Borrowed Light for My Youth

On senior picture day, the fall of our last year of high school, I did what I always did and stood next to Lena, the girl I'd grown up with. One of our classmates started in on us. "Come on, let the little married couple stand together!" I'd heard it a hundred times, but the secret I was keeping still put color in my face. Lena didn't say anything. Then the photographer counted down, everybody yelled "Cheese," and I heard her voice next to me, low and flat with irritation. "This is exhausting. Can you give me some space?" It was her. I was born with weak vision, so my hearing has always been sharper than most people's. I know what I heard. The second the shutter clicked, she turned and walked back inside. I stood there a long time before I followed. On my way past the wish wall outside our classroom, I reached up and took down the sticky note where I'd written the same dream school as Lena. Chapter 1 When I got back to my seat, Lena was talking to the girl next to her. She looked up and talked to me like she always did. "Where are your glasses?" I rubbed my eyes. They were dry and stinging from the sun. "Lost them." She sighed and pulled the curtain shut beside me. "I'll walk you home tonight." For a second I let myself believe the thing I'd heard on picture day had been my imagination after all. After school, somebody came and pulled her away. She told me to wait for her in the classroom. So I waited. Two hours. I wanted to call her, but my phone had died. Finally a teacher passed by and spotted me. "Owen? Why aren't you home yet?" She knew my eyes were bad and offered to drive me. I said no. I didn't want Lena coming back and not finding me. When she saw my phone was dead, she called Lena for me. Twenty minutes later, Lena appeared in the doorway, out of breath. "I texted you. I told you to go on ahead." "I didn't see it." I held up the phone, useless in my hand. "It died." She looked at me for a long moment. Something complicated moved across her face. In the end she said none of it. "Let's go." She barely spoke the whole way. She spent most of it answering messages. There was a scent on her, something green and faintly bitter, like crushed herbs. It hadn't been there earlier in the day. Where had she been? When we got to the front of my building, somebody called her name. A few people were standing by the entrance. I couldn't make out their faces. But the same scent came off one of them. Lena took a few quick steps toward them. I stayed where I was. "What are you guys doing here?" "The place we're going is right around the corner. We came to grab you." The voice was low and clean, and I knew it. I'd heard it over the morning announcements all year. Grant Hale. The guy half the school had a thing for. "Okay. Give me a second. I'm walking him in." One of the boys made an impatient sound. "Seriously? You're already at his building. He needs an escort from here?" One of Lena's friends jumped in to explain. "Owen can't see well after dark." The boy clicked his tongue. "He looks fine the rest of the time. Who knows if any of it's real? "It's Grant's birthday and she still has to make a whole trip out of this. I think he does it on purpose. Way to kill the mood." I stood there with my hands closed into fists and nowhere to put them. When Lena came back over, I kept my voice down. "Go with them. I can get myself in." She hesitated. "You sure?" "I'm sure." I turned and went inside. Their voices carried after me. "Hey, Lena. Aren't you going to tuck your invalid boyfriend in?" "He's my friend. Don't be disgusting." My feet stalled. In all the years I'd known her, that was the first time she'd ever snapped at anyone about it. The courtyard paths were well lit. Even so, the lights only gave me a general sense of which way to go. I felt my way forward. Something was closing around my chest. She'd never bothered correcting people before, because it hadn't mattered to her. Now it mattered. Because of Grant? My leg caught on something and I went down hard. My palm lit up with pain, and for a second I just sat there, lost. She hadn't always been like this. We used to live across the hall from each other. She held my hand on the way to school and on the way home. She asked the teacher to put us at the same desk. When other kids made fun of my eyes, she got in front of me. When had I started being a chore? "Owen!" Fast footsteps behind me. Lena hauled me up off the ground. "This is what you meant by 'I'm sure'?" Her voice was sharp. But her hands were careful, checking me over for anything broken. Then she took hold of me and walked me home, the way she used to. The small flame in my chest caught again. Lena still cared. Chapter 2 That night, lying in bed, I kept going back over what I'd heard. Grant's birthday had been that day. Lena's was two days later. So it wasn't only the scent on their clothes. Even their birthdays sat right next to each other. The next morning I walked over to Lena's. Her mom opened the door. "Owen! Get in here." Lena called something from her room but didn't come out. "I don't understand your school," Miss Carol said. "The SAT is in a few weeks and they're handing out days off. How is anybody supposed to stay focused?" She tipped her head toward Lena's door. "That one's been gaming since breakfast." Then she pulled fruit out of the refrigerator. "Go keep her company. Tell me what you want for dinner and I'll make it." Miss Carol left for the grocery store. I stood outside Lena's door and knocked. She had a headset on, mid-game. She caught me out of the corner of her eye and waved me in. I sat behind her and watched. I didn't understand the game. I didn't understand half of what she was saying to the people on the other end of the headset either. When the round finally ended, she turned around. "The sun's brutal out there. Why'd you come over?" I held out the box I'd brought. "Happy birthday, Lena." "Thanks." She took it and set it down beside her without opening it. Her phone went off right then. She glanced at the screen and picked up. "Lena, get back in. "Grant says he'll carry us. We got wrecked all morning. This is our shot." She said okay and pulled the headset back on. Then, like she'd just remembered I was in the room, she glanced over her shoulder. "I got some new books. They're on the shelf. Take whatever." She turned back to the monitor and didn't look at me again. I sat there a while, watching her laugh with people whose world I couldn't get into. It was the first time it really landed. She and I didn't live in the same one anymore. "I'm heading out." I thought she hadn't heard. But I got as far as the door and she called after me. "You're still going to Westbridge, right?" Westbridge had always been her school. And it was the one we'd promised each other, years ago. I nodded. "What about you?" "Okay. Got it." I wanted to ask what that meant. She was already back in the game. My eyes went to the gift she'd shoved onto the shelf because it was in her way. It was the out-of-print record she'd been talking about for months. I'd worked through every secondhand shop on the east side of town, a dozen of them, one at a time. It took me two full weeks to turn up a copy, and then I had to talk the owner into parting with it at all. Now it was standing in the corner where she'd dropped it. Nobody was going to touch it. That was about how I felt too. I was pulling my shoes on by the door when I heard her voice from the bedroom. Somebody in the game had apparently asked her something. "Westbridge? I don't want to go. I hate that city, it's way too dry. "I'll figure it out when the letters come." My hand went unsteady on the doorknob. Then why had she asked whether I was still going? So she'd know what to avoid? The door opened from the other side. Miss Carol came in with the groceries. "Owen, you're leaving already? Stay and eat." I made myself smile. "No, thank you. I want to get some studying in." She didn't push. She turned and aimed her voice at Lena's door instead. "Lena! Still on that game? You could at least see Owen out!" I came out of the stairwell into the sun. It was warm all the way through. Inside, I was hollow. So much for going to Westbridge together. She'd stopped caring about that a long time ago, which meant I didn't have to keep my end of it either. The night before the SAT, I got a text from her. "I'll pick you up in the morning." I looked at it for a long time, then typed back. "No need. My family's taking me." The next morning, I walked through the gates by myself. For the first time, at something that actually mattered, Lena wasn't next to me. I found my room on the seating chart and turned to go. Somebody slammed into my back. Chapter 3 My pencil case hit the ground. Pens, erasers, and a ruler went everywhere. My admission ticket skidded a few feet away. "Oh, sorry. Didn't see you." A boy I didn't know. I couldn't place him. I didn't bother with him and went straight for the ticket. My fingers had almost reached it when a shoe came down on top of the paper. He bent close to my face, his voice thick with mockery. "Are you actually blind, or do you just play it up? Your eyes really do look off." "That's not your business." I tugged at the ticket. It didn't move. "Real or fake, you're still a charity case. So quit hanging off Lena. "Don't be so selfish. Yeah?" I looked up at him. The face was vaguely familiar. "Move your foot. Whatever's between me and Lena has nothing to do with you." "Wow, you really—" He twisted his shoe. The thin paper tore straight through. Before he could finish, somebody shoved him hard enough to knock him sideways. Lena stood there with her face gone cold. "What is wrong with you?" That stopped him for a second. "What's wrong with you? "It wasn't on purpose. I already apologized." Lena picked up the torn ticket and the scattered pens and pushed them into my hands. "I'm walking you to your room." I kept my head down and followed her, holding the case against my chest. As we passed him, he muttered it under his breath. "Blind kid's such a drama queen." I knew that voice. He'd been outside my building that night, with Grant. Lena walked me all the way to my testing room before she went to find her own. For a few minutes it felt like it used to. But the coldness hadn't been in my head. Neither had the impatience. I really didn't understand her anymore. The SAT was finally over. The whole school felt lighter. That evening I finished sorting my notes and picked up my phone. Grant had posted a photo of the record. The caption read: "A surprise with perfect timing. Still hearing it. Thank you for the gift." It was the exact record I'd given Lena, right down to the birthday message I'd cut into the sleeve myself. Her birthday present, from me. And she'd handed it to Grant. The hurt came up so fast my eyes burned with it. I called her. "You gave Grant the birthday present I got you?" She made a small, careless sound. "Yeah. "Grant and I were talking and it turns out he likes it too, so I took it over for him to hear." My grip closed hard around the phone. My voice came out scraped raw. "It took me two weeks to find that. "You handed my present to somebody else and didn't even tell me. You don't think that's too far?" Lena sounded irritated. "It's a record. You seriously called me to put me on trial over a record?" "It's not about the record." My voice shook. "You threw away what I meant by it." "You gave it to me, so it's mine. What I do with it is up to me. "You don't get a say." I opened my mouth. Nothing came. "This is exhausting." She hung up. I sat there holding the phone with my chest aching. The exact words she'd said on picture day. After that, we stopped talking altogether. Until our class put together a get-together that spring. I didn't want to go. But it was the first thing anyone had organized all year. My parents pushed me to. Miss Carol even told Lena to keep an eye on me. It was the first time Lena and I had seen each other since the fight. She was in a mood the whole way there. I tried a few times. She gave me "mm" and "sure" and nothing else. So I stopped, and we rode the rest of it in silence, like two strangers who happened to know everything about each other. The restaurant was loud. Everybody talked over everybody. I drank my soda and listened. My eyes don't let me stare at a screen for long. I stay out of harsh sun when I can. After dark I'm most of the way to blind. Basketball, gaming, biking. There wasn't one conversation at that table I could get into. We'd barely sat down and I already wanted to go home. Then somebody suggested truth or dare. The bottle went around a few people and landed on Lena. She picked truth. Somebody grinned. "Lena, you take such good care of Owen. Do you like him?" Chapter 4 The table exploded. I sat very still with my hands locked together under it. I didn't want to put her on the spot. I was about to say something when she answered first. Her face was flat. Her voice came out cold. "Don't start. Our families are close. "His eyes are bad, and my parents told me to look out for him." It came out light. It landed on my chest like a block of ice. Everything I'd been carrying around in secret, everything I'd let myself hope for. Start to finish, I'd been the only one in it. I couldn't sit there. I got up and went to the restroom and stayed until I had my face under control. Coming back, I heard voices in the hallway outside the other one. "Lena, you're glued to Owen every single day. How are you ever supposed to get a boyfriend? "He can barely see, he needs you babysitting him around the clock. Are you honestly signing up for that for life? "Grant is obviously into you. If you lose a shot like that over some charity case, you're going to be crying about it later. "Think about yourself for once. Stop covering for him." Whatever Lena said after that, I didn't catch. So I wasn't only dead weight. I was the thing standing between her and Grant. Then the thing should get out of the way. I waited outside the private room. All I wanted was to tell her I was going home early. The second she heard me, her face changed. Her voice went sharp and impatient. "Owen, can you not ruin everything for once? "If you go now, I have to go with you. I have other friends. There are things I want to do. "Do you have any idea how much it wears on me, you using your eyes to make me take care of you? I'm not your mother. I don't owe you this. "Can you let me breathe? Please?" I froze where I stood. Every piece of pride I had left went to powder. So what she'd said on picture day had been the truth after all. And somewhere along the way, without meaning to, I'd put all of that on her. I held the burn in my eyes where it was, and nodded. "Okay. "I understand. "Thank you for all these years. "I won't bother you again." I was lucky the street outside was bright. I was lucky there was a cab at the curb. It let me keep the last of my dignity in front of her. The day the acceptance letters came, Lena and I had both done well. Our parents arranged a dinner to celebrate. Partway through, the talk turned to where we were committing. Miss Carol put another piece of short rib on my plate. "Owen, how are the schools looking? I remember you two were going to do Westbridge together. "It would be good, being in the same place. You could look out for each other. "Right, Lena?" Lena's hand stopped around her fork. She looked down at her plate. "...I haven't decided." Her mother made a noise and started in on her about it. My mom stepped in smoothly. "No rush. They're old enough to have their own reasons. Let them think it through." She turned the conversation, and the table eased up again. On the way home, my mother asked out of nowhere. "Did something happen between you and Lena?" She was never going to miss the change in me. So I didn't deny it. "I just think I shouldn't lean on her all the time. "Lena can't look after me forever. She doesn't owe me that." My mother put her hand on my head. It hurt her to hear it. "I'll look after you forever." Then she said, "Once you've sent in your deposit, let's take a trip. All of us." After the deposit went in, I stayed out of the house the whole summer. Part of it was the trip with my parents. The rest of it I spent on my own, going wherever. I didn't come home until right before move-in. Then I packed in a hurry and left for the next city over. A few days before her own move-in, Lena came by the house. "Miss Diane, is Owen home? I wanted to talk to him about when we're driving out." My mother looked at her, confused. "Owen's school starts early. He already left." Lena went blank. Westbridge move-in was still two weeks out. "Where did he go?" "Lakeview University."