Home I mean real home is Seattle Washington We lived there right along the shore all twelve years of my life There was always a wonderful blanket of soft gray in the sky so I only had to put on sunscreen once in the morning and my milk-white skin stayed perfectly pale The air smelled salty and like rain Mom would walk me to school during the school year and I’d spend the summer hanging out with my best friend Eliza who lived a block from us Her mom let her walk over to our house by herself in the morning but of course it was impossible for me to head out on my own So we’d always hang out at my home Mom would bake us cook ies and tell us stories about her life B A before Alice when she was a travel writer She made every day feel like an adventure Sometimes when Dad came home from work he’d say Where’d ya go today Alice And I’d say anything from Argentina to Zaire wherever Mom had talked about that day Here in Stinkville life is pretty much the opposite of before We live in a little house in the middle of the woods Even with all the trees the sky is blazing blue I have to put on sunscreen every other hour For real And the air in Stinkville It smells like rotting eggs That’s because the whole town is centered on M H Bartel Paper Mill where almost everyone including the new plant manager a k a my dad in town works 2
Do you know how paper is made I don’t either But I do know it involves purposefully rotting wood Rotting wood emits incredibly horrible smells The scariest part no one in town even smells it anymore For real So if we live in Stinkville long enough we’ll get used to the stink and we won’t even know how horrible it is to new people And if that wasn’t stinktastic enough Mom doesn’t walk me to school or anywhere for that matter Mostly that’s because we moved in the summer so there is no school But also because the longer we live here the less Mom does anything Momish She took me to the library the first week we were here but has been too tired feeling a little overwhelmed or grrrmmlll the approximate sound she makes when I nudge her awake since She doesn’t even tell me to brush my teeth any more let alone explain what happened when she went diamond mining in Tanzania years ago But what about hanging out all day with my BFF Well she’s literally across the country And I’m here With no friends No life My only excitement now is going to M H Bartel Public Library yup even the library was named after the paper mill When James Tooter and I got to the library doors I stomped and refused to go inside without my brother What is your deal he hissed I said I’d take you to the library not hold your books for you 3
I can’t go by myself I stomped again Why not I glared at him Are you playing the blind card he sighed I’m not playing I snapped I’m actually blind And you have to help me I don’t have to do anything James snapped back But he looked around for someplace to tie Tooter’s leash Do you think it’s okay to leave him out here I muttered I mean it was about a thousand degrees out Under my enormo sunhat my sweaty hair felt wet as if I had just left the shower Tooter’s little pink tongue hung out of his mouth and almost touched the sidewalk Urgh James jerked open the door to the library and stepped in dragging Tooter along by the leash The cool fresh air hit my face as we walked inside and I breathed as deeply as I could My glasses turn to sunglass lenses when I’m outside so for a minute I was even more blind than usual while the lenses adjusted Excuse me a high-pitched voice that seemed to come out of the speaker’s nose rather than her mouth called out We do not allow animals in here This Is A Library As my lenses transitioned I could make out a huge desk in front of us Behind it I saw a bright red blur 4
that I think was the speaker’s shirt and a fluffy mound of yellow which had to be her hair I’m sorry James said It’s just I’m bringing my sister here I had to actually bring her in because she’s blind Oh The librarian sucked in her breath I went ahead and rolled my eyes figuring the person behind the desk was a Not looking at me and b Not able to see behind my dark lenses anyway Where we used to live everyone knew I was blind It wasn’t a big deal It was accepted the same way every one accepted that Josh’s mom always was last to pick him up from playdates and that Eliza’s hair was too curly to lie flat around her face But here being blind is news And this is the way it goes when people find out about me they gasp Then if I’m close enough I’ll see this awful expression on their faces like they just ate some bad cheese but are holding it in their mouths instead of spitting it out Then they become overly helpful usually asking the person I’m with what they can do to help instead of asking me They also speak super loudly like maybe I’m also deaf No one ever asks me questions If they did I’d be able to explain So you’ve heard of 20 20 vision being normal I’m 20 200 in my left eye 20 210 in my right So a normal 5
