Blind Read Free

hallway, but into the argument.
    Instead, the house grew quiet, even over the sound of pots clanking at the stove and his own thunderous heart.
    When the door was finally opened from the outside, it was only the small, frail woman.
    “Come on out. Dinner’s ready,” she said, her robe hanging open on either side of her. Her long thick brain hung over her shoulder, well-past her sagging chest. “And don’t worry. Your father won’t be joining us.”
     
     
     
    “What’s wrong with you?” Locke asked the next day. She laid her bike down in the grass near Edison’s front porch and sank onto the step beside him. “You haven’t heard anything I’ve said, have you?”
    “Sorry,” he mumbled and leaned his back into the cool stone. “I know you hate it when people don’t listen to you.”
    She ruffled his hair, as she’d done more and more frequently lately. And as was the latest custom, a strange feeling rolled through him, a flutter somewhere between his heart and stomach.
    He knocked her hand away. “I wish you wouldn’t do that.”
    She cradled her wrist as if he’d broken it. He opened his mouth to apologize again but couldn’t think of what he was apologizing for. That things were different? He wasn’t sure how to articulate that anyway. Because he wasn’t sure how they were different, especially since so many things were still the same. She was only a few months older than him, still his best friend, still living just two doors down. But she’d already undergone Settlement and so they no longer had classes together. Once she chose Instructional eyes, her education had been adjusted, as was the case. In fact, Edison was only one of six students still left in his class. And if his father did appeal, then what? Would he be tutored individually? Like an idiot?
    But it wasn’t that she’d changed classes.
    She lowered her wrist and straightened her back.
    “I said I know what you should say to your dad,” she said. “I know how you can explain your side to him.”
    “Just because you are good at telling people what to do, doesn’t mean you should,” Edison replied. His eyes were fixed on the backpack between his feet as he ran a minor calculation of the zipped teeth.
    “Oh Eddy,” Locke replied with a disapproving tilt of her head. “Don’t be that way. Just show me the booklet.”
    He removed the booklet that Dr. Barnard had given him and handed it over.
    “I didn’t even read the Artist section,” she replied, accepting it. “I’ve known I wanted Instructional eyes for as long as I can remember.”
    “Well, you do have a knack for, uh, instruction,” Edison said with a small smile.
    “You mean bossy,” she said, frowning. “I know what you mean.”
    He reached across her leg and pointed out the earmarked page. Again that strange tension rolled over him. Locke herself became very still.
    “Read it aloud,” he said in a voice that was strange even to him.
    “Artists usually work closely with Architecturals because—” and this is where she began to quote the glossy page with the same pedantic tone as most of their teachers. “’It adds practical application and effective construction to an expansive and creative nature. Exceptional pairings such as the Wright and Picasso pairing of 3612 rendered the most astounding structures of our time.’
    ‘Or the irreplaceable partnership of ambassadors Thatcher and Poe, 3621, who prevented a conflict over energy rations through the design and construction of The Hydraulic Whale—a massive steel structure positioned in the South Atlantic river, responsible for providing abundant hydraulic energy for over three hundred principalities as well as irrigating an otherwise infertile 700,000 square miles.”
    Locke lowered the page. “Tell me why you’re choosing this?”
    “I want to see color, to dream, to imagine things,” Edison replied again. But at this point the words felt hollow, robotic. He tried again. “I want to understand all