Things Not Seen Read online

  Alicia’s on edge too. She isn’t going to let the conversation slow down. She says, “So, how is she? And what about your dad?”

  “My dad wanted to come home too, but the doctors wouldn’t let him. Which is good. See, what I hope is that he has to stay away long enough that when he gets out, he can go right back to work. I don’t think I could stand being stuck in the house all day with both my folks.”

  Alicia is nodding as if what I’m saying is really interesting to her. But I’ve stopped talking, so she gives me another prompt. “And your mom, she’s at home now, right?”

  I’m glad for the help, because all of a sudden silence seems scary. I mean, what Mom said was kind of true. I hardly know this girl. And when I talk, I feel like my voice sounds funny. “Yeah, she’s home. She’s okay, but she’s still kind of weak. The taxi guy had to help her up the front steps when she got home. And then the second she got in the house, I had to do some cleaning ’cause I could tell she was grossed out. I mean, I didn’t do any dusting or anything while she was gone, but still, it was only three days. It’s not like the house was a pit or something.”

  While I’m talking, I glance at the door of the listening room. There’s a guy there at the window, a man in a tweed jacket, about forty years old with a big head of wild hair. He stops, looks in, sees Alicia, looks at his watch, and then walks on.

  Alicia nods. “Yeah, my mom’s the same way. And my dad too. Neatness freaks. And now that I can’t see anything, it’s even worse. They’re afraid for me all the time, like if a shoe is lying in the wrong place, they think I’m going to trip over it and break my neck.”

  I pounce on that idea. “You said you’ve been blind for two years, right?” Because that’s something we haven’t talked about yet.

  She nods. “Uh-huh. A little more than two years now.”

  “I asked about that yesterday, but you didn’t tell me how it happened.”

  She shrugs and blushes a little. “It just happened, that’s the dumb part. It’s not like there was some disease, or a terrible accident or anything.”

  “But, like, something had to happen, right?”

  Her upper lip curls into a little sneer. She snaps, “Yeah, well, duh, Bobby—I mean, something happened. Of course something happened.”

  I don’t know what to say. Talking with her, it’s like walking along on ice, and I think it’s safe, and then I take one more step, and everything starts to crack and buckle. And under the ice there’s this dark river.

  We’re both quiet. Then she takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. And she smiles a little. “Sorry. It’s just I don’t know how to tell about it. I think about this stuff, but I don’t talk about it.”

  I look at her face the whole time, and I can see her thinking, deciding if she wants to talk. And it’s like she’s going a long way back somewhere so she can look around and remember. Then in a quiet little voice I have not heard before, she starts talking.

  ”It just happened. Two years ago. It was night, it was cold, January nineteenth, two days before my birthday. My mom had left the window open. I remember being really cold and waking up without any covers on. I reached over the side of the bed where they usually fall off, and they weren’t there, so I reached toward the other side, toward the windows. And I fell out of bed. I just fell and hit my head. I didn’t think anything about it. It didn’t even hurt that much. I just got up and kind of shook it off.”

  She pauses. This is hard for her. But she keeps going, talking in that small voice. “I wasn’t really awake, so I just grabbed my quilts off the floor and pulled them around me and went back to sleep. But in the morning…the morning was horrible. I knew I was awake, but it was like I was still asleep, or like I was lost inside this big dark…thing. But I knew I was home, in my own room. I could hear the birds on the feeder outside, and I could feel the sun on my face at the window, feel the cold glass on my fingertips, but…I couldn’t see anything.”

  The guy in the tweed jacket is back at the door of the room. Must be waiting for a seminar meeting. He looks in, acts as if he’s going to open the door, then leaves again.

  Alicia takes a long ragged breath, and then wills herself to calm down. “You remember how mad I got yesterday when you said you were invisible?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, part of that was because that’s exactly how I felt that first morning, that whole first year when I was suddenly the little blind girl. It was like I became invisible. I couldn’t see myself, I couldn’t see me going to dances or college or grad school, couldn’t see myself becoming an archaeologist. I was never going to get to see the pyramids or the Valley of the Kings. And I couldn’t even see getting married or having kids, or anything I used to wish about. Everything just disappeared.

  “I could tell other people were looking at me funny, I could feel it, and I could hear it in their voices. It felt like they wished I would just go away. I made them uncomfortable. And I couldn’t read the books I loved, I couldn’t watch movies, couldn’t see sunsets or flowers. It was all invisible, just like me.

  “Like a million different doctors looked at my eyes, and they were all real nice, and they explained what happened, but everyone said it couldn’t be fixed.

  “And it was like my parents couldn’t see me either. They just saw this thing that was suddenly helpless. They’re better now, but still, I’m not their wonderful daughter they were so proud of anymore. Now I’m a big job, a job they can’t get rid of even if they wanted to.” Anger again. Deep and hot and hurtful.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I notice the man again, the guy with the big hair. He’s about four feet back from the door, and he looks anxious. He’s got an old tan briefcase in one hand. He’s standing at an angle where he can see Alicia as she talks. Then he moves, trying to scan the room to see the person who’s listening to her. I think, Get lost, mister. The room’s reserved until three, and if this girl wants to talk to the walls, that’s what she’s gonna do.

  “What about your friends?” I ask. “Didn’t they help?”

  Her lower lip trembles, and maybe this is one question too many. I really can’t take tears. But she pulls back from the edge, and she starts talking again.

  “I guess I was popular before it happened, but that didn’t help. All the kids I hung around with just disappeared—all but Nancy, Nancy Fredericks. She was great. She came over almost every day after school, and she talked, and she just sat there and took it if I got mad and started calling her terrible names, and when I cried sometimes, she cried too. She could still see me, and she didn’t care about the blindness. That first year, my parents had special tutors come to our house and start to teach me Braille and all that blind junk—you know, like, ‘Here’s your white cane to tap around with, little girl.’ But it was Nancy who kept me from going crazy. She told me about school and the teachers and the boys, and who had a crush on who. We still talk on the phone. It’s like she’s the only thing that didn’t change in my life. Everything and everybody else changed…. It’s like I disappeared along with the whole rest of the world.”

  She’s done. And she’s self-conscious again. I don’t know what to say. I feel like I’ve been reading her diary. Risky stuff. So I just say, “Thanks…for telling me all that.”

  “Why thanks?” she asks. She sits back in her chair and pulls her legs up against her chest.

  “I don’t know,” I say, “I guess, because you didn’t have to tell me.”

  She gets a devilish smile on her face. “Like yesterday, when you didn’t have to tell me about what’s happening to you, right?”

  “Yeah. Like that.”

  And then I see what she means. Because I did have to tell her, just like she had to tell me all of this. I had to trust her. Sometimes you have to tell someone else what it’s like. Because if you don’t, you’ll go nuts.

  The tweedy guy is at the door again, and now he’s pushing it open, barging right in. Alicia hears the door and turns, putting her feet down as s
he does.

  The man says, “Alicia? What are you doing? Who are you talking to?”

  The color drains from Alicia’s face. She says, “Wh…what are you doing here?”

  “I’m here because your mom called and said she thought you might be meeting someone here today, and—”

  “And you thought it would be all right to do a little spying on your little girl, is that it?” Alicia presses her lips together. She’s past the surprise already, and now she’s mad.

  And me? I’m scared. Because I’m shut inside a small room with a blind girl and her father.

  And the man is looking for answers.

  chapter 14

  TWO COMMITTEES

  So Alicia’s dad finds out about me, and then her mom does too. It’s not much of a story. It’s Friday in the library, and Alicia’s taking heat from her dad about why she’s talking to the wall for five minutes straight, and I can see that she’s going to have to start lying for me. And I don’t want her to have to do that. So I just begin talking to her dad.

  And he stutters, and squints, and passes through all the phases that Mom, Dad, and Alicia have: fear, confusion, disbelief, and then amazement that levels out to a steady curiosity. Of course, for Mom and Dad, the final phase is a steady worry that keeps on chewing at them—but that’s because they’re my parents, and parents can’t help worrying about their kids, even if they’re fine.

  So as the great Professor Leo Van Dorn gets over the shock, he immediately starts to theorize, just like my dad did, except that he’s an astronomer, so instead of talking calmly about visible light anomalies and refractive indexes like Dad did, he’s pacing around the room looking at me from every angle while he runs one hand through his Einstein hair, and he’s saying that I’m like a black hole, “…a different absorptive principle, of course, but quite extraordinary nevertheless.”

  The next person who has to know is Alicia’s mom. After all, you can’t have two thirds of a family knowing a juicy secret like The Bobby Story. So as they leave the library, I tell Alicia and her dad it’s okay to tell Mrs. Van Dorn, as long as they’re sure she won’t go nuts and call the cops or something. And late Friday afternoon Alicia’s mom passes through the same steps when Alicia and her dad tell her about me. I hear about it later on the phone from Alicia. First her mom thinks Alicia and her dad are ganging up on her to play a practical joke. When she finally believes them, she goes right to the heart of her problem with the whole situation. She says to Alicia, “What does this young man wear when you meet with him?”

  And Alicia says, “On really cold days, he wears Saran Wrap, but most of the time he’s naked.” Mrs. Van Dorn is not amused by this.

  And my first visit to Alicia’s house? That’s on Saturday afternoon. It didn’t help that Alicia didn’t tell her mom that I was coming. I ring the doorbell, and I think it’s going to be Alicia, and it’s this lady in an exercise leotard with her hair up in a headband. Alicia’s standing behind her, grinning toward the doorway. And her mom looks around, up and down the sidewalk, and she gets this angry flash in her eyes, and she’s about to slam the door shut when I say, “Mrs. Van Dorn? I’m Bobby Phillips. Alicia said I could come over to see her today.” And her mom’s eyes bug out, and she steps back and gasps, and she doesn’t know what to do. Which is when Alicia pipes up and says, “Sorry, Mom, I forgot to tell you. It’s okay, isn’t it? If Bobby comes in for a while?” And I can tell by the look on Alicia’s face that she did it on purpose, surprising her mom and me. Her mom lets me in, but she says, “Stand right there,” and she runs—really runs—and brings me a long white terry cloth robe to wear.

  And that first visit, Alicia sits on a chair in the living room, and I sit on the couch with her mom, and she stays there with us the whole time.

  And I don’t blame her. If Alicia were my daughter, I’d want to protect her too.

  Mom is wrong about Dad being so mad that I’m telling other people about the “situation.” She said I had to tell him about the Van Dorns myself. When I call him at the hospital late Saturday afternoon, I’m all set for a big yelling match. It doesn’t happen. Dad listens when I tell him about Alicia, and about her dad and mom, and he doesn’t shout or splutter or interrupt me or anything. He’s quiet, and then he says, “If that’s the decision you’ve made, Bobby, then your mom and I will back you up a hundred percent. These people might even end up being a help. Frankly, I’ve been feeling a little overwhelmed about everything. I’ve heard of Professor Van Dorn, and I can’t wait to meet him and talk about this.” I’m surprised he takes the news so well, and as I hang up, I wonder why he’s so mellow, and I wonder if this is a real change. But I don’t get my hopes up too high. It might just be something the doctor is piping into his brain.

  I know what Dad means about feeling overwhelmed, and he’s right—it’s a relief to have a few more people on the official Save Bobby Phillips Committee. Because this started on Tuesday, and now it’s Saturday—that’s five days.

  When I woke up this morning, I got scared. Not scared like the last four mornings. Not scared by the sudden rediscovery that my body is missing. I got scared because I woke up already knowing that I’m like this. That means I’m getting used to it. Nothing’s changing, and I’m just rolling along, going with the flow. I’m adjusting to a serious maladjustment!

  And that’s truly frightening. But I’m learning stuff.

  The real lessons start two weeks later when Dad comes home from the hospital. And he’s at home with me and Mom for six days before he starts commuting to Batavia again. He’s got a blue plastic cast on his left arm from his elbow to his knuckles. Most of the time at home he spends poking through a huge stack of books and scientific journals. And now that he’s going to FermiLab every day, I have the feeling he’s doing the same thing there all day. Looking for the science of what’s happening. I reminded him about maybe taking a fingernail clipping to put under the electron microscope, but he shook his head and said, “Too early for that. Need to have a better theoretical grip on it first.”

  And Dad’s different. Or maybe I am. Or maybe it’s both of us, because there’s a lot less yelling. He talks, I listen. I talk, he listens. He still says plenty of stupid stuff, and he still says “bingo” way too much. But he’s definitely not the same person.

  So one thing I learn is that maybe everyone should have a near-death experience now and then. Sure did the trick for Dad.

  And I learn that I can have a girlfriend. Or at least a friend who’s a girl. That’s because I talk to Alicia a lot. We talk on the phone, and we do instant messaging. She’s got a text-to-speech translator on her PC, so whatever I type into a message window, her PC says out loud. She types a lot faster than I do. And we just talk.

  She tells me how her day stinks, or how her mom yells at her, and I tell her how my day stinks and how my mom yells at me. She tells me that the week before she went blind, she checked a book out of the library called Welcome to the Monkey House. It’s by Kurt Vonnegut, and she only read the first three stories, and now her audiobook supplier can’t find a recording of it. So we talk about Vonnegut and I tell her that my favorite book of his is Cat’s Cradle. Then I get my mom to buy the Monkey House book, and I read Alicia a couple of the stories over the phone. She says I’m really good at reading aloud. And we just talk about stuff. So that’s something I learn I can do.

  Because, before Alicia, what girls did I actually talk to? There’s Mom. And then there’s about fifty teachers and baby-sitters and day-care ladies who are all basically like Mom. There’s Carla, who was my lab partner in eighth-grade science, and she’s basically like Dad. And that’s pretty much it. So my known-female database is pretty limited. Because the girls at the lab school are mostly scary. And if any of them want to be friends, they haven’t told me. About half of the girls at U High act like they’ve known what they want to do in life since about third grade. Girls like Meaghan Murray and Lida Strauss? If they see me at all, they look at me like I’m a bug, some
thing to squash as they march toward the highest possible class rank. The other half of the girls have money. Girls like Jessica and her crew. They’re into clothes and shoes and jewelry and cell phones and beepers—and cars will be next. These girls don’t pass notes in class. They send infrared e-mails to each other on little palm computers.

  There is Kendra, though. I’ve talked with her. She plays tenor sax in the jazz band. This solo she plays on “Harlem Nocturne”? It’s so good, it makes me want to take sax lessons. I talk with her once in a while, just talk. Still, Kendra’s more like a musician than a girl.

  So like I said, because of Alicia, I learn that a girl will talk to me, and even seem to enjoy it. We both enjoy it.

  Back at the end of the first week when I told Dr. Van Dorn and he got so excited, I thought he and Dad—and the Committee—would get together right away. Do some big-league brainstorming. Work up an action plan to Save Bobby Phillips. It doesn’t happen. But the Committee does agree on one thing—by phone—that if Bobby Phillips is ever going to have a regular life, we must maintain absolute secrecy while we look for a way to get him back to normal.

  So I learn the hard way that I shouldn’t depend on a committee to solve my problems.

  Sitting on my bed looking at my bookcase one night during the second week, I see my thick Sherlock Holmes collection. It’s all the stories in two fat volumes. The great thing about Sherlock Holmes is, he never sat around looking for theories. He was into the facts. And observation. Like in “The Adventure of the Speckled Band”? About the man who dies in his bed one night, and no one can figure it out? It’s because no one took the time to really look at the room. And when Holmes does, he sees exactly what happened.

  That idea sets me off, and over the next few days, whenever I’m not talking to my folks or Alicia or not eating or sleeping, I’m being a detective. I start by writing down everything I can remember about the two days before the suspect disappeared. What the suspect ate, what he wore, where he went, who he talked to, where he sat, how many times he washed his hands—as much as I can remember. And I tape four sheets of typing paper together end to end and lay all the information out on a time line, hour by hour. Because there must be a clue somewhere. People don’t just disappear. Something—or someone—had to make it happen.