I'll Be Seeing You by Lurlene McDaniel Read Free Book Online Page B

to touch her face.
    “Wow,” Reba mumbled. “Close call.”
    “Tell me about it. It’s getting harder and harder to keep my secret.”
    “What if he asks one of the nurses about you?”
    “Don’t think I’m not worried about it. But they’re professionals. So if one does tell him about me, I hope she’ll be kind and won’t say, ‘Carley? You mean the dog-faced girl?’ ”
    Reba grimaced. “No one would ever say that about you.”
    “You’re wrong, Reba. Someone did say it.”
    “Who?”
    “Jon, my sister’s boyfriend.”
    “That’s so mean!”
    Carley patted Reba’s arm. “Don’t get worked up about it. It happened months ago. I was cutting through the gym at school and I heard some guys talking and heard one of them mention Janelle’s name. Naturally I stopped and eavesdropped. They were telling Jon how lucky he was to have a babe like Janelle for a steady date. And too bad she didn’t have a sister. And Jon said, ‘She does—it’s Carley, the dog-faced sophomore girl.’
    “Then I heard a couple of the guys makebarking noises and Jon say, ‘Man, I can hardly stand to look at her, she’s so ugly.’ I stopped listening then. I ran out of there as fast as I could. I didn’t cry until I got home, but to this day I can’t stand to be around Jon.”
    Reba’s eyes grew wide as Carley talked. “Did you ever tell your sister?”
    “ ’Course not. It’s too babyish to whine about it to her. I mean, what am I going to say? ‘Your boyfriend called me a dog. I think you should dump him.’ I need to be tough, Reba. Kids are always saying mean things about me. Dumb things. They don’t know what it’s like to look at this face in the mirror every day. People who are normal haven’t got a clue about how badly words hurt. Worse than rocks sometimes.”
    Reba nodded. “Why can’t people understand that no one likes being different. But people who are different still have feelings.”
    Carley realized that Reba, most of all, understood what she was saying. All her life Reba would be confined to a wheelchair. She was simply somebody that medical science couldn’t make normal. A lump of tearslodged in Carley’s throat. Tears for Reba. Tears for herself.
    “I’ve been trying to figure out why I’ve let this whole thing with Kyle get out of hand,” Carley said slowly. “I mean, why didn’t I just come clean with him from the beginning? You told me to.” Tears swam in her eyes.
    “What do I know?” Reba offered a smile.
    “You knew more than me. I guess it was just so nice to have a boy
like
me. And he liked me in spite of the way I looked. And now I can’t seem to stop pretending with him.”
    “You could if you wanted to.”
    Carley shook her head. “No. I don’t want to. I keep thinking that soon I’ll get out of here and get back to my life.”
    “But once he gets out, he might come looking for you.”
    “But
if
he can’t ever see me, it won’t matter.”
    Reba blinked. “Do you hear what you’re saying, Carley? It’s almost as if you don’t want him to get his eyesight back again.”
    Carley bowed her head. What Reba had said was true. She dreaded Kyle regaining hisvision. And yet it was wrong to wish him confined to a lifetime of darkness simply because she didn’t want him knowing she was disfigured. “He’s the first guy who’s ever been nice to me, Reba. The
only
one since before I was twelve.”
    “And you don’t think he’ll be nice to you once he knows what you look like?”
    “No,” Carley said miserably. “I live in the real world. And in the real world guys don’t stick around for girls who look like me.”
    Just before bedtime Carley’s phone rang.
    “Where were you tonight?” Kyle’s voice sounded hurt. “I told you my folks were coming and that I wanted you to meet them. Why did you run off?”
    “I went to visit Reba. I hadn’t seen her since her surgery and I didn’t want her to think I’d forgotten about her,” she explained