Blindsided Read online

  (Natalie had to hold it close to see): HUGS FOR FREE. “For you, Nat,” she said.

  “Wow,” Natalie said. She gave the bear a welcome squeeze. “He’s so soft!” Then she noticed something red tied to Meredith’s wrist and followed it upward to a heart-shaped balloon that floated over her friend’s head.

  “I didn’t really get a chance to say good-bye last week,” Meredith said. “Remember? We were at that soccer scrimmage? And hey! We really missed you last night. I tried to get you, Nat, but no answer.”

  Natalie hoped that was true. “Yeah,” she said. “The bus broke down.”

  “Yikes. . . . Well, anyway, look, Coralee and Suzanne were going to come, too, but they forgot they had their first driver’s ed class.”

  The news caught Natalie off guard. “Driver’s ed?”

  “Yeah, I don’t know what the big rush is, but they are dying to drive.”

  They had never mentioned it, Natalie thought. Were they being sensitive because they knew Natalie would never get a license? Or was she out of the loop already?

  A slight pause. “Do you want to come in?” Natalie asked.

  “Only for a minute,” Meredith said. She let Natalie close the door, then scrunched up her nose and indicated with her thumb how her dad was waiting outside in the car. “We have to go to my grandmother’s for dinner.”

  The two girls walked into the living room and Meredith touched Natalie’s arm. “So, guess who was asking about you this week?”

  “Me? Someone was asking about me?”

  “Yeah, you! Jake Handelman! He asked if I’d heard from you.”

  “He’s such a nice boy, isn’t he?” Natalie replied.

  “Really nice—and cute, too. If only he’d lose about fifty pounds!”

  Natalie grinned.

  The two girls sat side by side on the sofa. Natalie took the bear and held it in her lap. The helium-filled balloon was still tied to Meredith’s wrist and undulated in the air, moving with her hand as she leaned forward to put the tin on the coffee table.

  “You’re really sweet, Meres,” Natalie said. “But it’s not like I’m going away forever.” It was really bothering her, the good-bye stuff, the separation from her friends. She didn’t want to think of it as permanent. “I’ll be back every weekend.”

  “I know,” Meredith said. “But it’s still not the same . . . ’cause you’re not in school with us.”

  Natalie nodded. She couldn’t deny it was the beginning of a major change for both of them. They had been best friends for a long time, ever since second grade when Meredith moved to Hawley from West Virginia. Meredith had crooked teeth then, and on her first day of school, some boys blew spitballs at her through a straw and called her a hillbilly when she entered the cafeteria. Natalie told her they didn’t mean anything and offered Meredith a place to sit at the lunch table.

  “I’d better go,” Meredith said. “I know you leave early tomorrow—”

  “But maybe we can get together next weekend,” Natalie suggested.

  “For sure!” Meredith agreed.

  The girls walked back to the front door together, and Meredith turned and paused. Her eyes glistened and her lower lip quivered. “I’m going to miss you, Natty.”

  Natalie blinked and tears suddenly bathed her eyes, too. She opened her arms to give Meredith a hug, and the two girls embraced. “I’m going to miss seeing you, too,” she said.

  It wasn’t intentional, but Natalie realized the moment she said it that the words were heavy with meaning.

  “WHATEVER IT TAKES”

  Rape is not sex! Rape is an act of violence! A rapist needs to control and humiliate his victim.” The karate instructor’s loud voice echoed with authority in the small, old-fashioned gym at the Center for the Blind.

  “It might make you uncomfortable to hear some things I talk about,” Mr. Lee continued. “But my job is to teach you the skills you need to protect yourself! The number one skill?” He held up his index finger. “Information!”

  Natalie fixed her small circle of vision on the short, but lanky, ponytailed man. He stood with his hands on his narrow hips, while the girls in Natalie’s gym class sat before him in rapt attention, cross-legged on the polished wooden floor. They wore T-shirts, shorts, and sneakers and had just completed twenty minutes of exercises—stretches, sit-ups, modified push-ups, jumping jacks—before Mr. Lee sat them down to talk. Their skin glistened with sweat and the smell of perspiration hung in the air.

  “This is the book we will use in class—Safe Without Sight.” Mr. Lee held up a copy and thumped a finger on its title. “Each of you will get a copy. I have it in Braille, large-print books, and tapes.

  “You will read—or listen to—every word in this book. You will learn how to protect yourself through nonviolent ways first. That means using your brain! We’ll discuss three important skills: awareness, intuition, and how to set boundaries.

  “But you’re also going to learn the tough stuff. How to use your hands, feet, canes, fingers—whatever it takes—to save your life.”

  Whoa. This was really going to be an interesting class, Natalie was thinking. To her left, she could hear Eve still quietly taking in gulps of air to recover from the exercise. To her right, Serena wiped sweat off her face with the bottom of her T-shirt.

  Mr. Lee lowered his voice a notch. “I’m not going to pussyfoot around in here. If you don’t want to take this on, go ahead and leave. No hard feelings. But if you stay, you are part of this class. We will work hard. And we will work together!”

  Suddenly, Murph pushed herself up and stood, her two sneakers slapping the wood floor. “I’m leaving then,” she announced. “My mother would throw a fit if she heard you talking about these things.”

  Natalie quickly focused back on Mr. Lee to catch his reaction. He seemed surprised. “Okay!” he replied crisply. “But you talk to your mother, young lady, and ask her: Does she want you to have knowledge? To be prepared? Or does she want you to be an ignorant victim on the street?”

  Murph faced away from the teacher, which seemed strange, and she paused, as though expecting the others to stand up, too. But no one else made a move. Finally, Murph began walking out of the gym. Her cane, tapping on the floor and growing fainter as she moved farther away, was the only sound as everyone absorbed her departure. For some reason—Natalie couldn’t quite pin it down—she felt sorry for Murph.

  “True or false?” Mr. Lee called out sharply, steering the girls’ attention back to the lesson. “Nice-looking people are more likely to be raped.”

  Serena’s hand shot up. “True!” she called out.

  “False!” Mr. Lee fired back. “The book says ninety percent of rapists think about their attack first. It has nothing to do with sexy, nice-looking people. Rapists are looking for an easy target. They are looking for a woman who appears weak. So! You’re blind. Does that make you an easy target?”

  No one attempted to reply this time.

  “Ah. Mr. Lee is thinking you girls say, ‘Yes. Blind people are an easy target.’ If you think this way, you probably are!” He threw open his hands and raised his voice. “But you don’t have to be an easy target!

  “Walk with a sense of confidence and purpose!” he told them. Natalie was able to see his ponytail swing as he turned around and strode across the gym floor in front of the girls. His chest and chin were up, and one arm moved side to side in front of him as though maneuvering an invisible cane.

  He stopped and faced them again. “Blind people can’t drive cars. They must use public transportation. Subways, buses, taxis—all these things put you at more risk. But there are many things you can do to protect yourself. It’s easy! We will start learning tonight!”

  He clapped his hands a single time. “Now. Once a criminal decides to commit a violent crime, he needs two things. He needs a victim and he needs an opportunity.” Mr. Lee tapped his head. “So! Use your brain first!”

  He picked up the book and read from it. “Listen to the so
unds around you. Footsteps, voices, vehicles, water draining in the gutter, windows opening and closing. Pay attention to your relative proximity to the sources of these sounds and how it changes, getting closer or farther away. As you pass other people who may be talking, notice their tone of voice and what they are saying.

  “Your sense of smell can give you important information, too,” he continued. “Things like cologne. Ah, he smells nice!”

  The girls giggled.

  “But what about those other smells: cigarette smoke, mothballs on clothing, alcohol on the breath, personal body odor—”

  When the girls laughed at the body odor reference, Mr. Lee shook his head and waggled his finger at them. “No, no, no!”

  The girls stopped laughing.

  “An important clue!” Mr. Lee emphasized.

  And then he began talking about a special skill some blind people could develop called acute spatial awareness. “Some blind people can feel the presence of a tall building, a tree, or another person.”

  Natalie was fascinated—but skeptical. Because how could anyone feel the presence of a building?

  “Eve is good at it,” one of the girls offered. Natalie didn’t catch who had spoken.

  “Eve? Would you like to tell us more about it?” Mr. Lee asked.

  There was a pause, and Natalie wondered if Eve would even reply because she was so shy.

  “Well, it’s not just a thing that’s there,” she began quietly. “But also when it’s not there, like a space.”

  “Can you explain that?” Mr. Lee asked.

  “I’ll try. I’m not sure. But I can feel an open space,” Eve said. “Like in a building? I can tell when I get to a place where the halls meet, where the hall gets bigger. I can tell where there’s a doorway. Sometimes even a window.”

  “But how?” Natalie asked from her seat on the floor beside Eve.

  “It’s kind of like a difference in the air,” Eve said. “You can feel it. That and the sound of your footsteps and the tapping of your cane—the sound is louder if you’re in an enclosed space because the sound is bouncing back to you. It’s like echolocation, what the bats use.”

  “Mr. Lee, I did the same program as Eve,” Serena suddenly piped up. “It was at the National Federation of the Blind place downtown. They taught us that stuff about echolocation, but I didn’t hear anything different.”

  “Because you never tried!” Eve accused.

  “Bunch of patooty,” Serena retorted.

  “You needed to have confidence in it for it to work,” Eve countered. “You needed to use the straight cane all the time—and you needed to wear the sleep shades, which you refused. Remember?”

  “Yeah. So if that program did so much for you, Eve, then why are you here?” Serena shot back. “Why aren’t you in public school? Down in Caesar Salad, Maryland, or wherever—”

  “Waldorf,” Eve murmured.

  “Waldorf! Waldorf salad! That’s it!” Serena chortled.

  “Stop!” Mr. Lee clapped his hands. “We won’t have that here!”

  The room fell silent again. Natalie wished Serena hadn’t interrupted. She was really insensitive sometimes.

  “Enough for today,” Mr. Lee said. “I’ll see you girls next week!”

  Natalie stood with the others to leave. Interesting class, she thought, although she sure didn’t want to think she’d ever need what Mr. Lee was teaching them.

  “Don’t forget to pick up a copy of the book!” Mr. Lee was calling after them. “What you learn here may save your life one day!”

  EVERYWHERE

  Renegade W is what Miss Karen called it. Unlike all the other letters of the alphabet, W didn’t follow the pattern in Braille. She explained: “W is out of order because Braille was originally written in French in the early 1800s, which at that time did not contain a letter for W. So we had to invent one!”

  Okay. So sometimes it was interesting, and Natalie was beginning to appreciate how Braille could actually open a whole world to people who couldn’t see. Still, what Natalie thought about most at her new school was not Braille, or a cane, but Home and her Friends and how Forward Motion would keep her from acknowledging the constant butterflies in her stomach. She couldn’t wait for Friday to come, and every day looked forward to the phone calls she could make after 8 P.M. One afternoon, she even found herself rehearsing in her head the conversation she’d have with Meredith.

  I wanted to tell you about this boy at my new school. He’s Indian—meaning he’s from India—and on the bus back to school he brought me this dessert his mother made. It was in a cute little box, too, just for me. Coconut and poppy seeds and something called jaggery, which he said is like concentrated sugarcane juice . . . and oh, it’s so funny, but this girl, Eve, across the hall from me—I thought she had a bird in her room, but it’s her clock! An Audubon clock. She tells time by the kind of bird that sings—like the bluebird sings at eight . . .

  She would keep the conversation upbeat, she had decided. She didn’t want to make it hard for Meredith to be a friend.

  Back in her room, Natalie heard Gabriella taking a shower and figured it was a good time to start homework so she would have more time for phone calls. Which is when it hit her: she had forgotten her backpack on the second floor of Norland Hall after her O and M lessons. It was because she and Miss Audra had ended their walk in the dining hall at dinner. Natalie had planned to retrieve the backpack after she ate, but forgot.

  The evening counselor insisted Natalie take someone with her back to Norland Hall, so Natalie asked Serena.

  “I’m sure I would be okay by myself,” she told Serena as she took the girl’s elbow and they walked together back down the sidewalk.

  “Yeah, I know. But stupid rules, right?”

  “Look, you don’t have to go all the way upstairs,” Natalie offered. “I’ll just run up, grab it, and come back down.”

  “But you don’t have your cane,” Serena said. “Will you—”

  “I don’t need the cane,” Natalie stopped her. “I’m okay once I’m inside and there’s some light.”

  “Okay,” Serena said. “I’ll wait here on the bottom step.”

  Natalie moved quickly up the wide staircase to the second floor, then down the hallway, keeping a hand on the wall. The O and M office was at the far end. The door was open and Natalie glimpsed her bright red backpack. She grabbed it and, with one hand trailing the wall to her left this time, retraced her steps quickly back through the hall. When the wall ended, she began crossing a wide, tiled foyer and wondered, if she had her cane, would she be able to sense the open space like Eve? She’d try another time, just for the heck of it. Meanwhile, she moved swiftly, not wanting to keep Serena waiting, and reached for the wooden handrail that she knew was to her left.

  In her haste, however, Natalie misjudged the location of the top stair and missed the first step completely, which sent her spiraling over the edge. She landed hard, her left shoulder smashing into the stairs, her head against the wall. There wasn’t even time to scream. Natalie’s glasses and hat flew off and her backpack bounced down the stairs. A horrible thud and all was silent.

  Things were always a blur to Natalie, but this time nothing made sense as she slowly opened her eyes. Parts of different faces hovered over her and strange voices wove together in a surreal way. Pain shot through her left shoulder and arm. She winced as someone lifted her. Without her tinted glasses the lights hurt, forcing her to squint and shield her eyes with one hand. She had never been in an ambulance before but was aware that she was in one.

  After a short ride to the hospital, the stretcher was rolled into an emergency room, where the lights were even brighter. “Please—my eyes,” she begged, grimacing and holding her hand over her face. Someone kindly draped a towel over her eyes.

  Then Natalie heard a familiar voice.

  “Miss Audra, is that you?” she asked.

  “Yes, Natalie. I’m here.” She sounded breathless. Natalie reached out a hand an
d Miss Audra took it. “They called me and said you fell. I came right away! I practically followed the ambulance. Are you okay?”

  “I think so. But my arm hurts.”

  “What happened, Natalie?”

  “I don’t know. I was getting something—wasn’t I? My backpack. I had my backpack and I fell down the stairs. Serena was with me.”

  “Apparently, it was a bad fall, Natalie. You lost consciousness for a few minutes.”

  “I did?”

  “Gosh, Natalie, did you have your cane with you? Were you using it?”

  Natalie didn’t answer right away. The only time she ever used her cane was during O and M lessons, after which she tossed the cane into the back of her closet.

  “I didn’t have it,” Natalie confessed.

  Silence as Natalie envisioned Miss Audra frowning and crossing her arms.

  “That ends tomorrow,” Miss Audra declared. “From now on, Natalie, the cane goes with you all the time and is used everywhere.”

  Natalie felt her heart dip. She did not want to use that cane. But neither did she want another bad accident. Deep down, she knew that the accident marked a turning point. No way could she keep on living the way she had, pretending she didn’t need any help but knowing that she did.

  Miss Audra stayed with Natalie for the next several hours while X-rays were taken and nurses watched for signs of head injury. An ice pack was brought in for her left shoulder, another for her wrist. The ice made her cold. Miss Audra left to find a blanket and even managed to locate a cup of warm tea somewhere.

  Finally, a doctor came in to announce that no bones were broken. “Although you do have a shoulder sprain,” he said. “And there was a slight concussion. You need to take it easy for a couple days.”

  It was nearly midnight when they arrived back at school. The evening counselor handed Natalie her hat and her glasses, which, amazingly enough, were still intact.

  “Is there anything else I can do?” Miss Audra asked.

  “I’ll be fine,” Natalie assured her, whispering at the doorway to her room so as not to wake Gabriella. “Thank you so much for everything.”