Chapter 5: Drifting

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.”

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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.

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