Farsighted (Farsighted Series) (5 page)

Neither of us says anything for a few awkward moments.

“Is that a braille book?” Simmi asks. I’m guessing she means
The Odyssey
.

“Yeah. You ever seen one of these before?”

“No, besides the cover of your chemistry, uh, book yesterday, I mean. Do you mind if I take a look?”

“Go ahead,” I say, tossing the spiral-bound first volume over to her. It hits her body with a
thud
. Note to self:  don’t throw things at girls.

She opens it, turns a few pages, and is quiet. I wonder if she is sliding her finger over the bumps. “Always been curious,” she says at last, placing the book back on the bench seat. “Is braille the same everywhere? I mean, if I wanted to read a book in braille, but I speak Hindi or Japanese instead of English. Is it the same no matter what?”

I think this over for a moment. I have no idea what the answer to her question is, but I need to come off sounding smart. Giving it my best shot, I answer, “I’m not sure, actually. I’ve never learned any language besides English. I guess it’s different for every language. Each braille character represents a character from the English alphabet.” I pick
The Odyssey
back up to make my point. “See this?” I say, pointing to the first letter on the title page. “This combination of bumps placed exactly like this represents the letter
H
, and this one here is an
O
, and this is
M
and the last one is for
E
and
R
together.” I hold the book up to Simmi, so she can run her finger across the word.

“
Homer
,” she says. “My first word in braille.”

“Yeah,” I laugh. Something about this girl sends nervous energy tingling through my chest and arms. “I guess it kind of is.”

Simmi doesn’t say anything, but she also doesn’t leave. I don’t know what to say, so I wait for her to speak. Finally, she does.

“Alex, I was wondering. I hope you don’t mind me asking. I just want to understand…”

I can tell what she’s getting at even before she asks the question. It’s the same one everybody has. I save her the awkwardness of asking and give her my answer right away.

“Yes, I’ve always been this way. I was born blind. I don’t see shapes or shadows. Just blackness. I don’t know what it’s like to be able to see, so I don’t miss it. This is just the way I am.”

Simmi shuffles her feet. She’s embarrassed for me but wants to know more.

“You want to know why I’m this way?” I offer.

She doesn’t say anything.

“Do you?” I repeat.

“Oh, sorry. I nodded my head… Yes, I want to know, if you’re willing to tell me.”

“Well, my mom grew up in a really small rural town—way smaller than Grandon, if you can believe it. The people there ran farms, homeschooled their kids, and just lived the simple life.” I’ve told this story a million times, but mostly to teachers and doctors. Explaining my story to Simmi isn’t much different—she smells nicer, though, so that has to count for something. “And that didn’t include getting all of those vaccinations you’re supposed to get as a baby,” I continue. “Grandma and Grandpa say that milk straight from the cow cures everything. They’re wrong, but that’s beside the point. Well, when my mom was pregnant with me, she got sick with the German measles. She should’ve gotten a shot to prevent it as a kid, but she didn’t. And that’s why I was born the way I am.”

“Is anything else—?”

“No, nothing else is wrong with me. Healthy as a farm horse.”

“Thanks for telling me.”

“Yeah, any time,” I say, jumping into a new topic so that we can be done talking about this. I don’t want to appear as anything less than normal to Simmi; hopefully, she’ll consider me even better than normal with time. “Are you sure you’re okay bringing my schoolwork by like this? I mean, my mom or dad could always stop over and pick it up.”

Simmi exhales. She must be relieved at the topic change, too. “No, I don’t mind. I’ll be over here most days after school anyway. Mummy visits Miss Teak a lot.”

“Why? I think she’s kind of creepy,” I say, unable to suppress a shiver. “I mean Miss Teak,” I clarify, just in case, “not your mom.”

“I guess Mummy misses back home in India. Miss Teak reminds her of it.”

“How come? The music?” I say, recalling the mysterious melody playing in the recording yesterday.

“No, not the music.” She laughs a little, and I grimace at having appeared stupid once again. “It’s because psychics are very common in India. People believe what they say and talk to them for guidance, but here, nobody seems to believe in magic. They’re okay with believing only what they can see. They don’t know how special the unseen can be sometimes.”

“Magic?”

“Well not magic exactly, but something other-worldly that can’t be explained by science.”

“I thought you liked science. You’re the only other sophomore in Dr. Brown’s class,” I point out.

“I do like science, but I also like things that can’t be explained by science.”

“Oh, okay,” I say in confusion.

“It makes sense to me,” Simmi says, “because I grew up believing. You may take some time getting used to it all, but I think one day you’ll come to appreciate the unknown, like I do.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Because you don’t have a choice, do you?” she says with a half-chuckle.

Uh-oh, does she know about what’s been going on in my head? Otherwise why would she say something like that?

I must be showing my emotions on my face again, because Simmi says, “Miss Teak’s shop is right next to your mum’s.” She jabs me playfully on the shoulder.

A rush of calm and happiness spreads throughout my body, like getting hit with a tranquilizer dart in a really good way.

“You’re going to encounter it every single day. You’re bound to get curious sooner or later.”

A car honks from the parking lot.

“I need to go,” Simmi’s voice recedes as she heads toward the door, “but I’ll be back tomorrow. Bye.” The bell jingles, and she’s gone.

“Bye,” I whisper as her coconut hair recedes into the outside world.

A friend. I finally made a friend.

***

I whittle the days away until Friday, the last day of my suspension. Simmi has come by to bring me my schoolwork every day at four o’clock—her arrivals sync almost perfectly with the cuckooing of Mom’s old-fashioned clock. She stays while her mom chats with Miss Teak and leaves something like twenty minutes later.

During the daytime, I work my way through
The Odyssey
.
I’ve gotten to the part where Odysseus meets the princess and the goddess Athena makes him look especially good so the hot, young princess will like him. I wish I had a goddess doing things like that for me. Odysseus has all the luck—everywhere he goes, princesses and goddesses throw themselves at him.

Getting jealous of some ancient fictional character is pretty lame, but I can’t help it. I don’t need a handful of women fawning over me. I just need one—Simmi. There’s something about her I can’t resist:  the way she smells, the sound of her accented voice, how she makes me feel like everything will be all right, that my problems don’t matter anymore. And, I don’t just like her because she’s the only girl—the only person—who will talk to me at school. It’s something more than that.

Whenever I’m not reading
The Odyssey
or helping Mom with chores around the shop, my thoughts zoom to Simmi. She’s like a proton and my thoughts are an electron; it’s natural the two would come together. Can’t be avoided. I think about the types of things I might be able to talk to her about and just about her in general. For some reason, she trusts Miss Teak. If this weird psychic lady is good enough for Simmi, then she’s good enough for me. Besides, being forced to hang out in this strip mall all day without anything major to keep me busy, my curiosity’s gotten the better of me.

“Hey, Mom,” I call. “I’m gonna head next door and see if Miss Teak needs help with unpacking or anything like that.” Best she knows where I am, just in case my initial instincts were spot-on and by heading in, I’m putting myself in danger.

“How sweet of you, my little sapling,” Mom coos.

I sigh, embarrassed even though nobody was around to hear.

Outside a cool rush of wind chafes my face—it’s barely September, but winter is on the way. A stray leaf blows up and hits me on the chest. I huddle forward to block out the cold air and rush into Miss Teak’s shop.

“Hello?” I call.

“Who are you?” an unfamiliar girl’s voice asks.

“I’m Alex. Who are you?”

“Shapri,” she says matter-of-factly, with a bit of a twang—I gather she’s not a native Midwesterner. “Hey, aren’t you in fifth period chem?” she asks. “With Dr. Brown?”

“Uh, yeah. Are you? I don’t remember you being there.”

“Well, weren’t you around for like a day, and then you got suspended for fighting?”

A rush of tiny vibrations forces upon my face. That means Shapri’s gotta be looking at me. I wonder what she thinks about the appearance of my blotchy, swollen nose.

“Yeah, I guess.” I sigh and run my finger across that big, old trunk I rammed my foot against the other day. The layer of dust is gone.

“So what are you doing in here?” Shapri asks, walking closer to me, her steps muffled by the carpeting. She picks up an object from the trunk, knocking the stand aside. I assume this is the same crystal ball that created the scene earlier this week.

“I was just bored. My mom owns the florist shop next door.”

“Oh, Sweet Blossoms, I like that place.” She puts the ball down somewhere else.

“What are
you
doing in here?”

“My mom owns this shop,” she says with a yawn as she stretches her arms over her head and sends bursts of her grassy fragrance my way. She sure does move around a lot, and the coming and going of her voice is making me dizzy.

“Aren’t you supposed to be in school?” I feel like a lame goody two shoes for asking.

“Well, yes. But I’m helping Mom get everything set up here. I took a sick day. Don’t tell anyone at school I’m not really sick.” She sits down on what sounds like a beanbag chair; the contents reorder themselves to accommodate the added weight of her body.

“I won’t,” I assure her. “So you’re Miss Teak’s daughter. Is Teak your real last name?”

“Uh, yeah. Why wouldn’t it be?” She’s gone from happy-go-lucky to on-edge in a matter of seconds.

“Well,” I say, choosing my words carefully so as not to add to her bad temper. “It seems too perfect, Miss Teak. Given she’s a mystic and all. Seems made up.”

“Well, it’s not!” Shapri says with a huff, standing up again.

Somehow she’s taken offense to my harmless question. “Okay, okay.” Since she’s already upset, I might as well ask the question I most want an answer to. “Are you a psychic, too?”

“No.” She takes a deep breath. “And Mom isn’t either. It’s just a bunch of made-up crap.”

“Yeah, I don’t believe in it either,” I say, sinking down into the abandoned beanbag chair—well, not sinking exactly. The motion is more mechanical, like an under-oiled robot. I place my cane on the floor and put my hands behind my head, trying to relax.

Shapri stares at me for a long time. She doesn’t know I’m able to sense when people do that. This happens all the time, people staring at me. It isn’t fair, since I’m not able to stare back.

“Where are you from?” I ask, trying to break her gaze.

It works. She paces toward the other side of the shop and picks something up, then runs her fingers across it—
cccccrick
goes the deck of cards. “What makes you think I’m not from around here?”

“Well, you’re new to the school and this is a small town. Plus, you talk with an accent.”

“I do?” she asks, shuffling the deck absent-mindedly. “I guess I do. I’m from New Orleans.”

“Where’s that?” I ask, trying to get a rise out of her.

“Really? You don’t know where New Orleans is?”

I sigh as if to say “no,” all the while suppressing my urge to laugh.

“It’s in Louisiana, home of
Mardi Gras
, and the Saints. Most haunted city in the U.S. Not to mention, we were hit by a massive hurricane a few years ago. The coverage was all over the news.”

I sit still without giving any indication of recollection.

“Wow, you’re really making me worry about the quality of my new school,” she says, walking toward me—I can’t tell whether she’s being sarcastic or not. “Pick a card,” she commands, bringing the deck close to my face.

I hesitate before reaching forward and locating the deck and then grab a card from the middle of the bunch fanned out in front of me.

“Ah, the Chariot,” she remarks.

“What does it mean?”

“Um, there’ll be a struggle. Let me see if I can remember this correctly… You’ll take a trip, and, and…be ripped apart by opposite forces.” Shapri seems proud of herself for having been able to provide the information.

“So it’s not a very good card?” I ask with a sarcastic laugh.

The back door swings open and a presence enters.

“No card is good or bad. All tell a story.” It’s Miss Teak. I recognize her voice from the other day. She drifts over to me and kneels down, cupping her hand over mine and the card it still holds. “The card is correct. You will face a struggle, both inner and outer. Don’t be overcome by the challenge. Stay strong and you will prosper.” She pulls her hand away, removing the card, too. She takes the remainder of the deck from Shapri and places it into the trunk.

With her back toward me, she continues speaking. “I believe you.”

“Believe me?” I’m beginning to get freaked out again. Shapri’s a little touchy, but things were going fine until Miss Teak entered.

“I know the fight started because you heard the other boy saying cruel things to you.”

“How do you—” I begin, but she cuts me off.

“Be wary, things are not always as they seem. Sometimes our vision plays tricks on us.”

“What do you mean ‘our vision plays tricks on us’? My vision’s always the same, everything’s black. I can’t
see
anything.”

“Yes, Alex, yes, you can. You see in a way that is different from others, but still you see.”