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There are seven stores ahead. My cane hits the side wall, and then not when I pass a store entrance, and then wall again. After seven gaps, I know I’m in the center hub.
This is the first time I expect Aunt Celia might intervene because I’m heading straight for the fountain. On purpose, but she doesn’t know that. It’s only shin high and she probably thinks I’ll plow into it. My cane strikes the rim and I stop. No one says anything.
Except a little boy nearby whispers loudly, “Mom! Mom! Look!”
Who knows what that’s about. Maybe me or maybe a turd floating in the fountain. Now comes the tricky part: orienting to the shoe store from here.
“She’s pretending she’s blind!” the boy says in a whisper loud enough to echo.
It’s always a question whether or not to ignore these things. I can tell he isn’t far away, so I lean toward him a bit.
“I’m not pretending,” I say in a loud whisper. “I’m really blind. And not deaf.”
He gasps and I hear scrambling. Maybe he’s hiding behind his mom.
“Then why’re you wearing a blindfold?” he asks.
“Come on, Donnie,” says a young woman. “Don’t bother her.”
“I wear it because it’s pretty. And because Japanese pilots in World War Two wore them when they crashed into things on purpose. Sometimes I crash into things too, though not on purpose.”
I realize this might be offensive, even if they aren’t Japanese. Too late now.
“Kamikaze!” he shouts, followed by plane noises, bullet noises, and an explosion noise, all of which probably adds several ounces of spit to the air.
With that taken care of, it’s time for the tricky part. The wing of the mall with the shoe place, Running Rampant, is opposite the fountain, which is round. It works best if I tap my way around by sidestepping, always trying to face the same way without pivoting, or else it’s hard to keep track of my direction. As I do it, the airplane noises diminish. When I think I’m there, it’s time to see if I got it right.
I walk far enough forward to know I’m generally in the main wing, and then I start trending toward the right, where I know the store is. I manage not to bump into anyone, like people who are probably just facing away, gawking at the window displays or whatever, and don’t hear my taps.
When I reach the doorway I pass through and walk straight until I tap a barrier that should be a shoe display. I reach out and touch canvas and shoelaces. Success. Now it’s a waiting game, and usually a short one.
“May I help you?”
It’s a guy’s voice. Maybe my age. I don’t recognize it.
“That depends. Do you work here?”
He chuckles. “Yeah, I’m an employee. Want to touch my name tag?”
“Not until we know each other better. Unless it’s in braille.”
“It’s not. It says Jason. Are you looking for someone?”
“Nope.” I lift my right leg a bit and turn my foot to the side. “Can I get a new pair of these in an eight?”
“Hmmm … I don’t think we carry those anymore.”
“The closest thing is fine. I’m not that picky.”
“In black?”
“Definitely. I am picky about that. No stripes or colors or any wacky stuff. If I run at night I want to get hit by a car because they can’t see me.”
“You might as well run at night since you don’t need any light. I’ll be right back.”
He leaves. No reaction to me running at night, or running at all; he even made a crack about it. I could like this guy. Except I don’t know if he’s seventeen or twenty-seven and that’s a tough thing to ask, even for me.
I say “No thank you, I’m being helped” to three different people before Jason returns.
“There’s an empty bench about three steps to your right,” he says.
While I tap over and sweep my hand, he keeps talking. “I don’t know if you care about brands—”
“I don’t.” I find the bench and sit down.
“Okay. They discontinued the shoes you’re wearing and replaced them with these, which are close but they put in more arch support and some B.S. spring-foam technology in the heel that doesn’t help but doesn’t hurt either. Do you want me to lace them for you?”
He asked me. He’s racking up points now.
“Give me one and you do the other.” I hold out a hand and a shoe lands in it.
“Sure thing.” He sits down next to me. “We can race.”
I have lots of experience lacing shoes but he works here so I’m guessing he’ll win.
“Are you a runner?” I ask. “Or is this just a job?”
“Why not both? But yeah, I run.”
“You ever run track in school?” I ask. Very smooth.
“Still do. Well, if I make the team, which seems likely. Tryouts are next week.”
“Where do you go?”
“I’m a senior at Adams, now. What about you?”
“Ah, you’re one of the immigrants. I’m a native.”
“Really?”
Now I wonder if he’s playing me. Not to be conceited or anything but what are the odds that he’s never seen me and my blindfold tapping around school?
It’s too much to let go. “You haven’t seen me around?”
“No, I guess we don’t have any of the same classes.”
“Or walk the same halls, or eat in the same cafeteria.”
He laughs. “I just walk the track with a granola bar at lunchtime.”
I finish lacing. “Time. You finished already?”
“Uhhh …” he says. “Yeeeeeaaaaaah … finished … Here.”
“I won, didn’t I?”
“You’ll never know.”
Wow, taking advantage of my blindness in a safe, playful way in the first five minutes.
I put on both shoes and stand.
“You have about three or four clear steps in front of you. If you want more, I can clear out an aisle for you.”
“No, this is fine.” I bounce on my toes and run the shoes through some paces. They feel odd but in the usual way new shoes do. Otherwise good.
“How much?”
“Seventy-nine ninety-nine.”
I pull the credit card from my pocket and hold it out. “I’ll take them. I’ll be up to the counter in a minute.”
“No need, we just got these portable scanners.”
While he scans the shoe box (beep) and types (click click) I change back into my old shoes and pack the new ones away.
“You sign on the screen. I’ll put the tip of the pen where it goes.”
I hold out a hand and it finds a pen. I grab on and he’s holding the other end in space until it clicks on a hard surface.
“There.”
I sign my name and he takes back the pen.
“I tucked the receipt in the box.”
“Thanks.”
“If you check it later, which you should, it actually cost only sixty-eight dollars, or seventy-three seventy-eight with tax.”
“They’re on sale?”
“No, I have a Friends and Family discount. I think we’re friends now. It’s just a code we enter—we don’t flag your account or anything—so whenever you come here you have to ask for me, Jason Freeborn.”
“Cool—thanks, Jason.”
“But if my boss asks, I’d better have a name to give him.”
“I’m sorry?”
“What’s your name?”
Oh. What an idiot. “Parker. Parker Grant. Just like on the credit card.”
“I didn’t want to assume. A lot of people use their parents’ cards.”
“I wish.”
“Here are your shoes. Promise me you won’t run at night, even though you can.”
“I promise.”
“Good. Maybe I’ll see you in the halls at Adams. And since we’re friends now, I want to see you run in these sometime.”
Strangely enough, I’m thinking I might let him.
Except there are no patients in the room, or rather the table where Sarah and I are sitting outside in the Junior Quad. We provide easy access to our patients but not much privacy. Sarah says we can’t be overheard if we talk softly but people still have to struggle with whether they want to be seen with us since most people know why we’re out here every morning. Well, most Adams natives know, not the Jefferson immigrants.
“Lori’s talking to someone I don’t know and looking over here,” Sarah says. “Either gossiping about us or working up the nerve to come over. Oh, here comes Molly.”
“Hey, what’s up? You guys usually sit out here in the morning?”
“Every day,” I say. “Doing the good work.”
“It looks like sitting around to me.”
“Looks are deceiving. We provide a rare and valuable service—”
“Here they come,” Sarah says with an edge to her voice because Molly’s here.
Before I can say anything, Lori says, “Hi, Sarah. Parker.”
A girl I don’t know says, “Hi, Moll.”
“Hey, Reg,” Molly says. “How was your summer?”
“Okay.”
“This is Regina,” Lori says. “She has a problem. I told her she should talk to you.”
“Have a seat,” Sarah says. “Um … Molly?”
“It’s okay,” Regina says. “She can stay. She already knows most of it.”
There’s some scuffling as people sit down.
“Go ahead, Regina,” Lori says. “It’s okay.”
“So … I was going out with Gabe last spring, but we broke up right before school let out.”
Silence.
“Regina …” Lori says.
“He dumped me. Then he went to Spain for the whole summer on an exchange program.”
“Hang on,” I say. “How’d he do it? In person, phone, text?”
“When I was at work he texted me We need to talk and I texted back About what? and he said We should talk in person and I said You’re freaking me out, what’s wrong? and he said I could call him if I couldn’t wait and I said I was at work but I’d call him on my break. Then I called him and he broke up with me.”
“Did he say why?” Sarah asks.
“He said we were growing apart. That we both knew things were cooling off and he didn’t want to drag it out when we only had one more year at school.”
“Was he right?” I ask. “Were things cooling off?”
“I didn’t think so, but …”
Silence. This is what I need from Sarah later, whether this girl is looking at her hands, looking up at the sky trying to find words, glancing at all the faces not wanting to share with a crowd …
“We can’t keep entire conversations confidential because honestly it’s too hard to sort everything out,” Sarah says. “But if there’s anything specific you want us to keep to ourselves, we will. Just tell us.”
“It’s not that. It’s just … well … I guess things weren’t that hot in the first place?”
“You’re not that into him, or he into you?” I say.
“Oh, we’re great together, but … maybe he wants to go faster than I do?”
I say, “He said things were cooling off but he actually meant things weren’t heating up fast enough.”
“Maybe.”
“Did you two talk about it?” Sarah asks.
“No. I didn’t say much. I was at work, and I really didn’t expect it. I dunno. I just felt like I blew it somehow. I didn’t want to make it worse by trying to figure out what went wrong and promising to fix it or begging or whatever. I just wanted to hang up. So I did and that was it. Well, until last week. He started calling me again.”
“He wants to get back together?”
“He didn’t say that. And I didn’t ask. He just said he misses me and wants to catch up.”
“And you don’t know whether you want to?” Sarah asks.
“I don’t know if I should.”
“There is no should,” I say.
“Parker’s right,” Sarah adds quickly, which tells me to let her follow her line so I clam up. “I asked whether you want to. That’s what matters.”
“I dunno. I do, I guess. We really get along and stuff. I miss hanging out … but … after he broke up with me … I dunno … I think it’d be weird.”
“Weird how?” Sarah says quickly. To emphasize the importance of the question and to get it out before I go off on her, which Sarah must know is about to happen.
“I dunno. Just weird. I didn’t see it coming the first time so it could happen again anytime without me expecting it. I’d be thinking that all the time. I guess that’s true with anyone, though. I just wasn’t thinking about it before.”
“So what do you want to do?” Sarah asks.
“I guess … I want to be with him. I just don’t want to be looking over my shoulder all the time, you know?”
“Yes, definitely,” Sarah says.
“So … what should I do?”
“We don’t tell anyone what to do—”
“Except when it’s obvious,” I say, unable to hold back any longer. “You just said it. Go find someone to be with where you don’t have to look over your shoulder. Is that this guy, what’s his name?”
“Gabe.”
“Gabe. Is Gabe a guy you’ll have to look over your shoulder with?”
“I guess so.”
“Problem solved.”
“But I miss hanging out …”
“He said things weren’t hot enough for him. Give the guy points for breaking up before he went to Spain to have a fling without cheating, but he loses them again for trying to worm his way back to you now that he’s back, to see if a summer alone—were you alone?”
“Yeah.”
“To see if losing him for three months might have changed your mind about whether you wanted to put out to keep him.”
“He never said that. I don’t think he’s trying to be sneaky—”
“We already know he’s sneaky. He was your boyfriend; didn’t he know your work schedule? And he texts you while you’re at work saying We need to talk. He knows you have to reply to that. And when you do he says you guys should talk in person, knowing you won’t be able to wait. Then he breaks up with you on the phone, saving himself the awkwardness of doing it face-to-face but making it your fault. If he wasn’t sneaky, he would’ve just waited till the next time you were together.”
Silence.
“The point is,” I say, “if he wasn’t happy before, why would he be happy now? Either he’s changed or he’s hoping you have. Have you changed?”
“I don’t think so.”
“He hasn’t either, sorry to tell you. People don’t change. They just learn from experience and become better actors.”
More silence.
Sarah says, “I don’t know if this helps, but we’re here every morning if you want to talk.”
I hear shuffling and footsteps.
“They’re gone,” Sarah says.
“How’d it end?”
“She looked confused. The usual cognitive dissonance. She wants to get back what she thought she had, knows it’s not really there, really wants it to be, and is struggling with how much to rationalize to get it back.”
“Wait, what the hell just happened?” Molly says. “Regina walked up and told you all that and you’ve never even met?”
“It’s something we do,” Sarah says. “Everyone at Adams knows. We listen to anything without being judgmental—”
I snort but Sarah ignores me.
“—and we offer unbiased observations and advice. We do a pretty good job of keeping things confidential …”
“Is she looking at me?” I say. “I keep the sensitive stuff quiet, but part of the value we provide is knowing things about other people. For instance, we were helping—”
“Parker!” Sarah snaps.
“Fine!” I say. “I wasn’t going to say any names.”
“You guys …” Molly says. “Well, I was going to ask if you’re serious, but Regina … I mean …”
“She said you knew about her breakup,” I say. “She talk to you?”
“A little.”
“What’d you tell her?”
“I mostly agreed with whatever she said. It seemed like what she needed.”
“Of course. When he’s dreamy, he’s dreamy; when he’s a jerk, he’s a jerk. A lot of people need that, but they also need the truth they usually can’t get from friends. Talking the way we do is tough for people to do and stay friends.”
“She means the way she talks,” Sarah says. “And yes, it’s absolutely hard to stay friends with her talking the way she does.”
“Ouch,” I say. “But it’s what people need; that’s why they come to us. They don’t have months or years to do it the old-fashioned way, professional-like. So Sarah starts it off right and then I cut to the chase.”
“How did this even start?” Molly asks. “You guys sitting out here … How do people know?”
I wait for Sarah to answer. She doesn’t.
I pivot my head to face her. “Go on, Sarah. Tell her.”
“God,” Sarah says in her eye-rolling voice. “The bitchiness I have no problems with … but the smugness … ugh …”
I grin.
“Fine,” she says. “One of the unexpected side effects of Parker going blind was how she got … less and less sensitive about what she said to people because she couldn’t see them flinch. Then freshman year a few people came back and thanked her for being so blunt, saying they later realized she was right and it really helped them. And here we are, two years later.”
“See, that wasn’t so hard, was it?” I turn back to face Molly. “She even sold herself short. We’re a team because those things I say to people, most of them I wouldn’t even know if Sarah didn’t tell me. It’s like I said, she’s the eyes and the brains, I’m just the loudmouth.”
“Wow, you’re like Good Cop, Bad Cop Psychologists,” Molly says. “You should charge people five cents a session.”
“Yes!” I say. “We used to put out a coffee mug with Lucy on it saying The Doctor is IN, but it broke a while ago.”
“Maybe it’s time for a confession,” Sarah says without sounding at all remorseful. “I broke that mug on purpose.”
“You did?” I’m genuinely shocked. “Why?”
“She’s right about what she says to Charlie Brown but she’s totally heartless about it. That’s not us. Lucy’s a bitch.”
“But that’s perfect for you guys,” Molly says. “Each of you are half of Lucy. You’re the insightful psychologist half, and Parker, you’re …”
I laugh. Can’t deny it. Don’t even want to.
*
My locker combination is easy: zero-zero-zero, and there’s a bump on the dial by the zero. I have a separate padlock that takes a key since I can’t tell if someone’s looking over my shoulder. I asked them to disable the combination lock but they said they couldn’t without damaging it—which I don’t believe—so I asked if they could at least make it the easiest combination. Now I get the joy of unlocking two locks every time I want in my locker.
“Hi, Parker.”
It’s Faith. She doesn’t normally just say hi out of nowhere anymore so I wonder what else she wants. I’m not worried, though; school’s out and Molly has plenty to do in the library till I get there.
“Hey, Fay-Fay, how are you today?” It’s an old rhyme from when we were kids. She probably doesn’t like that nickname anymore but I’m in a good mood and she’s never told me to stop using it.
“You want to go to the mall this weekend?”
There were ninety-nine things I thought she might say—that wasn’t one of them.
Faith and I don’t hang out, mainly because we have almost nothing in common anymore. We act like we don’t get along but we’re the opposite of frenemies; we’re friends who pretend to be enemies. I guess that makes us enemends. We share a lot of serious history without any bumps in the road and were there for each other through the worst of it, just not so much day to day.
“It’s only Monday,” I say, buying time. “You really plan ahead.”
“I go to Ridgeway every weekend. I just thought maybe you’d like someone else to pick out clothes with besides Sarah ‘Sweatpants’ Gunderson for a change.”
“I guess she’s not invited.”
“She can come.”
“We don’t shop together,” I say. It’s never really occurred to me to wonder what Sarah wears all the time. “Does Sarah wear sweatpants a lot?”
“Only on days ending in y. Do you want to go?”
I don’t. And, well … I kind of do. I don’t want all the hassle, or pressure to get clothes that are too showy or aren’t my style, but … since Dad died I haven’t done any shopping besides the shoes yesterday. Shoes are about the only things I don’t need some amount of help with.
“Don’t you usually go with Lila and Kennedy?”
“Not always. It’s okay if you don’t want to.”
I wonder if this is one of those times I should just go with it without overanalyzing everything.
Nope.
“Why are you asking now?”
“What do you mean?”
“We’ve never been shopping together and suddenly, on a random Monday afternoon, you want to go, but not till next weekend. What made you think of it?”
“Like I said, if you don’t want to …” she says.
“I didn’t say I didn’t want to.”
Silence.
“Nothing’s easy with you, Peegee. Not one thing.”
She sounds resigned, not angry. I feel a twinge because I know she’s right. Then a thought occurs to me. “Is this because I’m an orphan now?”
Sigh. The kind that tells me how burdensome my friendship is to her.
“Yes, Parker, it’s because you’re a hopeless charity case.” She closes her locker. “You just have to dissect everything around you like dead frogs.”
I laugh. “Today’s the first time since we met in kindergarten that you ask me to mall crawl and you’re surprised I want to talk about why?”
“Did I say I was surprised?” she says. “Fine, I saw you in the mall yesterday buying shoes.”
“Oh, you … Why didn’t you say something? Ah … the Dynamic Trio.”
She clears her throat—she hates that name. “I was alone. You were talking to a cute guy. I didn’t want to break the spell.”
“He was cute?” I say.
“Do you care?”
“Ha! See, you do know me. Wait, you were shopping alone?”
“There’s a time for everything. But I bet you think all shopping should be solo because you don’t want anyone’s help. Am I right?”
No way I’ll ever admit that. “You’re telling me you trust Lila and Kennedy’s opinions about clothes more than your own?”
“It’s not just about being helped. It’s nice. It’s fun.”
“Nice? Fun?”
“You know what? I’ve changed my mind. You do have to go. Sarah and Molly, too. You can’t walk around claiming to know everything if you’ve never even gone out shopping with friends. We’re going this Saturday—it’s decided.”
Nobody, but nobody tells me what to do. Nobody.
“All right, then,” I say.
It bugs me the way she always says my mom and my dad. I mean, whenever I talk to anyone about my parents, R.I.P., it’s always my mom or my dad because it’s not their mom or dad; but Sheila and I are cousins and even though her mom and dad aren’t mine, I know them and we live together now and it just sounds weird. I don’t know, it just bugs me.
“I’m surprised,” I say. “Driving me without your mom here means you’re breaking the law, but your mom’s still an accessory if she knows about it. I always thought of her as someone who doesn’t break the law for convenience.”
“Your convenience. I told her you could walk home. It’s too bad she said no—you could take your buddy Molly with you. She could lose a few pounds.”
“What?”
She puts the car in gear and hits the accelerator. “Anyway, it’s not against the law if it’s to or from school and I have a signed note. Which I have. Wanna see it?”
“I can’t … heyyyy, wait just a minute here,” I say. “Are you kidding? You must be, since you know I’m blind and all, so I can’t see notes or how fat or skinny anyone is. Or are you just being mean?”