“God, it’s so…dark.”  Those were the only words that I could think of.  Little did I know that those four innocent words held so much misfortune.  Six seconds later, I would learn that one of the symptoms of Meningitis is blindness.  Seven seconds later, I would realize that I was one of the few people who suffered this fate.

Hot, salty tears drown my eyes as I viciously rub my eyelids.  Maybe I could rub hard enough to smear this blackness away.  The blackness persists.  Balling my fists, I drive them into the hospital bed surrounding me.  The mattress springs retaliate and cause my back to slightly leap above the bed.  I rip the tucked sheets off of the bed, and whip them into the air.  I feel trapped inside of my own body, conscious of every twitch and pulse in my arms and legs and face.  Regressing back to the days of IfYouJustBelieveHardEnoughAnythingIsPossible, I hope with every cell in my body that I could open my eyes to just see what is around me—my sister’s curly hair and freckly face, my dad’s round glasses and soft, hazel eyes, my mom’s wide, goofy grin, even the unfamiliar doctor’s face. 

More tears escape through the corners of my eyes.  My wrists are shaking and I’m sobbing with no control of myself; my hands buzz with rage.  This type of thing isn’t supposed to happen to me.  This is what you read about in textbooks, and in the newspaper.  You read about that eight-year-old orphan who became both blind and deaf, feel sorry and shake your head at the unfairness that takes place in this world, then go onto eating your cereal and reading the Sunday comics.  This is impossible.  This is bullshit.  I’m too normal.  Maybe it would happen to that kid in the corner of my math class, always wearing that same disgusting, black sweatshirt and purple eyeliner.  Or maybe it would happen to the old woman who walks her cat on a leash. Or, ironically, an eye doctor.  But why me?  What’s the point of doing it to me?  Everything was going   how it was supposed to. What the hell? I’m too good for this.

After two more days of breathing for stethoscopes and enduring needles poking into my arm, I finally arrive back to our apartment.  My mom holds one of my arms, while my dad holds the other.  I want to yell that I don’t need their help as my dad murmurs to my mom to move the coffee table.  Feeling helpless and weak, warm tears once again drip down my cheek and under my chin.  Wooden floor, linoleum, wooden floor, carpet.  I must be in my room now.  Shaking loose from my parents’ grip, I cling to the sides of my room, carefully tracing the walls.  I can sense that my parents are still standing in the doorway as I approach the wooden handle on my tall closet door.  My red clothing filters through my fingers; I had been sorting my clothing by color ever since I saw Jessica do it last year.  In the midst of foreign emotions, my organized closet gives me a quick rush of comfort and familiarity.  Reaching my hands farther inside the cotton layers, I feel the soft, thin denim of my favorite pair of Seven jeans.  My fingers soon find the rows of leather and suede that fill my shoe shelf.  I’m careful not to knock down the line of nail polish bottles on the top of the shelf.  My hands then press against the cold glass of my mirror.  I lean my forehead and cheeks against it, and once again feel the sore sting of sadness in my throat.  I slide further around my room, and the sharp corner of my desk knudges my stomach.  Cold, slippery paper clips; prickly thumbtacks; and cubed post-it notes brush my fingertips.  My elbow hits against the bed frame.  I plop face first into my new best friend—my bed.

For the next three weeks, I don’t go to school.  I don’t want to leave the house or see any of my friends—I must look like a wreck!  My sister told me that she would help me pick out a cute outfit and do my make-up, but how much does she really know about fashion?  She practically pulls the first two things out of the closet and throws them on.  If I don’t look my best, my friends will ditch me.  Trust me, I don’t want a repeat of middle school.

Instead of going out, I spend the majority of my time sleeping.  I like being asleep: I’m not supposed to see anything.  I’m the same as everyone else for those peaceful hours.  Sometimes when I’m in bed I go over the colors—red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple—visualizing each one for a few moments before going onto the next.  I imagine the lush, green grass after it’s rained a lot, and the endless blue of a clear, sunny sky.  I constantly promise myself to never forget these colors. 

***

I lay in my bed, my head comfortably pocketed into a down pillow, feeling the warmth radiate from my clean, damp hair.  I have no idea how long it has been since the incident.  The post-incident life has consisted of a monotonous alternation between eat and sleep.  Stroking my cold wall with the back of my hand, I feel dizzy and have no sense of direction.  I don’t even feel like I am alive, just floating in nothing.  My mom’s loud voice suddenly booms through the hall and breaks my daydream. 

“Abby, I have a visitor for you.”  She says this in a cheery voice, as if she gets joy out of the fact that I’m about to die of embarrassment.  Quickly combing my knotted hair with my fingers, I try to look somewhat presentable.  The world I have been trying not to confront for the past several weeks is entering back into my life in the form of four light knocks.  Before I hear her voice I smell her perfume.  It smells the same as the Macy’s perfume department: suffocating and intimidating.

“Abby, oh my God.”  It’s my friend, Charlotte.

“Hi.”

I can feel her presence, hovering over my bed and not knowing what to do with herself.

“Um, wait…so you’re actually, like…blind?  Like, you can’t see?”  Her tone is amused.

“Nope.”  I say this fast, so I can hear her next response.  I hope for something sincere and reassuring—maybe a squeeze of my hand to tell me that everything will be okay. 

“Woah.  That’s so freaky.”  Her voice still sounds amused, rather than concerned.  I feel the whip of air as she swings her hair in front of her head to pull it into a ponytail.  She always tried to make as big of a scene as possible when putting up her hair.

“Oh my God, Abby.  You’ll never believe what happened today, though.  So, you know that girl who always wears the ugly sweater her mom knit her?’  I can practically hear the anticipation in her voice, waiting to break the next line of the story to me.

“Yeah?”  I rub the material of my shirt, to notice it’s rough and baggy. 

“Well, she wore bright pink corduroy pants today!  Ha.  What a freak.”

She laughs, expecting me to laugh with her, but it just isn’t funny to me for some reason.

I shift in my bed.  “Well, thanks for coming to visit me.”

“Oh my God, everyone’s been asking where you’ve been.  Me and Sasha tried to call you and your parents kept saying you didn’t want to talk on the phone or want any visitors—you just ‘needed some alone time.’  I didn’t know it was like, this serious, though.  Well, now I’ll finally have an answer when someone asks where you are.”

The obnoxious ticking of the clock resonates in my ear. 

“Well, I just wanted to see why you weren’t at school.  I should probably go, though.”

I turn away from her and face the wall.  “Um…ok.  See ya.”

 I lay in bed, bathing in pity for myself, when the strong, proud sound of guitar strums suddenly fill my room.  A pure melody whole-heartedly pours itself from the musician’s lungs.  “Imagine all the people, living for today…”  The energy that fills my room is ineffable.  I feel the drowsy comfort and warmth of lying in a square of sunlight on a softly carpeted floor, but the soothing feeling soon transforms into a jittery feeling of excitement—like you get right before you’re about to go on an anxiously-awaited vacation.  No longer being able to stay still, I poke my toes outside of the smothering, flannel comforter.  My leg slides outside of the blankets and arches onto the carpet, as my hand clutches a bedpost I use to lift myself up.  A little dizzy at first, but I’m soon balanced.  I put my right foot forward, then my left.  Placing my hands on the wall, I feel around until I reach the doorway.  Meanwhile, the music is getting louder and louder.

“Hey Abby, you up to a visitor?” my neighbor, Frank yells out.  Even though I can’t see him, I know for a fact that he’s sitting on his apartment deck in a plastic lawn chair.  I’ve never seen him leave that seat or that guitar he plays since he moved in next to us two years ago.  I imagine his gray, bushy mustache and eyebrows, ponytail hanging down his back, and squinty, green eyes overlooking the city.

“Sure, come on over,”  I shout back, surprised by the sincerity and excitement in my tone.  The music stops, as the hollow guitar clunks into its case and the clamps snap shut.  Soon enough, my mom greets Frank at the door and his heavy, confident footsteps make their way over to me.  After a good ten minutes of explaining my situation, we are unsurprisingly sitting outside on my porch.  I hear cars passing and waves crashing in the distance as the cold airs sweeps in and out of my lungs.

“Hey Abster, wanna try and play my guitar?  I brought it over.”  Agreeing to give it a shot, I clutch the large wooden instrument against my chest.  Frank guides my fingers into a formation along the rough, metal strings. 
            “Now take your other hand like this, and strum over here.  That’s a G.”

Holding the thin, plastic guitar pick in my right hand, I sweep my hand across the reverberating strings.  The pluck of each chord releases a flutter of soothing notes.  My whole body feels the warm vibration as my baggy shirt ripples back and forth in the wind.  My hair is blowing against my face, but I don’t bother to pull it back.  I just sing at the top of my lungs for the city to hear, as the colors grow dimmer and dimmer in my mind.