Blindsided by Priscilla Cummings Read Free Book Online

Insulting sign taped on the wall over my pillow:
    MAKES OWN BED
“Do they think I can’t see?”
I can see . . .
    Twenty-four hours. She had been here for a little more than one day and already it was too much. Her father’s parting words came back to her: “You’ll be okay, Natty. You’ve got way too much going for you. . . .”
    That was it exactly, Natalie thought, sitting up and opening her hands as though to argue the point with an invisible stranger. She had so much going for her! She was a good student, a girl who laughed with her friends, who loved peanut M&M’s and fuzzy socks and a Nubian goat . . . so why her?! Why would God do this to her?
    Sometimes Natalie wished there was someone—or something to blame. But she was born without an iris, and that simple fact was the root cause of her juvenile glaucoma. Sporadic aniridia, they called it. Simple, irrevocable bad luck. The gene that was responsible for eye development didn’t do what it was supposed to do.
    “You’ll have to accept it, Nat,” her mother had whispered in the hallway when they left Dr. Rose’s office that last time.
    But did she have to accept it?
    No! For years, Natalie had chosen to ignore the facts they gently hammered into her. She just refused to change her way of thinking. She could never say it out loud, but the conviction was deep. Natalie was certain that as long as she worked hard, prayed hard, and totally believed in herself it would never actually happen. Because how could it? How could a girl with so much going for her—simply lose her sight?
    The fingers of Natalie’s left hand gathered and squeezed the fingers of her right. She thought back to what people had told her: The pressure is up again . . . this isn’t good . . . surely you’re struggling . . . the loss of peripheral vision is only the beginning . . . you’ve got to prepare yourself.
    But there was always hope. Wasn’t there? It’s why her father bought her the little pink stone. It’s why she did her stupid eyedrops faithfully, twice a day. Even Dr. Rose once told her there was always hope. Anything is possible, he had admitted. Miracles do happen . . . So wasn’t it possible that his own diagnosis was wrong? And no different from all the other times when naysayers had filled her ears with their dire predictions?
    She was fourteen now, on the brink of so much, and maybe, from now on, she would have to get through it by doing what she had always done: tune out the naysayers, like turning off a radio station with too much static.
    And hope for the miracle.

A PREVIEW OF WHAT’S COMING
    I n the morning, Natalie moved an empty box and made sure there was nothing else of hers on the roommate’s bed or bureau top. In the bathroom, she shifted her two towels to one rack so that the other was free, and slid her toothbrush, toothpaste, and bottle of eyedrops all the way to one side of the narrow glass shelf above the sink. All halfhearted efforts. At another time, another place, Natalie might have loved the companionship of a roommate. But not then. Not when there was so much turmoil and uncertainty. Natalie dreaded having another human being foisted into her private space.
    Quickly, she made up her bed, and then reached up to rip the humiliating sign off the wall above her pillow. MAKES OWN BED. It was pretty obvious, wasn’t it? She tore it up and threw it in the trash.
    Sighing, she jammed the books she needed that day into her backpack. When her foot stumbled over the cane, Natalie picked it up from the floor and heaved it into the back of her closet where it landed with a loud thud.
    What if her new roommate talked all the time? Or snored at night? Or was so blind she walked into everything?
    Natalie zipped up her purse. The schedule. Where was that new schedule? She rolled her eyes, recalling how she had thrown it across the room, then got on her hands and knees and felt around on the floor until she found it.
    What if this new roommate was messy and