Blindsided by Priscilla Cummings Read Free Book Online Page A

left gooey toothpaste and stuff all over the sink? What if she used Natalie’s towel by mistake? Or her hairbrush— or her ChapStick?! Natalie figured she’d have to start keeping those things in a drawer now.
    She hoisted her backpack and started to walk out.
    Yeah. And what if this new roommate was the type who borrowed things without asking? Or stole ? Natalie’s new iPod might be pretty tempting, and it was so small.
    Natalie paused at the door with her hand on the knob. . . . She held the doorknob so long it made her hand cold. . . . What if her new roommate didn’t want to be here either?
    Slowly, she walked back to her bed, where she let the heavy backpack fall off her shoulders onto the mattress. Tearing a sheet of paper out of a notebook, she sat down and began writing in large letters with her black felt-tip pen: Welcome to 202. My name is Natalie. I’m new, too.
    What else? Natalie bit her lip again. She hoped her roommate could see well enough to read the note. I’ll see you later , she added, then stopped and blacked it all out. Phrases like that were always popping up. People didn’t mean anything cruel by them, but those prickly everyday sayings could be as mood-altering as a vague stomachache.
    She started over again with a new piece of paper, ending it with: Can’t wait to meet you .
    After placing the note on the empty bed, she joined the others in the lobby and took Serena’s elbow for the long trek to the dining hall.

    Let me not to the marriage of true minds
    Admit impediments. Love is not love . . .
    In English, they were studying Shakespearean sonnets, and the teacher, a young woman named Miss Amelia, had written Sonnet 116 on the blackboard.
    “There is a beat behind every poem, a cadence of words in a patterned sequence,” she told the class. “Shakespeare used a lot of iambic pentameter. The iamb is the stress and the unstress, the metric foot . Let ME not TO . . . Penta means five—so five feet, five beats to the line.”
    While she spoke, three students pounded on their Braillers, which were like typewriters except that instead of keys they had six tabs that corresponded to the six dots in a Braille cell. Others tapped on Braille notebooks, which were like laptop computers except that they also had the six tabs corresponding to the six dots in a Braille cell. Serena and Natalie were the only two who actually wrote by hand. They took their notes with thick, black felt-tip pens on paper with wide, dark lines.
    “Who wants to come up and mark in the stress and the unstress?” the teacher asked in a loud voice so she could be heard above the noisy Braillers. “How about you, Sheldon?”
    Sheldon, who had just put his head down in his arms (a habit of his apparently), reluctantly pushed himself up and walked to the blackboard. He stood with his face about an inch from the words the teacher had written in chalk. Slowly, he moved his head in a circle. Natalie was fascinated. She knew that Sheldon had lost his central vision, so that he saw only peripherally, around the edges—the exact opposite of Natalie’s problem. And she suddenly realized why he often seemed aloof, looking off into space, even when he was talking to you. He was just trying to see what was right in front of him.
     
    In American government, the teacher’s name was Mr. Joe (it was almost like kindergarten, Natalie thought, the way they addressed their teachers: Miss Amelia, Mr. Joe, Miss Audra, Miss Karen). Mr. Joe told class they would be studying the separation of powers in the three branches of government. “What are those three branches?”
    Eve raised her hand to answer and for some reason stood up. Natalie, sitting behind her, noticed the huge red stain on the back of her white denim shorts. Her period?
    Natalie felt embarrassed for her. She knew she would quietly say something to Eve at the end of class. But what if no one told her? How did blind people deal with this?
     
    Sandpaper . . . silk . . . wool . .