Kirsten was daydreaming in class when she was interrupted by a boy with a white cane coming into the class with another woman walking with him. They try not to interrupt the teacher and the aid guides the boy who is apparently blind, to an empty chair. The chair happened to be next to hers. She spent the rest of the class staring at him. She knew it was weird but she couldn’t help herself. It’s not like there was even much to look at. The boy looked like any other kid who didn’t want to be in class. Really, like the male version of her. He pulled a tape recorder out of his backpack when he first got to his seat and after turning it on, slouched back in his chair with his head bobbing every once in a while like he was fighting sleep. He was literally the image of the kid asleep in class hiding it with sunglasses. That was what Kirsten was thinking when she snorted to herself, waking up Matt. At the same time the teacher puts on a short video related to the lesson and she takes the opportunity to whisper over to him.
“Hey. To your right.” Matt turned to face her, reflexively running his hand through his hair, face completely affectless. He was hard to read, like his guard was so high up he wasn’t even able to climb over it, even if he wanted to.
“What’s your name?” She went for it, not knowing where it would take her.
“Matt.” He turned to face forward again. Kirsten noticed him twisting and unfurling the strap of his cane sitting in his lap.
“Aren’t you gonna ask what my name is?”
“Okay. What’s your name?”
“Kirsten.”
Matt assumed that was the end of it and if she was trying to hassle him it wasn't worth it anymore but to his surprise she continued.
“Are you new here?”
“What do you think?”
“I don’t know. It’s a big school. Plenty of people I haven’t seen.”
No reaction.
“That wasn’t a blind joke. By the way.”
“Okay.” Again, completely unreadable. But still responsive, which is good enough for Kirsten.
“Do you have a girlfriend?” He doesn’t respond.
“A boyfriend?”
He abruptly turns back to face her.
“Are you bored or something?”
Her face twitches into a guilty smile.
“Obviously. This class sucks. But you wouldn’t know, you’ve been asleep the whole time.”
“Not the whole time. What have you been staring at me?”
“No.” She scoffs defensively.
“So messing with the blind kid is how you entertain yourself?”
“Who said anything about you being blind?” She responded defensively. After he doesn’t respond she starts to feel actually a little guilty.
“Okay, I’ll stop annoying you. Sorry.”
She sighed. They sat there while the video played for about 10 more minutes before the bell rang and everyone got up to leave. Except for Matt who stayed sat. Kirsten assumed he would wait for everyone to file out so he and his aid could avoid the crowd.
Matt went through the rest of the day and like clockwork every other class felt the same. He would enter the room and depending on how late or early he was, kids would file in, stopping to stare at the new kid with the aid standing near him. Matt sported his trusty, “I don’t really care about anything, I definitely don’t care about this” face throughout the day.
---
At lunch, Kelly, his aid, found them a place to sit and besides the one kid who was already sitting there, no one joined the table. Besides the few times Kelly tried to break the awkward silence, no one said a word. Matt kept himself busy listening in on various conversations, he couldn’t help himself, sometimes literally. He wasn’t set on listening into one table until he heard his name. About five tables over from him was Kirsten. She sat with a group of girls who all sounded similar to her. Matt imagined they all looked alike, too.
“His name is Matt. He’s in my science class.”
“He’s kind of cute. Is that weird to say?” Kirsten’s friend Molly says.
“No, I kind of get what you mean.” Alexis joins in.
“You guys are so weird.” Cristina, the ringleader of the group, finally speaks up.
“Why is that weird?” Kirsten interjects, and the two go back and forth.
“Because, it's like, inappropriate.”
“But why?”
“Because, Kirsten, he’s got like- issues. Like mentally, probably.”
“What? He’s just blind.”
“What, are you like obsessed with him?”
“Shut the fuck up. I hate you guys.” The group laughs. But Kirsten isn’t really kidding. She’s hung around this group since middle school and although they never make her feel like she doesn’t belong, she feels like she’s outgrown the friendships. It’s just too comfortable for her to leave and have to start over.
Matt shudders to himself. Deciding to focus his attention back to the cafeteria food whose unpleasantness has nothing to do with him.
---
Matt couldn’t stop thinking about her all day. Despite his feelings of annoyance. She was the only person to talk to him without any obligation all day. And that made her different.
The next day when Matt got to 3rd period he sat in the same seat he did the day before. He waited for Kirsten to come sit next to him but she never did. He wondered if maybe he didn’t remember her voice and she was sitting in another seat but he didn’t smell the overwhelming scent of Clinique Happy she was bathed in the day before. He was distracted by her absence.
The next day at lunch Kirsten was on her way to her usual lunch table when she stopped. She scanned the cafeteria and found Matt sitting at a table with his aid again. She watched as the aid said something to Matt and then walked away from the table. She took it as an opportunity and walked over to the table, sitting down across from Matt.
“Hey.” She didn’t have to announce herself. Matt knew exactly who she was.
He sighed. “Hello.”
“Where’d your handler go?”
“She’s not my handl- she went to the bathroom.”
“So we have some time.”
“Time for what.”
“To make our escape. I’m busting you out of here.”
Matt just laughed, but Kirsten got up from her seat.
“C’mon. I know a really good pizza place nearby. My treat.”
“What about your friends over there?” he said. It was a challenge. A way to say, in the most subtle way, that he knew.
“What about them? They aren’t even really my friends. I just sit with them because I always have. That’s just how it is sometimes.” she said, defensively.
He thought for a second. Listening for Kelly to see if she was coming back anytime soon. Without saying anything he got up from his seat and Kirsten followed. She took his hand and led him out of the cafeteria, making sure to look out for Kelly and took them down a hallway that led to the student parking lot.
They’re sitting together at the pizza shop, not having spoken much. Matt starts to laugh, stretching his arms out behind him.
“What’s so funny?”
“Kelly is gonna freak the fuck out.”
“Who’s Kell- oh your handler. Yeah. I wonder what she’s doing right now. Running around looking for you like a lost child at Disney World.” They both laugh at the mental image.
Matt felt his braille watch, checking the time. “We should probably get back soon.”
“I mean, we could. Or we could do something else.”
“What did you have in mind?”
They drive around for a while. Matt rolls down the windows, loving the feeling of the wind on his face. Kirsten blasts Tori Amos.
“Can you turn that down? It’s giving me a headache.”
Kirsten complies.
Eventually Kirsten decides to just take them to her house. As they walk in, Matt takes in the space, it’s a lot bigger than he expected. A spacious brownstown that echos every step they take. He figures that the place is pretty empty, probably looking more like a showroom than a home. He runs his hands down the railing of the staircase right by the entrance.
“Take your shoes off. My dad is a freak about shoes in the house.”
They both take their shoes off, placing them down near the front door and Kirsten leads Matt up the stairs to her bedroom.
She takes the same CD she had playing in the car out of her bag and puts it into her CD player, this time making sure the volume isn’t too loud. Just loud enough to blanket the large room.
Kirsten takes a shoe box out from under her bed and lifts the top off. The smell of weed overtakes Matt’s senses and he tries not to gag as Kirsten rolls a joint for them to share. She opens the window and leads him to sit on a little padded bench under her big window. Matt trying his hardest to concentrate on breathing through the intense smell. He had started smoking a couple years ago when Trevor, one of the older kids at the orphanage, took him up on the roof to smoke with him. He still hasn’t fully gotten used to the smell.
“I knew it.” Kirsten says as she inhales a hit of the joint.
“Knew what?” Matt grabs the joint.
“You don’t think I’m annoying.” Smoke coming out of her mouth at the same time the words do.
“I never said that.”
“Never said I was annoying or that I-”
He cuts her off when he hears footsteps coming up the stoop. “I think someone’s coming.”
Kirsten looks out the window. “Shit. It’s my dad.” She quickly kills the joint, putting it in a tiny ring box inside the bigger shoe box and grabs room freshener from her attached bathroom.
“He’s not supposed to be here this early.” She says as she clouds the entire room in an artificial lavender. Matt coughs.
“What does he do?”
“Go wash your hands. Just walk straight ahead until you hit the wall and then to your left. He’s a lawyer.”
Matt stops in his tracks and faces her.
“A lawyer?”
“Yeah. So what?”
“Nothing. I just- I want to maybe be a lawyer?”
“You do?”
“Why does that surprise you?” Matt got defensive. It was the typical response he would get for a comment like that. No one thought he was capable of- well- really anything.
“Well, you’re not much of a talker.”
“That’s because I don’t know you.”
“And yet you’re in my bedroom, smoking my weed.”
Matt rolled his eyes. He continued on his way to the bathroom and washed the smell of sticky weed off of his hands. In all this time, Kirsten’s father has made it into the house, he’s now making a sandwich in the kitchen.
“Okay. I’m gonna go downstairs and tell him I wasn’t feeling well and my phone died so I couldn't ask him to come- no- '' She talked out loud, figuring out her plan of action. “I can say the school had the wrong number for him. No, that won’t work, either. Shit.”
“Have you never skipped before? You seemed so confident.”
“No, Matthew” using his full name as emphasis. “I’ve never been caught skipping.”
Before she has time to figure out a good excuse, Matt hears her dad grab his briefcase and head back out.
“I don’t think you have to worry anymore. He just left.”
She runs back to the window.
“Oh, thank God.” She looks over to Matt. “You have freakishly good hearing. Is that like a blind thing?”
“Yeah, sure.” Kirsten gives him a suspicious look but drops it.
Around the time school was getting out, Kirsten drove Matt back to his foster mom Tanya’s house. He prepared himself for her to come down on him for this. He was sure Kelly and the entire school administration was panicking. He felt kind of guilty when he realized that she might feel panicked too.
Moments after Kirsten pulls into the driveway, Tanya comes out of the house, barefoot, her hands exaggeratingly combing through her hair.
“Well. I guess your mom found out.”
“She’s not my mom.” he sighs. Kirsten doesn’t ask questions.
Matt opens the car door and then pauses.
“Don’t worry. You don’t smell like pot or anything.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
“See you around?”
“Yeah.”
He gets out and shuts the door. Tonya just stands there. Probably waiting for the right time to say something.
“Where have you been?!”
Kirsten pulls out of the driveway.
“I’m sorry. I was with a friend.”
“A friend?! Matt! You left school, you- you were missing!”
“I’m right here. I’m really sorry. I won’t do that again.”
He hung his head in shame. Maybe he fucked it all up again. She would send him back to St. Agnes and it would be one more parental figure he couldn’t keep around.
His thoughts were interrupted by her warm arms pulling him into her embrace.
“Don’t ever do that again. Seriously. Just call me next time or something.”
He laughed lightly, the vibration ricocheting off her chest and back onto him. He felt a sense of relief and reassurance he hasn’t felt in a long time. That he could be a kid and mess up and it wouldn’t be grounds for abandonment.
They walk back into the house, his knuckles gliding against the rough popcorn wall on his way back to the room that didn't feel like his. He dropped onto the bed, head gracefully meeting the pillow, and smiled to himself.