Sightless

Chapter Three

Alex had something on his mind all evening. He wanted to know what Terry meant by how his attractiveness had anything to do with him sitting with Casey. He was just Casey’s new acquaintance. Were only beautiful people allowed to sit with him? Was he only there because he was considered attractive? Was this some sort of prank on the sightless kid? All of those questions plagued Alex’s mind until he got to school the next morning.

He walked into his first class with a growing confidence and sat down in his seat. Of course chatter box Angela was ready to talk the minute he sat down.

“How was lunch yesterday? Do you like Casey’s friends? Are you going to sit with me today?”

Alex thought for a moment and then answered each question. “Lunch was fine, I enjoyed myself. I like his friends well enough, but I don’t think they are all too keen with me sitting there. And I’m not sure Casey’s friend Rodney told me I wasn’t allowed to sit anywhere else because I was an ‘amusing little dude,’” Alex said with a little laugh at the memory.

Rodney was quite a character, but so was Casey. They seemed to have the most personality out of any one at the table. And for some reason even though Angela was Alex’s new best friend at the school he couldn’t imagine sitting with her friends when he had the option of sitting with Casey and his friends.

Angela’s pout was lost on Alex’s sightless blue eyes, but the tone in her voice tipped him off. “Oh, okay. We can still talk during this class.”

Alex smiled, trying to ignore the pout in her tone. “Yeah, we can. And you like to walk me to Biology 2 don’t you?”

“Yeah,” Angela sighed.

How would Alex ever pick up that she liked him if he was sitting with the stupid outcasts of the school? Why would he sit there when he could sit with her and the other popular kids? It just didn’t make any sense to her at all. She would just have to try even harder while they were in class.

The bell rang and Alex felt a surge of relief. Practically jumping out of his seat, he gathered up his books and walked swiftly out of the room, with Angela trailing behind him chattering away.

Alex couldn’t handle another moment of her talking. He didn’t know what had come over the girl, she was giggling incessantly, and touching him whenever she got the chance. He wasn’t exactly a touch-me-not, but a boy can handle so much arm punching before he wanted to do a little punching of his own. But of course Alex didn’t say a word to Angela about her driving him up the wall.

“Bye Ang,” he said leaving her in the doorway.

He heard the soft roar of multiple conversations as he sat down and he wondered if he was somehow late. He sat down waiting to see if he would get lectured.

“What’s wrong, Cruz? You seemed annoyed,” Casey said from beside him.

Alex hadn’t even noticed Casey’s presence, so of course it made him jump a little when a voice you didn’t expect starts speaking it tends to scare a person. “Oh, it’s just Angela. She was being so.. weird.. today. I told her I was going to just be sitting with you- I hope you don’t mind –and she started rambling about uninteresting things and giggling and hitting my arm. My arm. Seriously, who does that?”

Casey snorted a laugh. He was amused at how clueless Alex was. It was like he was beamed in from an alien planet or something. “She was flirting with you, Einstein. She wants your D.”

“She was? She wants my.. what..?”

Casey leaned toward Alex and whispered into his ear what that meant as the bell rang. Alex’s eyes became as wide and as round as saucers and his mouth formed an ‘o’ shape. That was the reaction Casey was aiming for. He smirked pleased with himself.

“Do you think? Does she rally? Are you serious?” Alex stammered out, panic clear across his face.

“Bro, chill. So what? A girl wants your D. What’s the big deal? Just be happy about it,” Casey said with a shrug.

“I’m not like that!” Alex exclaimed his face becoming very animated.

“Mr. Cruz, Mr. Toler, the bell has rang,” Mr. Johnson said with a slightly annoyed tone. This was the second day in a row that he had to get onto them for being too noisy, but before he had never heard Casey say anything other than the occasional wise crack at his teaching, so he felt like he was being too harsh.

“Sorry, sir,” Alex said tilting his head down. He knew that it was his fault that he and Casey got called down. If he didn’t react like such a -what was the word– prude, then no attention would have been called to the pair.

“It’s alright, boy. I’m sure it was a lot different at your old school,” Mr. Johnson said softening a bit. He was a bit of a push over when it came to Alex.

Alex nodded and then class began. Mr. Johnson had finally remembered the needed supplies for the mitosis experiment he had promised on Alex’s first day. Mr. Johnson called on students to pass out microscopes, slides, and slips of paper to identify what was on the slides. Once the supplies were distributed the sound of scraping chairs filled Alex’s ears. He then realized he was going to be of absolutely no use during this lab. Casey would have to do all the work, unless Alex wrote down the results, but even then his writing was more than likely atrocious. He just felt like 110 pounds of dead weight.

After a few moments of Casey doing all the work he looked at Alex and asked aggravated-ly, “You gonna help or what? Ahw..”

“I could try to write down the results?”

“How would that work?”

“My teacher at my old school taught me how, but I don’t know if it is anything more than chicken scratch,” Alex explained feeling slightly self-conscious. He seemed to second guess himself when around Casey.

Casey shrugged, even though he knew that Alex could not see it. “You can give it a shot. My hand writing isn’t pretty either.”

Alex leaned forward in his seat and ran a hand across the sheet of paper. He could feel the indentions from Casey’s writing. He was surprised, usually only people who were purposely trying pressed this hard when writing. He felt around for his pencil and then tilted his head up waiting for further instructions.

Casey named off a few slides and Alex took his time writing them down as carefully as possible. He, for some reason, felt the need to impress Casey. Or maybe it was that he wanted to do well to prove he could do something to pull his own weight, so that Casey would want to be his partner.

Finally Casey quit identifying slides and took the paper from Alex’s calloused hands. He peered down at the paper expecting to have to put a lot of effort into reading Alex’s scribbles. But to his surprise Alex’s penmanship was superb. He had neater handwriting than Casey who was perfectly sighted. The only flaw in his handwriting being that some of his letters were formed wrong, but it was obviously due to the fact that Alex had never seen a single letter in the entire alphabet. Casey was impressed. He wondered if everything came naturally to the blind boy. Everything, but seeing. He thought to himself and laughed under his breath.

“Is it that bad? “ Alex asked grimacing.

“No, it’s actually way better than mine.”

“Really?” Alex asked skeptically.

“Honest to blog,” Casey said setting the paper back down on the desk in front of Alex. “You are going to be the one who writes up our labs.”

Alex’s face lit up. He had a warm fuzzy feeling in his stomach. He felt proud of himself for impressing Casey so much. He was glad that he would be able to pull some of his own weight when the two were partnered up.

“Time’s up. If you did not finish you will have points taken off for every slide you did not identify,” Mr. Johnson said coming around and collecting papers.

The same students collected the supplies for the experiment until the lunch bell rang.

This time Alex and Casey leisurely walked into the cafeteria. It was Beefaroni day, one of the most dreaded lunch items on the menu. Neither were in a hurry to get their lunch.

When they finally made it into the cafeteria the food line was reduced by half and everyone was already at the table, picking away at their disgusting lunches. Alex sat down and Casey went up to go get their food.

“Why are you sitting here two days in a row?” Casadee asked, rolling her eyes.

“I decided I liked sitting here better than with Angela and her friends.”

“Oh, good,” Terry said condescendingly.

“Yeah..” Alex said feeling vulnerable again. He wished that Casey or Rodney would come. Or even Erickson.

Just then Alex heard a thud to the left of him. “What are you doing back so soon?” He inquired.

“What are you talking about?” Rodney asked arching his eyebrow at the strange boy.

Alex tilted his head down. “I thought you were Casey. Sorry.”

“Honest mistake. It’s not like you can see us,” Rodney replied.

“I should have been paying more attention. Your footsteps sound different.”

“I would never notice something like that,” Rodney said watching the blind boy fidget with the hem of his shirt
.
“You have your eyes you don’t have a reason to.”

Alex was glad for Rodney’s conversation it made him feel better. He hated being left alone with Terry and Casadee already and it was only his second time being around the duo. He could tell that they didn’t like him. He didn’t have to see their faces for that. He could hear it in their voices. By the way they were always so short with him every time they spoke to him.

“Where’s Erickson?” Casey asked setting two trays down on the table. Then he sat down himself.

“He didn’t show up today. Think we embarrassed him too much yesterday?” Rodney asked, his eyes dancing.

“Oh, I doubt it. He’s too stupid to be that embarrassed,” Casey said with a chuckle and forked his beefaroni.

Alex pushed his noodles around on his tray. “I hope you all don’t talk about me like that when I’m gone,” his tone was meant to be light and teasing, but it didn’t quite ring right. He was legitimately slightly worried that they would talk about him like that when he was gone. He, of course, was the new kid. Not one of their longtime friends.

“Oh, it’s much worse,” Casey said with a mischievous glint in his eyes. He looked at Rodney and winked at him.

Alex’s face contorted in surprise. “What? Really?”

Rodney and Casey burst out laughing. “Bro, you don’t even want to know how we talk about you when you are not around.” Rodney said still laughing.

Terry wrinkled up her nose. “You guys are disgusting.”

Terry and Casadee knew exactly what kind of things the two said about Alex. The kid wasn’t even that hot. And far too clueless to do any of those things.

Alex’s face turned beat red. “Do you really talk about me like that?”

Casey replied still laughing, “What do you think?”

“Why?”

“Because I can? Because you’re my man candy? Because I’m a man with man needs? Which one do you like? Or should I keep going?”

“I’m your man candy?” Alex squeaked.

“Well, duh, I said it yesterday so it’s not new information.”

“Uh, are you joking?” Alex stammered.

“Do you want me to be?”

Alex answered before thinking. “I’m not sure.”

“Oh my Gawd,” Terry said getting up and stomping away to dump her tray.

Casadee followed in the same fashion.

“Awkward..” Rodney said drawing out the word longer than necessary to get his point across.

“Well, I’m going to go see what that was about,” Casey said getting up and taking his and Alex’s barely touched trays.

As soon as Casey left the table Rodney leaned in, doing a little digging, and asked, “So do you want to be Casey’s man candy?”

“That’s absurd,” Alex retorted blinking rapidly.

“Sounds to me like you do, but you don’t want to admit it.”

“I don’t even know what I am,” Alex refuted.

“Oh my God are you a hermaphrodite?” Rodney asked in disbelief.

“A what?” Alex asked putting a lot of emphasis on the last word.

“Do you have both parts?”

“Heavens no! I meant my sexuality.. I don’t know about it.”

“How do you not know about it?” Rodney asked looking at the kid like he was crazy. He has known that he was attracted to girls and boys his whole life. How could this kid be serious?

“I’ve never had a reason to,” Alex said shrugging and tilting his head down.