When I was a very young boy, my grandmother would take me to the mosque almost every day. We’d kneel and she’d show me how to pray properly, she’d always hold my hands and speak in her thick accent and her long hair would touch my shoulders. She’d sing to me, she’d laugh with me, she’d take me everywhere. Never, never, never would she let go of my hand. Never would she call me useless or disabled. I remember the feel of her cracked, wrinkled old hands on my skin, how it was just me and her and her and me and the rest of the world didn’t matter.

Then, when I was four-

Sounds from the kitchen exploded-

A crash-

I couldn’t reach the phone-

I shook her still body, screaming, until-

The neighbors called 911-

Then I was sent away-

My new parents had no accent. They were a lot younger, no dry, cracked hands and no soothing voice. No singing. Their last name was Jefferson, like the president. ‘Dad’ was a 4th grade teacher, ‘Mom’ was a lawyer. They changed my name from Aalam to David, they changed my religion from Muslim to Catholic. The weirdest thing was having no choice in the matter whatsoever. Just, boom, handed over to complete strangers like commodity.

I didn’t say they weren’t loving or kind, just… it was a big change for me. I didn’t know where things were in the house, I tripped on invisible extra stairs and cried in my big new bed. There were a lot new sounds to hear, some too loud to bear. For one thing, a year after I came to live with them, they had a biological kid. All I could smell were diapers and baby powder and baby food and baby everything. They named him Derek. David and Derek, new best buds.

In my head, I was still Aalam, the offspring of my grandmother. It seemed like they were trying hard to make me forget.

----

There were a lot of phone calls that year, until they got me in a good private pre-school where I wore sunglasses so no one would stare at me, where I read differently than the rest of the other kids. I didn’t make friends easily, but Jared-the-weird-kid was nice to me and usually gave me gum. He came over to my house for sleepovers and played games we made up together. But we were never close, we never shared secrets or anything. The next year he moved to Connecticut.

‘Mom’ taught me how to spell Connecticut.

“It’s easy,” she said. “Connect-i-cut.”

Connect I cut. Connect the cuts. I felt scissors in my hand when I spelled Connecticut. What a harsh word. Who would ever name a state that?

Derek started talking pretty early on. Well, if you count baby-language “talking”. He’d babble in his own special languages, and ‘Mom’ and ‘Dad’ would babble back.

In that stage of life, I felt the world in textures and sounds. I knew my ‘Mom’ and ‘Dad’ must have loved me to adopt me, but I wasn’t David and could never fully be David. When I couldn’t sleep at night, I would dream of my grandmother holding me tight and singing my name in my ear. Everything would get really quiet then, and my brain would fade into haziness, and I’d hug my stuffed rabbit, feeling okay for one more night. 

I was pretty much sheltered from the rest of the world for the first nine years of my life. My ‘parents’ didn’t take me far, and I was never allowed out of their sight. Derek grew older and got a different life than I did. He was sent to a public school for preschool and had a lot of friends. He was loud and annoying but had a kind heart, and as he grew stronger I faded. ‘Mom’ was pregnant again. With another kid, I’d still be seen but would be shoved in the distance.

I wondered what would happen if I just didn’t talk or move or do anything.

I got exceeding grades in school, but didn’t care much for anything at all. I had to read using braille, which was little dots on a paper that made me feel stupid because I was that kid who read with his fingers. I had to take my cane around with me in new places, and I tripped often. I learned to write without seeing the words I wrote, feeling the pencil in my hand and making alien scratch marks. I didn’t want to go to a private school anymore. I wanted so desperately to become normal.

Then there were the sketches.

I’d take my alien pencil and hold the plasticy-woody thing in my hand, drawing lines and circles and dots. I’d etch out the being of my soul onto that paper, and cried when my parents laughed and my brother tore it up. I grew sad and depressed at a young age, would cry out to a God I didn’t fully believe in. I retreated further inside myself. I had no friends.

Daria Jefferson was born that year, the newest addition to my ‘happy’ ‘family’. Again with the crying and diapers. Derek had middle child syndrome; he threw fits and destroyed everything in the house because he felt like he wasn’t getting enough attention. I got headphones for Christmas and turned up the music loud to tune out Derek’s screaming and Daria’s crying.

Finally my ‘parents’ decided to send me to a public school. The private school was getting to be too expensive, even though they assured me it wasn’t a money thing.

I was eleven when I first felt attracted to someone.

It was the end of elementary school 5th grade dance, and I was greeted by a voice. It was this kid I didn’t know very well, but everyone talked about them a lot.

“The music’s a bit too loud,” said the person, half-yelling. Their voice was a bit accented, though I couldn’t tell what the accent was.

I smiled. “Yeah.”

I felt a hand brush mine, and my heart sped up just a bit. “You’re going to Fredmont Middle, right?”

Another smile. Another “Yeah.”

I felt the person relax slightly. “I am too. Good to see a familiar face there-” they stopped, realizing what they’d said. “I mean-”

“It’s okay. People do that all the time.” I didn’t want them treating me with special privilege. Their voice got a bit softer.

“It must be hard, to just not… not see.” said the person.

“Not really. I mean, you get used to it.”

The person deflated slightly. There was a silence, the booming of the music. A sip of punch. “Sorry we weren’t friends. I just moved here this year, and you weren’t in my class or anything. You seem cool though.” the person said, a bit uncomfortably but well-meaning.

“You could say that.” I said. They had no authority to.

Then, all of the sudden, there was a silence, and a loud screaming. I gripped to the voice’s hand instinctively, and then the screaming died down and the music returned.

“W-What happened,” I shouted.

The voice laughed. I liked the laugh, and how it sent a bit of vibration through my skull. “The power went out for a minute, that’s all.”

The person let go of my grip, and I breathed out again.

“By the way, I never catched your name.”

“Oh,” I said. “I’m David.”

The person shook my hand firmly, business-like. “I’m Ryan,” he said.

He said.

Ryan.

He.

----

My face got really greasy and my first acne emerged the day before 6th grade. Derek was kind enough to inform me (“Ewwwww, what are those big red dots on your face”) before I felt around my face until my finger met a little bump. Then another, and another, all on my forehead. I wished my hair was longer so it could have hidden my ugliness.

So, with fresh oil covering my face, I got on my bus for the first day of middle school. At the next stop I heard a thump as Ryan sat down next to me.

“I’m so nervous,” he said. “Are you?”

“I guess. I’m always nervous,” I confessed, feeling my sunglasses beginning to slide down my nose. I pushed them up again self-consciously.

“You look really… cool… in those sunglasses,” Ryan told me. It sounded like he was almost going to say you look good but stopped himself. I wondered why.

“By the way, where were you before you moved here?” I was dying to know where that amazing accent came from.

“Oh, we lived in Indiana since I was 7 but I was born in the Philippines.”

“Are you a citizen?”

“Yeah, my mom’s from the US.”

I nodded.

“Where’d you come from? I’ve seen your parents at PTA meetings. They don’t resemble you.” The bus bumped and his voice lurched with it.

“I lived near here all my life, but my parents were Indian. They couldn’t take care of me so my grandma raised me until..” The knot in my throat was threatening to undo itself. I forced my tears back down.

“Oh,” he said. “My grandma died too. When I was 7. That’s why we moved back here, because my grandma didn’t leave the house to us in the will even though we were living with her.”

The bus stopped and I heard the scuffling of feet.

“You need help getting out or anything?” Ryan asked, the uncertainty back in his voice.

“Nah,” I said. “I’m fine on my own.”

English class seemed useless from the beginning. Our teacher was an old woman with a flat voice, and the classroom smelled ever-so-slightly of expired yogurt. I didn’t get the point of taking English when we grew up learning it. It wasn’t like a foreign language or anything.

The good thing is that I had most of my classes with Ryan. I wanted to see him so desperately with my own eyes; if only they functioned correctly. He had peanut butter and jelly for lunch, and tore off his crust. I tried to hide my disgust at that, I had always considered it a waste of time to rip off the crust. Everyone seemed to do it and I had no idea why.

---

Throughout that year we grew into a little friend group of 6 people: Me, Ryan, Mark, Jeffrey, Lamar, James. We all talked about crazy things and did some weird stuff but we were good kids (and nerdy, I’ll admit). I learned to laugh and have fun and just relax that year, learned the fizz of the coke and the sound of Lamar’s skateboard rolling up and down the track when we’d go to the park.

As far as home life, things weren’t going so well. Daria was diagnosed with Down’s Syndrome and my ‘parents’ simply didn’t know how to deal with her. Derek would always beg me to play with him because he was lonely and no one else was there to play with him. Something had happened at his school which lowered his popularity significantly. He refused to tell me what it was, but I remembered hearing my parents say something about him wetting his pants. Even for a 7-year-old, that was pure humiliation. I didn’t let him know that I also found it incredibly funny.

My feelings for Ryan waxed and waned like the moon we learned about in Science. I desperately didn’t want to feel anything so I could usually control how I felt. Plus, I was young.

7th grade was going by pretty quickly. It was a time when most of my friends still acted like kids and felt like kids and didn’t think about girls at all, although that was starting to change. Mark had a crush on a girl named Karry, who apparently was just another popular dumb blonde. I heard her gum-chewing voice in the hallways, screechy and annoying. I had no idea what Mark saw in her, but that’s probably because I couldn’t judge by looks.

My voice began to change near the end of 7th grade, and so did Ryan’s. We took a music class during the 7th grade school year(our elementary school hadn’t had the money to fund it) and I was learning how to play the saxophone. I didn’t need to see the instrument itself to play it at first, but there were difficulties when playing sheet music. I, instead, played by myself and learned the musicality of the instrument itself. I focused on it until I could hear its clear sounds better than the scratchy squeaks other kids were making. I learned to play the songs I liked by ear and not by music on paper.

Ryan learned to play the violín. He wasn’t great at it, but he was a fast learner and we soon learned to play duets just by playing by ear. I convinced myself that I didn’t like him, only liked him as a friend, and tried to wipe all the feelings away.

I started having recurring nightmares in the summer before 8th grade. Sounds mixed in and out of my dreams: the low commanding voice of my ‘father’, the rough, humorous voice of Lamar, the still-high voice of Jeffrey. Then, all of the sudden, I was back in the mosque. I heard my grandmother’s soothing voice mix in with the others, but not until now did I understand what they were saying, and they were all saying the same thing…

“Aaaaaaalam, Aaaaalam,

You will never belong here,

Your glazed-over eyes will never see the light,

You are ugly, scorned, rejected,

No one will ever love you,

You are cursed like your parents were

They hated you and abandoned you

Just like your Grandmother

If she had loved you, she wouldn’t have left

Your life means nothing

You see nothing, you are nothing…”

Their voices faded in and out, and all of the sudden I felt a pool of sticky blood covering my hands and knees. I wanted to scream, but I was drowning in the thick liquid; it poured into my mouth as soon as I opened it. I couldn’t breathe. I was dying.

--

I must’ve screamed.

It was June when that first nightmare came. Derek ran into my room first to find me convulsing on my bed, screaming and crying. My voice was hoarse, my hands pinned to my sides, my tears seemingly never-ending.

It wasn’t a one-time thing.

Every night, I had the same nightmare with the same voices and the same blood. After about a week of this, my ‘parents’ had had enough. My ‘dad’ took me to therapy.

“So, David,” the therapist began. Her voice was smooth and her words casual. When I heard her voice, I thought of the blood again. Sticky. Oozing.

I coughed.

“Describe your dream to me,” she said. I told her in vivid detail and I listened to her pen scratch the paper. I waited patiently for it to stop before she started talking again.

“What is this they were saying to you? Aalam?”

“That was my name before I was adopted.”

“Do you have a special connection to that name?” She waited patiently through the silence.

“Well,” I said, “To be honest… I never felt like I was connected to the name David. It’s just not me. Aalam is the name my grandmother gave me, it is my Indian name. It is the only piece of my past I have left.”

She tapped her pencil on her paper. Dad, next to me, adjusted his tie.

“Well…. Maybe you could start asking people to call you Aalam?” the therapist suggested.

“No,” Dad and I said at the same time. He cleared his throat. “No, we named him David. It’s his Christian name.”

“Very well,” said the therapist. “David, why did you say no?”

“Because-this is hard to explain-I feel like the name Aalam is not something I want to share. I want it to be mine, and only mine.”

--

The nightmares continued but I stopped screaming in my sleep, so I decided to lie and tell Mom and Dad I didn’t have them anymore. They ended the therapy, thank God, it had made me anxious and itchy.

8th grade started way too soon.

Ryan started playing soccer with the local high school team, which is apparently something you can do if you’re really, really good. He made friends with the kids on there, and everyone at school thought he was so cool to be making friends with high schoolers. Ryan was popular and I was not: there was no way to get around it. He was losing interest in me.

Lamar and James still hung out with me, but they were always talking about video games and things that I, the blind kid, couldn’t enjoy. James was richer than most of my friends; he lived in a pretty big house with a pool that I liked swimming in. Lamar liked telling jokes in his deep masculine voice. He liked to take off my sunglasses and stare at my empty eyes. He told me they were a light chestnut brown color and didn’t look all that bad.

I wondered what brown was.

When I thought of brown I thought of chocolate, since Derek told me that was brown. But brown was also something else, it’s some type of ‘color’ apparently. I hated all the things I was missing out on.

After school I held a piece of chocolate in my hand. Brown. Brown. Derek’s cleats squeaked into the kitchen. “You gonna eat that?”

“I will,” I said. “I’m just trying to figure out what brown is.”

“It’s hard to explain color to someone who’s never seen it. It’s like….” he struggled to find words.

“It’s okay,” I assured my little brother. “I think I have to find out for myself.”

---

Ryan started sitting in the back of the bus, away from me. He sat with the popular guys and laughed loudly, away from me. As his popularity grew, he drifted further away from me. He even started dating a girl named Marie, another one of those gum-popping heel-clicking popular girls. I hated sitting on the sidelines in gym hearing him laughing and shouting and hearing his sneakers rub against the floor.

I decided it was because I was blind. That’s why he hated me.

I thought a lot about his girlfriend. What was I feeling? Was I jealous? No, I couldn’t be. I had already convinced myself I was never attracted to Ryan, it was never a thing, it would never be a thing. And that was that.

In the weeks following I felt increasingly lonely. Lamar and James were two hovering clouds, and I never felt comfortable talking to them about how I felt. I had qualms about talking to anyone about anything. I was just that blind kid, not just blind in sight but blind to the world. I was drifting away like a fish lost in the ocean, a baby seal separated from its parents, calling out for help with no words at all. 8th grade became a blur of thoughts and never words. I talked in “Yeah”’s and “Okay”s and “Sure”s and “Nah”s and no one worried about me.

--

I never knew what “blind” was until after my grandmother died. She didn’t tell me there was anything wrong with me so I just assumed everyone felt the world through sounds and touch and didn’t even know there was a 3rd dimension of sight.

Everyone else is in 3d, but I’m stuck back in 2d. Flat. Two-dimensional. Like a drawing on a paper, not a sculpture. I was never fully blind when I lived with my grandmother; she gave me the dimension of love.

‘Mom’ told me I wasn’t getting along with the ‘normal’ kids enough, and maybe I should meet kids ‘who were like me’. My little sister Daria who had down’s syndrome went to meetings like this, learning to speak and read with challenged children like her. I never really noticed what was wrong with her; she was about 10 times happier than me.

We drove 45 minutes to get to the Colorado Center for the Blind, or CCB. I heard the barking of dogs when we entered the building and figured they were seeing-eye dogs. Derek was allergic to dogs so we were never able to apply to get one.

The seats there were cushy, and by the noise I figured there were about 20 other kids in the group, all teenagers. I heard a young female voice next to me.

“I’m Ava,” it said.

“Oh, hey,” I tried to sound casual.

“When did you lose your sight?” she asked. Great way to start a conversation.

“I was born blind.”

“I lost it at age 3. From cancer. They had to amputate,” she said.

“Oh. I’m sorry to hear.” I said. “Wait, do you remember anything? From when you saw?”

“Just blurry shapes, colors…. I only see them in my dreams,” she said. “What are your dreams like?”

“They’re only sounds and feelings. I never saw anything so I don’t see anything in my dreams,” I said. “What is it like to see?”

She shook her head. “Beyond explanation.”

We were interrupted by a man’s voice. He sounded like he was in his 30’s or early 40’s.

“Okay, guys! Settle down, settle down….” He waited to silence to return before speaking again in an upbeat, over-enthusiastic voice. “Welcome to The Visionary Club.”

“Nice name,” I muttered to Ava.

“They’re trying to inspire us. Just go with it.”

“The first thing we should do is share our ages, our stories, and how we’re coming to accept who we are. I’ll start on the left.”

I heard a voice that sounded a bit older than me. A shuffling of feet. Someone stood up. “I’m Toby, I’m 17, and I was born blind. I don’t have much of a story, I go to a school of blind people. Uh… I think I’ve always accepted who I was. Being blind is all I’ve ever really known.” The guy sat down again and the next person stood.

I loved listening to everyone’s stories. I felt like I belonged. The voices drifted around me into a calm sea.

“I was 8 when I got a disease in my corneas….”

“I accept who I am because I have found someone who isn’t blind but sees me as beautiful even though I can’t see him…”

“My parents were always accepting of me…”

“I am still in foster care, no one has ever wanted me…”

Then, it was my turn. The chair screeched a bit as I stood up.

“Hi, uh, my name is David, and I’m 14 years old. I was born blind, and my parents didn’t want me so my grandmother raised me. She had a heart attack when I was four years old and I got adopted by the Jeffersons. I’ve never really come to uh, accept my blindness.” I cleared my throat and sat down. Ava sat up and told her story about how it felt to have cancer at such a young age, how scared she was, and how people stared at her empty eye sockets before she got fake eyes. She was a much better speaker than I. When she sat down, I felt her edge a bit closer than before.

--

“Hey, where were you yesterday?” James asked. “I wanted to hang out.”

We were walking to our first period class, boots dripping with melted snow. It was mid-December, and everyone was too excited for Christmas break to pay attention in class.

“I was at a club for blind people. I told you I’ve been going there on Thursdays.”

“Oh yeah,” he said. “You met a girl there, right?”

I blushed. “She’s just a friend.”

“That’s what they all say,” he answered, laughing.

First period was health. After having the last few months of gym, we’re starting to do health. It was pretty horrible, but at least I got to participate.

We were learning sex ed, aka the most uncomfortable subjects known to humankind.

“You have a girlfriend now, you have to know,” chided James. I sighed at his immaturity and continued drawing invisible circles that overlapped each other on my paper.

--

Derek asked me why he could see and I couldn’t. Was I cursed? Did something go wrong in the womb?

We were sitting next to the Christmas tree, and I felt a branch in my hand. A bit prickly, but comforting at the same time. It made me remember my first Christmas, when I was 5. Before that, I didn’t celebrate it.

“What color is this?” I asked, holding a branch in my hand, feeling it spike into my palm.

“Green,” Derek told me. “A lot of plants are green.”

“Is lettuce green?”

“Yeah.”

I thought of the empty, tasteless crunch of lettuce and tried to relate it to the nice-smelling pine tree. It didn’t seem to make sense. Why would something as gross as lettuce be the same ‘color’ as a tree? Why would poop be the same ‘color’ as chocolate? Sometimes I felt like a whole different species, studying the behavior of humans and thinking about things I would never understand. Just a bug sitting in the grass, from the outside looking in.

Daria was 5 now, but still could hardly say words. She couldn’t walk until she was 2 and a half, and still wore a diaper. It’s like she was developing in slow motion.

I heard her running down the stairs and laughing loudly, searching for a present that could be hers. She spoke in rapid gibberish, and somehow Derek could interpret what she said. It must have been a sibling thing.

“Webmudahcomousowecanohenpeseans?”

“What?” I said.

“She wants to know when our parents are coming down so we can open the presents,” Derek explained.

“Ohhhhh,” I said, feeling dumb.

People at our church acted like my parents were some type of saints. Adopting a blind kid with the knowledge that he was disabled and of a different ethnicity than them, then taking such good care of their youngest child who had Down’s Syndrome.

I was growing at a fast rate, and my voice had finally begun to get deeper. Did this mean I was on my way to adulthood? How would I even function as an adult? Would I ever get married, have kids?

Would I get married to the girl in The Visionaries Club?

--

The club started up again in mid-January. We did arts and crafts and learned how to do things without having to see anything. We were making clay figures based on what we thought faces looked like. I remember wondering what my face would look like when I was younger, how I would feel the contours of my cheeks, my nose, my eyelids.

I was sculpting a nose when Ava spoke up. “My mom says you have handsome features,” she told me.

“Wow, that’s…. Uh, ok?” I was unsure of how to respond. “Thanks?”

“Sorry. My mom’s like my eyes. She tells me what things look like,” she said.

There was a silence. I decided that instead of sculpting eyes I’d just sculpt sockets. Empty eye sockets, to represent how blind I was. I shaped 2 lips near the bottom of the chunk of clay and then realized the clay was still in brick form and I hadn’t actually shaped it into an oval. Oh well, art is art.

--

My parents took me in for a physical appointment at the doctor’s office since I hadn’t been there for years. I clung to the railing as I walked up the steps to the office. I hated the doctor.

“Hello there, David!” said the overly friendly nurse. “Last time you were here, you were just 11 years old and about a foot shorter! My, look at how you’ve grown!”

I chuckled good-naturedly but my head was screaming get out get out get out. The doctor, an elderly man, came in the room after about 10 minutes of waiting. The paper I was laying on rustled uncomfortably.

After doing all the regular check-ups and assuring my ‘Mom’ that I was a-ok, he said he had something to tell us. I itched to leave.

“There are a lot of advances in technology in this age, as you know,” he said. “Most importantly, medical technology.”

‘Mom’ shifted in her chair.

“There are new surgeries in trial that could fix your vision, David.”

I froze.

“What kind of cost are we looking at?” My mom’s voice of logic drifted in and I breathed out again. Of course I couldn’t get the surgery. We didn’t have enough money.

“Well,” said the doctor, “You’d be one of the trial patients, so if you get the surgery within the next 2 years, it’d be about ten thousand dollars.”

Mom sighed. “David, what do you think?”

Oh, someone’s asking my opinion? I thought I didn’t matter. I’m just an object after all.

“I really want to get it,” I said, my voice shaking a bit. This was an opportunity to be normal.

“Well,” said ‘Mom’, “We’ll discuss it and see what we can do. I understand how much you want this, David.”

I was euphoric.

--

Before I knew it, I was thrown into the mythical land called high school. Ryan had broken up with his girlfriend and quit the soccer team for this season(because his parents pretty much killed him for getting a C in English and most likely forced him to quit the team). His popularity had declined significantly and on the first day of high school he plopped down next to me on the bus to school on the first day.

“So, 9th grade.” He was obviously trying to avoid an awkward silence. “Crazy, right?”

“Don’t give me that bullshit.” I muttered. “You ignored me for a year and now all of the sudden you think you can sidle back in and be my friend again? No. It’s gonna take more effort than that.”

“David, listen-”

“No, you listen! I got so lonely my parents were worried about my mental health! They sent me to a blind club because they felt like I wasn’t fraternizing with normal people enough. You hurt me, okay?”

I heard Ryan sniff slightly and realized he was crying.

“I’m sorry…. I’m so sorry…” he whispered. “I’m so stupid…”

The bus pulled up to the school and I didn’t say another word to Ryan. I’d forgive him, but not yet. He made my heart hurt like Hell.

I had my cane that day because I was in a new place, but I felt even more disabled with it in my hand. I could tell people were staring at me; it must have been overly obvious that I was blind. The first place we had to go to was the auditorium.

“Welcome, welcome, welcome,” came an overly loud microphoned voice from down below. Since sounds were a bit louder to me than to most people, I had to cover my ears. “This is high school, and the beginning of your future. This is your higher learning.”

Bla, bla, bla, bla. All I could hear was Ryan breathing next to me, slow and steady. Somehow that was louder than the speakers.

--

“If you are willing to move forward in this surgery, you must be aware of the consequences since David is a trial patient, and a young one at that,” began Dr. Merez, the woman who would be in charge of my surgery.

“What type of consequences?” ‘Dad’ sounded diplomatic, as if he was about to make a chart of when the cost outweighed the benefit.

“Well, for one, we won’t be operating on David’s eyes themselves. We’ll be working on the nerves behind the eyes, which means one slip could damage another part of the brain. Now, there’s a 90% chance this won’t happen, because our surgeons are very very skilled and this operation has been practiced many times. But we do have to warn you.”

“How much will the insurance cover? We can’t pay this big of a bill.”

“The insurance will most likely cover about 80% of it.”

“Twenty percent of $10,000 is still a lot.”

Please, Dad, don’t argue like this. I need this surgery bad and you know it. This is my only opportunity to be normal.

“...The operation will most likely be in about a year or so. We need to take preparations and you should be aware that this is a long process,” the nurse was saying.

I felt Mom squeeze my hand. “Dave, I know you want this bad. We’re gonna try our best to make sure you can see.”

I thought about what it would be like to be 3 dimensional like everyone else. It hurt to think about, so I just sat there, smiling like an idiot.

--

Near the end of one of the Visionary meetings, Ava walked up to me. I could hear her fidgeting.

“Hey, David.”

“Hi Ava.”

“I was wondering if… I mean…” She breathed and started again. “There’s this dance at my school. You know, Kane Academy for the Blind. And there’s this uh… this fair… to raise money for the school, you know, sounds fun. And I was wondering if you wanted to come.”

I paused. Was she asking me out? Nah. It’s probably just a friend thing.

“Yeah, sure, I’d love to come.” Was that too forward? Should I just have said ‘yeah, sure’?

She brightened up a little bit. “It’s on September 23rd, uh, I think that’s a Friday.”

“Okay, I’ll ask my parents.”

“I’ll look forward to seeing you there! Well, not seeing, but, you know…”

I laughed. “Yeah, I know.”

--

“She likes youuuuuu. She really likes youuuuuu,” Lamar teased at lunch.

I punched him in the shoulder. “Shut up, Lame-ar.”

He laughed and punched me. “Don’t call me that, Dave.. uh, David…. Uh…” I laughed as Lamar tried to come up with a clever nickname but couldn’t think of one. But then, all of the sudden, he stopped. I heard footsteps approaching, then stopping, then someone sitting at our table.

“Hey, Ryan,” James said casually. He’d always been better friends with Ryan than Lamar and I.

I didn’t say anything, just sipped from my water bottle. Ryan was next to me; I could feel his arm brushing against mine. I would have moved, but I didn’t. My heart was beating faster than humanly possible.

“Look, David, I just want to say I’m sorry.”

I shrugged. “Okay.”

“I know this is cheesy but… I just really want to be your friend again. I miss having you around.”

“You’re the one that left me,” I reminded him. “I missed having you around, but you never gave a shit.”

I could hear Lamar put down his sandwich very, very quietly. There was a sharp intake of breath.

“I’m just asking for a second chance,” Ryan pleaded.

“Okay, but please don’t be a jerk this time,” I told him.

He was such an asshole, but I love having him around. Why????

--

The fair came sooner than expected. There was a chilly breeze that day, reminding everyone that fall aka allergy season was nearly upon us.

“You’ll be fine if we just dropped you off?” Mom asked anxiously.

“For the third time, yes. I’m nearly 15.”

“Okay, okay. Have fun then.”

I unfolded my cane and listened through all the voices, trying to pick out Ava’s. It was impossible. I was nervous in such an unfamiliar place.

She found me before I found her. “Hey, David, is that you?”

“Oh, hi, Ava.”

“So I was thinking, first we could go on some rides and then maybe have some cotton candy and a hot dog and something fried.” she spoke quickly, practically breathless with excitement.

“What kind of rides are there?”

“Oh, the scariest one is the ferris wheel. But this is a pretty big event for my school.”

“Well, let’s go to the ferris wheel then!”

3 rides and 4 games later, we were sitting in the grass stuffing ourselves with cotton candy and laughing like never before. Ava was such a great friend.

“I love this feeling,” she said. “You know, when it gets chilly but not too chilly, and the air is clear and you just feel amazing.”

“Yeah,” was all I could say.

I could hear her breathing faster than normal. I wondered why she was always so nervous around me, and why she was edging close to me-

Her hand touched mine-

Then she put her arm around my shoulder-

And cuddled up against me-

I couldn’t move or breathe-

I didn’t have those types of feelings for her-

I knew I should, of course I should-

But all I could think of was Ryan-

--

My friends were bothering me again the next day.

“Come on, she obviously likes you”

“Why didn’t you make a move too? You should have made a move”

“For god’s sake you shouldn’t have just sat there”

“You gotta let her know you like her back”

“Now you’ve gone and hurt her feelings”

I sighed, got up, and threw my tray away. Without saying a word, I went and sat in the bathroom stall and held my face in my hands even though no tears came out. Why don’t I like her? Why don’t I like her? She’s perfect, even my parents agree… why can’t I even hold her hand?

The bell rang, and Ryan caught up with me so we could walk to Social Studies together. I felt him there, and I wanted him so badly that it made me sick.

--

“Mom, what do you think of gay people?” I chewed a tough piece of ham.

“David, dear, please don’t talk with food in your mouth,” she answered.

“But what do you think of them?” I swallowed my ham and stared intently at my mom. I wasn’t gonna let this go.

“Well, they… Well, God says… Well, point is, it’s wrong.”

“Wrong?” I could feel my palms getting sweaty.

“What, you’re not gay, are you?” Dad inquired.

“No, I was just curious. There are some gay people in my school.” I tried hard to keep my voice from quivering, then walked to my room, locked the door, and screamed hard into my pillow.

I don’t believe in God or Allah. I’m not Aalam or David. I’m just… nobody.

Thursday came way too soon, and Ava was there at the doors waiting for me. After my parents pulled away and it was just me and her, and she seemed eager and I was empty and I knew I had to tell her the truth.

“Ava, listen,” I began. I could hear her breathe in; she was probably smiling with excitement, she probably thought I was going to ask her out. “What happened at the fair, I mean…. I just..." Just say it. Just tell her. I’m gay, I’m gay, I’m gay. “I’m not attracted to girls.”

“Oh, well some are late bloomers. It;s okay,” she said.

“No, Ava. I like guys.” The wind sped up a bit, like a whole whirlwind of emotions. There was a silence.

“Oh… oh.” She sounded disappointed. Then she held my face in her hands and kissed my chapped lips. I couldn’t breathe.

I had to escape. I had to, I had to, I had to, but Ava wouldn’t let me.

“How did that feel?” her voice was aggressive. Not sweet like it usually was. “I can’t let you get away. You’re my only chance. My only chance at a boyfriend.” She grabbed both my hands and held them tight. I wanted to cry. I wanted to run.

Instead, I ran inside the building and to the boy’s bathroom. I hid in a stall and silently cried for the rest of the hour long meeting.

At the end of the meeting I heard Ava leaving with her mom. I waited until I heard their car pull away to reveal myself. Mom asked how the meeting went and I told her I couldn’t go. No questions asked, I just couldn’t.

What would Ava do to me? Would she rape me? Would she abuse me? Would she use me?

Am I seriously scared of a blind girl??

“Aw, did you break up with your girlfriend?” Mom rolled down the window a bit.

“No, it’s not that. I just don’t like it anymore. It’s boring.”

I love the club. It’s all I have left to connect with blind people. And I blew it.

I imagined myself with Ava, myself not being gay, myself not loving Ryan. I felt so powerless.

I wish I could control who I am.

--

My surgery was scheduled for April of next year.

I’d lay on my bed sometimes, thinking about my whole life so far. Thinking about how I was blending in fine with the kids at school (Even though I had a braille keyboard and couldn’t do some things like participate in gym). I thought about my parents, my adoptive parents, and how they really did love me for who I was. I felt my grandmother’s hands on my head, her words so soft and so powerful…. Never forget me, Aalam…. I will always be here with you…. I remembered The Visionaries club and how much I missed it. I felt the wind in my hair and Ava holding my head in her hands, I remembered how it felt when she kissed me, how I felt threatened, how I never even stood up to her.

I thought about Ryan.

I wonder what he looks like.

Is he strong, muscular?

Does he look like me?

Is he taller than me?

Will he love me?

--