Things That Are (retail)

  things that are

  ANDREW CLEMENTS

  things that are

  PHILOMEL BOOKS

  PATRICIA LEE GAUCH, EDITOR

  PHILOMEL BOOKS

  A division of Penguin Young Readers Group.

  Published by The Penguin Group.

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.). Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England. Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd). Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd). Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi-110 017, India. Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd). Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa. Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England.

  Copyright © 2008 by Andrew Clements. All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, Philomel Books, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 345 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014. Philomel Books, Reg. U.S. Pat. & Tm. Off. The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  . Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  ISBN: 1-101-15866-2

  Again, for Rebecca

  Contents

  chapter 1: vibrations

  chapter 2: moonless

  chapter 3: voices

  chapter 4: friend

  chapter 5: watchers

  chapter 6: orbits

  chapter 7: gentleman caller

  chapter 8: squeaks

  chapter 9: tissue

  chapter 10: in the air

  chapter 11: up to a point

  chapter 12: felonies

  chapter 13: we

  chapter 14: quiz show

  chapter 15: trust

  chapter 16: plan in motion

  chapter 17: blood on snow

  chapter 18: confessions

  chapter 19: still of the night

  chapter 20: some friend

  chapter 21: now

  chapter 1

  vibrations

  The phone vibrates under my pillow—dash; dot, dot, dot. That’s B. For “Bobby.” The second call from him on the same night. Which is good news. Very good news. Even at two in the morning. Because our earlier conversation didn’t go as far as I wanted it to. I need to say something else to him. Something important.

  Dash; dot, dot, dot—

  I push the answer button and I use my warmest voice, sweet and sleepy. “Hey—hi.”

  Nothing.

  I press the phone against my ear and talk louder. “Bobby? Bobby? It’s Alicia.”

  Faint voices, one of them his. Plus a lot of hiss and static.

  And right away I know what this is. It’s not another call from Bobby. It’s a mistake. He has one of those candy-bar cell phones, and he keeps it in his pocket. And when he sat down or bent over, something pushed against the redial button. By mistake. So now I’m eavesdropping on a conversation in New York City, eight hundred miles away.

  It’s a guy talking, someone I don’t know, and his voice sounds odd. I stifle a yawn and try to focus on the words.

  “…and that is precisely what you do not understand. There are other forces at work. And all this anger is unproductive—especially since you and I have common interests. I was hoping—”

  Bobby interrupts.

  “We don’t have anything in common, not one thing.”

  “I am deeply disappointed that you seem so unwilling to help me. Because I’m sure you can. And I really must insist. One way or another, you are going to help me.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Bobby’s voice is hard and flat.

  “It means that, like it or not, we are linked now. And because…”

  Harsh hissing noises and random phone button tones. Then silence.

  And my phone gives a little shake that means “call ended.”

  I’m tempted to call Bobby back, make sure he’s all right.

  But I don’t want him to think I’m worried about him. Even if I am.

  And I don’t want our next conversation to begin by accident.

  And really, what I have to tell him? I don’t want to talk about it on the phone. We need to be in the same room. No static, no hum, no distance. Close. Breathing the same air.

  So I tuck the phone back under my pillow, pull the quilt up over my shoulders, and yawn, and I shut my eyes, and I let it all go. For now.

  Because everything will have to wait until tomorrow. Until morning. Until Thursday.

  chapter 2

  moonless

  I swat the clock and it stops buzzing. I blink my eyes to scatter the last of my dreams, a scary one about Bobby and this angry man who keeps shouting, “Fee, fie, foe, fum!”

  And I sit up, take a look around, and then shut my eyes and flop back into my pillow.

  Yes. I’m Alicia. It’s me. Here in bed.

  And right away a docudrama about life on earth flashes onto the small screen inside my head. With me in the starring role.

  Me.

  Four and a half years ago, me wasn’t much of a word. I was an eighth-grader then—kind of popular, kind of pretty, kind of interesting, kind of smart, kind of aimless and friendly and snotty and carefree and anxious and shallow and deep and wistful and perky and moody and…kind of ordinary. An ordinary me on an ordinary path to an ordinary high-school-and-college-and-grad-school-and-career-and-home-and-family-and-second-career-and-retirement kind of a life.

  All of which sounds kind of heavenly right now.

  Because halfway through eighth grade I banged my head, and something stopped working, something neural and retinal, something that affected both my eyes. And since that moment I’ve been blind.

  No one could figure it out, at least not in any practical, fixable way. So I’ve been learning to cope.

  I’ve had help, of course. My parents have been great, first fighting for the best specialists, the best care, the best analysis. Then fighting for the best teaching, the best equipment, the best of everything. Hard times for them. Especially Mom. Or maybe she just lets more worry seep out into the air than Daddy does.

  The people at the Hadley School for the Blind have been great too—kind and very patient.

  It was dark back then. I wore a brave face for my mom and dad, but so much had disappeared. And after a year or two I was headed that way myself, feeling more and more lost.

  And then Bobby happened.

  Bobby.

  He’s been away almost three weeks now. I can’t help thinking about him, and I loved talking to him last night. Except I wanted to say so much more.

  He won’t be back from his auditions in New York until Sunday, three more days. He’s hoping to get accepted at a music school, hoping to start this fall, studying trumpet, jazz and classical. And all his college choices are far away from Chicago. Far away from me.

  Before I met Bobby, I had lost most of my hopes, my plan
s, my dreams. I had lost my view of the future. The blindness had its hooks in deep.

  What changed me most wasn’t just our friendship. Which is turning into something more. Maybe.

  What changed me was being able to help someone. I know that if I hadn’t helped Bobby two years ago, he wouldn’t have found his way back from his own temporary disability, his own brand of blindness. Helping him made me see I could do more to help myself.

  And about two years ago I reenrolled in high school. Not school for the blind. High school. That was a few months after I met Bobby. The timing wasn’t a coincidence. The things he and I went through back then changed me.

  Because a moment came when I had to choose whether I was going to be blind or not, and I chose. And now I’m not blind. I still can’t see, but I’m not blind. And I keep making that choice. Every day.

  And what’s happened to me during the two years since Bobby burst into my life?

  Now I am a better thinker, a better reader, a better writer—at least I think I am. I even play guitar—badly, but I’m learning. And now I can type like crazy, about eighty words a minute. And I read Braille faster than most of my teachers. I’ve got a portable Braille keyboard, and I can fly through novels, textbooks, web pages, reference books, anything on a screen. I plug the thing into my laptop and it translates the output, pushing up pins to form the symbols. I touch, I feel, I read, I see. And soon I’m getting an audible GPS hookup—uses a Bluetooth connection and uplinks to satellites, eyes in the sky. And the new electronic voices and the new screen readers are fantastic, and I’m staying on top of all that stuff. Because in the land of the blind, it’s geekness or weakness. I am the techno queen.

  And I’ve used my new sensitivities, used the strange freedoms my blindness has given me. Freedom from distractions. Freedom to be alone. Freedom from cliques and gossip and comparisons—all the junk that can make school feel like a snake pit. I’ve used my freedom to crunch through three years of high school in two. And I got great SAT scores, and my class rank is up in the top three percent.

  This isn’t bragging. And I’m not doing all this to make my parents proud, or to show the world how a blind girl is as capable as the next kid.

  So why am I pushing myself?

  Bobby.

  He’s going to college this fall, and so am I. I’m going too. Because I am not going to be left behind. I am not going to be the girl back home, back in his past life. I’m no musician, so I know we won’t be at the same school. But I can be somewhere near, somewhere in his life. In the present. Maybe.

  Another maybe.

  And maybe all this Bobby stuff is a dream. Which is why we have to talk, just the two of us. Soon.

  Because I know how cruel dreams can be.

  Every night in my dreams I see perfectly for hours and hours—maple trees, streams and mountains, the city skyline, the faces I love, tulips and sunsets. All those stored-up images.

  And the moon. In my dreams I always see the moon, bright against the sky.

  And every morning I learn I’m blind all over again. That’s the cruel part. I open my eyes and stare: darkness, but not the night sky. It’s a wall, dull and blackish brown, and very near. No sun, no stars, no moon.

  Makes it hard to get out of bed. Like today, right now.

  Gertie’s here, and that’s good. She’s a German shepherd, and I can hear her stir and stretch and yawn in her doggie bed across the room. I got her almost six months ago. I’d become good enough at tapping my white cane that my counselor decided I could use a guide dog. A new level of moonless independence.

  And really, Gertie’s wonderful, like a low-tech organ transplant, a set of eyes walking alongside, complete with an extra brain.

  My turn to stretch and yawn. I didn’t rest well last night. Two phone calls from Bobby—one on purpose, and one that scared me. An argument…right? It’s fuzzy. Along with a bunch of other things in my life.

  It feels like there’s so much at risk right now.

  Which is why I have to get up and face the world, deal with it, be positive, make progress.

  That’s what I tell myself.

  But I don’t move.

  Gertie jumps onto the bed and nudges me with her nose. She’s always direct, always definite. And now she needs to go out. I almost push her away, send her off to find Mom. But Gertie is my responsibility, my eyes.

  Besides, Mom and Dad aren’t here. Thursday is my morning to sleep late. Both my parents are on campus by now, one teaching and the other being taught. We live practically in the middle of the University of Chicago, so even when they’re gone, they’re close.

  They’re always close, especially Mom. If she could crawl inside my skin with me, if she could be blind along with me, or instead of me, she would.

  I’m glad she’s studying again, getting her Ph.D. in Elizabethan poetry. She used to do a lot of writing for a group of marketing consultants, a job she didn’t like much, and my blindness gave her a reason to quit. Which let her focus on helping me—even when I wanted to do more and more on my own. So now the degree program keeps her busy, which makes both of us a little less crazy. I mean, I know my blindness has been tough for her. The truth? I’ve made the adjustment better than she has. Which is one of the reasons I love Thursday morning so much: I get to wake up when I want, pick out the clothes I want to wear, eat whatever I want for breakfast, and wander over to the university library when I’m good and ready. All on my own—no advice, no directions, no silent frowns. And no timekeeper. Unless you count Gertie.

  I’m enrolled in regular high school, but I don’t attend on a regular schedule. Thanks to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, I get to do flextime and individualized study projects.

  So I use my special status under the law. I work the system. And today I’m legally truant, sleeping in.

  Another nudge.

  “Okay, Gertie. It’s all right. Good girl.”

  I’m up, and I pull on my robe and find a slipper, and I’ve got the other one, and now that I’m on the move, Gertie jumps off the bed and goes into guide-dog mode, even though she’s not wearing her harness. She’s completely unselfish, so focused on my needs, always so close—like I’m the president and she’s my Secret Service agent.

  Would Gertie take a bullet for me? Absolutely.

  But here at home I don’t need much help, so I release her, and I hear her trot ahead to the end of the hallway, hear her claws click down the back stairs to the kitchen door that opens into the fenced backyard. I follow, much more slowly.

  When I get to the back door, first I reach up and to the right. I push the alarm status button, and a strong male voice announces, “System is armed.” So I find the keypad, push the four-digit code, and the same voice says, “System is disarmed.”

  My parents never leave me at home without turning on the alarm system. I’m their baby, and the alarm system is the babysitter. One of the babysitters.

  I open the door.

  There’s a walnut tree in the center of the backyard, home to a pair of squirrels. One of the few times Gertie gets to be purely a dog is when she blasts out the door in the morning and streaks toward that tree, trying to catch a warm meal. And today, like every day, after the scramble I hear the squirrels, twenty feet up, scolding my dog.

  Classic scene.

  Except I have to imagine it, make my own pictures.

  I barely think anymore about the way I see without eyesight.

  But at a moment like this, with cold February air in my face, when I become aware of the process, I’m still amazed at how well it works. Because my four good senses pick up all this information, and that data sprays a stream of words across my mind, and those words create images—my own private movie. Which may or may not be physically accurate. And that’s fine with me. I’m not afraid of ambiguity. I use my words and I see what I want to see, what I need to see.

  And I love my words and I’m so glad it all works. Otherwise, this morning scene would be nothing bu
t vibrations on my eardrums—invisible dog chasing invisible squirrels.

  Invisible.

  I got so angry at Bobby when I first met him. He told me he was invisible. I thought he was mocking me. Because I’d been struggling with that word. And that feeling. Invisible.

  Because blindness tries to make everything disappear—friends, family, life, self.

  But Bobby wasn’t mocking me. He wasn’t being metaphorical. Or metaphysical. All that came later.

  That first day when he told me he was invisible, he meant it. He was talking physics—cold, hard physics: He’d woken up one morning and his body had stopped reflecting light. For real. It was science, an actual phenomenon. He had just happened to be at the right place at the right moment when the right conditions converged. Or maybe I should call them the wrong conditions. Either way, this precise set of interacting circumstances had created an observable effect. On Bobby, on his physical body.

  And two years ago he and I were the ones who finally figured things out, figured out how he could get back to normal—as normal as anyone can be after an experience like that.

  I mean, it’s not like Bobby and I figured it out entirely on our own. We had some big-time help thinking about the problem. Both our dads are completely into physics—real scientists. Supergeeks. Mine looks at outer space—he teaches astrophysics at the University of Chicago. And Bobby’s dad looks at inner space—hunting for particles, and the parts of the parts of the parts of the particles. He works with the Tevatron team at FermiLab, which is in Batavia, Illinois, about an hour west of here.

  The two dads squished their brains all over the invisibility problem, trying to understand the physics, trying to see how to reverse the process. But in the end, they were stumped.