couldn’t help smirking too. Even in a SPED class, Dellian was out of his league.

  Dellian shrugged. “Perhaps Luke Skywalker taught it to him.”

  “You can’t teach the Force!”

  Jeffrey’s loud outburst startled everyone, including Dellian. We all snapped our heads up to look at him as Mr. Dellian reprimanded. “Jeffrey, enough.”

  But Jeffrey wouldn’t let it go. “No! You haven’t answered me yet. Who would win, Han Solo or Indiana Jones?”

  “Indiana Jones. Now, it’s time for class, Jeffrey.” Dellian turned to the rest of us. “As I was saying yesterday, this course will teach you to be self-sufficient. Self-sufficient, however, does not mean doing everything by yourself. To succeed, you must stand up for yourself, and that includes asking for help when you need it.” He looked at me as he said this. He probably figured since I didn’t ask him for the History syllabus, I wouldn’t have the assignment. Bet he was dying to give me an F. I couldn’t wait to see his reaction when I turned it in that afternoon.

  “You’ll be assigned a partner. If your partner is having a bad day, you’re having a bad day. Understood?” He picked up a clipboard. The names of six students were apparently too much for him to memorize. “Because Bart has autism—”

  “So do I!” Jeffrey interrupted.

  “It’s not a competition, Jeffrey. Please let me finish.” I watched Bart as Mr. Dellian said this. He seemed unaware that he was being talked about. He just ate a chicken nugget, flapped his arms, ate another nugget, flapped again . . .

  “Since Bart needs extra assistance,” Mr. Dellian continued, “I’ll be his partner. JJ and Jeffrey; Roz and Tricia; and our aide, Jonathan, will be your partner, Ruth.”

  “Maybe you should put Ruth with Tricia?” I said. “I’m switching out of here.”

  “Oh?” Dellian tilted his head. “How’s that?”

  “My mom’s calling today. To say I don’t need it.”

  “Well, I look forward to that conversation.” His tone made me wish I’d kept quiet. “You’re with Tricia.” He started on a new topic—a job program for the juniors and seniors.

  “Guess you’re stuck with me.” Tricia squirted a massive blob into her mouth. “Careful,” she said through the whipped cream, “I bite when I’ve got the munchies.”

  The rest of the day dragged on like yesterday, second verse same as the first. As I took my lunch from my locker, I smelled watermelon bubblegum and glimpsed a tall figure coming my way. So much for lunch at my locker. I slammed it shut and pretended not to notice him as I headed toward the lunchroom.

  The scent stayed with me. In my peripheral vision, I saw him to my left. He said nothing while we walked down the hallway. We reached the stairs together, feet falling in perfect unison, but still, we both pretended not to notice each other.

  I stifled a manic giggle. If I ducked into the bathroom, would he follow me? When we neared the cafeteria, side by side, it became too awkward. I stopped. “Hi, Greg.”

  He stopped too. “Oh, hi!” he said. I tried to walk away then, but again he followed me, again saying nothing.

  “Uh, thanks for the syllabus?” I tried.

  That worked. Too well. “So you got it, then? Good, I worried I had the wrong locker.” He bobbed his head, his mop more unruly than yesterday. “I was fairly confident it was the correct locker.”

  The area outside the cafeteria smelled like a perfume counter. And it was loud. Chatter echoed off the walls. Groups clogged the pathway. I hesitated a few yards from the entrance. Missy had to be at the center of one of those clusters. I should’ve grabbed my ear buds so I could look unbothered by her popularity. Of course, I hadn’t planned on coming down here in the first place.

  Greg slowed his pace too, still rambling. “I remembered there were three twos in the number, and it was in the right vicinity—”

  Strong hands squeezed my shoulders from behind. “Hey, Beautiful!” Jonathan Webb draped his arm across my back.

  I gave him an overly toothy grin. I couldn’t help it. He made me lose all muscle control.

  “Your mom get first hour straightened out?” He smiled at some girls to the right of us and then turned his full attention back on me.

  “Working on it.” I tried not to blush, but I could feel the blood in my cheeks.

  “It’ll be a drag without you.” He gave my shoulders another squeeze before letting go. “See ya ’round, Rose.” As he joined the group of girls, I glanced around to see if anyone had heard his mistake.

  Greg had.

  Why was he here anyway? I left him standing there and pushed through the crowd into the cafeteria. I threw myself down at a nearly empty table in the back, grabbed my apple out of my bag, and ripped a bite from it.

  “Hey, Fritz. Ricky,” a girl said to the guys at the end of my table. Fritz and Ricky. Two skateboarders who always wore shorts, even when it was forty-below outside. I heard the hand slaps of two high-fives, and then the girl slid in across from me. “Saw you talking to Zeus! Yummy!”

  I looked up from my apple. Bright fuchsia sweater. Long raven-blue hair. Chin-length gold hoop earrings. Heather Torres. She hung on the fringe mostly, not popular, not a loser—although there was some controversy with her in fifth grade, I think. A fashionista, her every outfit was loud and dramatic, over-the-top, and truly out of place in Birch, Alaska, where fashion trends are a full year behind the rest of the world. I’d always admired that about her. She stood out and didn’t care. “Yeah, yum.” I rolled my eyes. “He can’t even get my name right.”

  “No?” She stuck her lip out in a sympathetic pout. “Well, he did have his arm around you, so there’s that. And Missy. Was. So. Green.” She gave me a smile that said she knew the score between me and my ex-BFF. “Rona was all ‘Helen Keller and Zeus? Not gonna happen, Missy. Not gonna happen.’ But Missy thought it was happening.” She stuck her hand out for a high-five. “Totally worth it?”

  Helen Keller? Nice. It meant that not only had Missy told Rona about my eyes, but they’d laughed about it enough to give me a nickname. Who else had Missy told? Did the whole school know now? I cringed, but obliged Heather with a “Totally” and a high-five. I took another big bite of apple and prayed she wouldn’t ask.

  She didn’t. Not right away. First she took a bite of her burger and shoved a bunch of fries into a vat of ketchup. “So, why ‘Helen Keller’?”

  I shrugged. “I can’t see that well.”

  “You need glasses?”

  Everyone always says that. Like a conditioned response. I studied the core of my apple. “I have contacts but . . .” I hated this part. It wasn’t the questions people inevitably asked; it was their reactions. They fell into one of two categories: pity or discomfort. And I still didn’t know how to handle either. “Legally I’m considered blind.”

  “Like cane-and-seeing-eye-dog blind? You don’t look blind.”

  “I’m not. My vision isn’t good enough to drive, though, so I’m ‘legally’ blind.”

  “Is that why you never look at people? I always thought you were just a bitch. No offense.” She shoved the ketchup-soaked fries into her mouth.

  Bitch. I’d heard that one before. Missy used to call me that and accuse me of ignoring people. From a distance, say when I’m walking down the hall, I can’t see people’s eyes, so I may hear them talk or may see them wave, but I don’t know if they are looking at me or someone else. It’s humiliating when you think someone’s talking to you and they are
n’t. Just as humiliating when the guy you’re crushing on thinks you just blew him off because he waved and you didn’t wave back. That’s why I stare at the ground or fiddle with my shirt or pretend to be reading when I’m in a crowd. Anything to avoid humiliation. “I can’t really see faces, so . . .” I shrugged.

  “But you can hear?”

  “Uh, yeah?”

  She smirked. “Well, Helen Keller couldn’t! She was blind and deaf; mute, I think, too. Leave it to Rona to get it wrong. So can you see—” She looked across the cafeteria to search out a test object, then stopped and smiled at someone behind me.

  I turned. Greg’s finger went into my eye.

  “Roz, I am so sorry!” He crouched to peer in my eye. “Are you okay?”

  My eye stung. I blinked rapidly to make it tear up. “Is there salt on your finger?”

  “Ink. Sorry.”

  I dabbed my watering eye with a napkin. “’S okay.”

  “So that was ‘Zeus’?” Greg said, making punctuation marks with his hands. “The guy Missy likes?”

  I blinked again to clear my eye. “Yep.”

  “I need more ketchup,” Heather said.

  Greg watched her leave. “Why aren’t you eating with Missy?”

  “Are you conducting a social survey or something?” I asked.

  “No, I was just wondering.” He sat down. “Is Zeus the reason you and Missy aren’t talking?”

  Greg’s crush on Missy. Of course. He was hoping I’d taken Jonathan out of the picture so Missy could focus on someone else, like Greg. “No, he’s not. We just met.” I felt suddenly sorry for Greg with his knit sweater, Oxford collar, and ink-smudged chin. Missy’d never flit from Jonathan to Greg. He was wasting his time on her. “We’ve all changed, Greg. Me, you, Missy—we’re not kids anymore. You know what I mean?”

  “Yeah.” He gave a nervous cough and I knew I’d embarrassed him. Which embarrassed me. I looked into my bag and pulled my sandwich out.

  “If I offended you yesterday somehow, I’m sorry. Okay?” He stood up.

  “Okay.” I slowly chewed my sandwich and willed him away.

  Heather bounced up. “Too soon? I can go—”

  “No! I mean—” I glanced up at Greg. “You can eat with us—”

  He was backing up, though, flustered, no doubt, by my awesome hospitality. “I see . . . friends.”

  “Awk-ward,” I said when he’d moved away.

  “Oh, come on, he’s cute,” Heather whispered. “Not Zeus cute. Shy cute. Way too Ivy League–ish for me, though. What’s his story?”

  “Missy’s next-door neighbor, just transferred from Trinity.”

  “He ask you out?” she said, her voice still low.

  “Hardly.” I laughed. “He’s hot for Missy. Keeps lurking around me for info, practically stalking me.” Heather made a face and mouthed something at me that I couldn’t make out. “What?”

  She pointed to the end of the table with her french fry. Oops. Greg was eating with Fritz and Ricky, and by the way he sat motionless, staring at the lunch bag in front of him, I was pretty sure he’d heard me.

  I took a front-row seat in AP, and as I pulled out my assignment the smell of watermelon bubblegum caught my attention. He must shop wholesale for that gum, I thought and looked up.

  “I’m not hot for Missy,” Greg muttered, darting a glance in her direction, “and I’m not stalking you either. That’s my assigned seat.”

  “I’m sorry I said that.” I paused. “Assigned seat? We have assigned seats?”

  “Please put your assignments in this basket,” Mr. Dellian said.

  Greg walked his over. I followed, giving Dellian my best I-don’t-need-Life-Skills-see?-I-got-the-syllabus-all-on-my-own smile.

  Dellian looked unimpressed. “Miss Hart, if you don’t want to be marked absent, I suggest you take your assigned seat.”

  I rolled my eyes at Greg’s smug expression and slid my books off his desk. “I wasn’t given an assigned seat.”

  “You were sitting at a desk yesterday, correct? That’s your assigned seat.”

  “Oh.” I couldn’t see the board back there, though. Perfect opportunity to demonstrate my life skills. I turned back around. “Could I move?”

  He hesitated a moment, as if my asking to move was a really difficult question. “No, you’re fine back there, aren’t you?”—a smug smirk in his tone. “Take your assigned seat, Miss Hart.”

  Even though the rest of the class didn’t know those were my words from Life Skills yesterday that he was repeating, I knew. My cheeks flushed, anger rising. I went to his desk, all too aware that everyone was now listening. “You want me to admit it? Fine,” I whispered. “You’re right. I can’t see from back there, okay? Now can I move?”

  “You can’t see?” he said too loud to be accidental. “Perhaps you should invest in a pair of glasses, Miss Hart.” The class laughed.

  As if I hadn’t heard that before. I folded my arms and said nothing.

  He postured against his desk. “You had bad eyesight yesterday, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah, it’s kind of an ongoing thing.”

  “Yet you chose to sit in the back. Bad choice, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “Okay, I get it! I should’ve sat in the front, but I was late. God! Why are you being such a—” I stopped myself too late.

  “I won’t tolerate disrespect in my classroom,” Mr. Dellian said in a voice as thick as ice. “I can and will kick you out of here.”

  “I’m sorry—”

  He didn’t let me finish. “In my classroom, students are assigned the seat they take on the first day. I don’t change my seating chart once it’s complete. Now—”

  I expected him to say “I’ll let it slide” or “Don’t let it happen again,” not “Take your seat in the back, Miss Hart.”

  “What?” I stared in disbelief. “You have to let me switch! It’s—”

  “It’s what?” he asked.

  I heard the challenge in his voice. What an ass. He wanted me to say “It’s in my IEP.” To admit out loud that I had a disability, that I needed special help—his special help. Well, I wasn’t going to play his stupid game anymore. I wasn’t going to beg him for a seat up front. I didn’t need it that badly. I focused my blind spot on his face and glared at him.

  “I’ll switch with her,” Greg offered.

  “How gallant of you”—Dellian consulted his seating chart—“Mr. Martin. But then I’d have to mark you both absent.”

  Greg shrugged at me apologetically.

  “Are we finished? I’d like to start class.” Mr. Dellian’s bored tone made me want to scream.

  “Yes.” I marched back to my assigned seat and silently screamed a thousand obscenities while he shuffled through the assignments, all smug and arrogant.

  “Oh, and Miss Hart?” Mr. Dellian said without looking up. “I had a lovely discussion with your mother earlier. We decided to keep you in your Special Education class. We both feel you need it.”

  My body exploded. Hellfire. Brimstone. Lava dripped from my pores. I wanted to fly across the room. Tear the flesh from his limbs. I glared at the back of his head. Burned holes in his skull while he rifled through the pages as if he’d merely commented on the weather.

  Everyone else knew the weight of his comment, though. The tension that settled over the room told me they were watching, waiting to see what I would do. If only I had telekinetic powers. I’d burst him into flames, his desk combusting with a boom. The best I could do was focus my central vision on him, making the reddish-orange dots that block my vision engulf him, make him disappear.

  Slowly my laser gaze slipped from Dellian to the empty desk next to Greg. I don’t remember making a conscious decision. But I guess I did.

  I thought, Screw you, Dellian!

  And then I stood, walked back up to that front-row seat, and made it mine.

  Thirty-seven days before

  “Rozzy, why do you do this?” Mom said when I told her De
llian was now marking me absent for sitting in the front. “He’s trying to help you!”

  This was my fault? “He tells me to stand up for myself in Life Skills and then when I do, he punishes me? How is that helping? It makes no sense!”

  “With that attitude of yours, I’d mark you absent too.”

  “Whatever, Mom,” I muttered. “Can you at least admit he’s being stupid?”

  She sighed as if I were exhausting her. “Trying to keep you from self-destructing so you don’t end up like that poor kid is not stupid, Rozzy. You have to start accepting the fact that there are things you can’t do. Maybe that AP class isn’t such a good idea.”

  “What? No!”

  “You have a disability, Rozzy. No one expects you to become a brain surgeon.”

  “So what? I should take Underwater Basket Weaving instead of AP History? Why even bother with school? I’ll just quit and find men to live off of like you do.”

  Too far. “You can take the bus to school,” Mom said, heading back to bed. It didn’t matter anyway. It was obvious I was on my own on this one. Dellian had her snowed.

  “‘Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important,’” Greg said as we left AP. “T. S. Eliot. Have you told your parents about Dellian’s power trip?”

  I snorted. “Tried. Mom thinks he walks on water, though.”

  “Mine too. Hockey coach, yearbook advisor, Special Education teacher—Principal Ratner is so impressed with Dellian’s multiple talents that he didn’t even think twice when Ms. Ludlow moved out of state at the last minute. He handed AP over like an offering to the gods.” Greg shook his head in disgust. “Anyway, when Mom talked with Mr. Dellian, he said we’re just using your impairment as an excuse to sit together.”

  I stared, horrified. His mom? Talked to Dellian? My “impairment”?

  “Oh, I’m sorry.” He frowned. “Is impairment not the right word?”