Blind Read Free Page A

of this.” He swept his arms out in front of him. “Like metaphor—”
    “Metaphor is simply the linguistic example of an algebraic variable,” she replied brutally, in a tone that made him think specifically of their fourth year teacher, Mrs. Tyne. “It stands in for something else.” She sounded like everyone else then. “You’re already capable of simile. You make comparisons all the time. I don’t know why metaphor should matter.”
    Edison exhaled. “You sound so certain.”
    “Most people find comfort in certainty.” She shut the booklet and looked at him strangely. The clicking of her shifting eyes stopped.
    “Never mind,” Edison said. “You’re like everyone else. You don’t understand.”
    Locke tilted her head as if to take him in from a different angle. He was sure her eyes had provided some conclusion and now she was processing how to best relay the information to him.
    She handed him the booklet instead. “Will you change your name as well? I hated Descartes. No one could pronounce it properly. And you know how I am about imprecision. And Edison isn’t much of an artist name, is it? Oh, but you should choose something with an –ED, so I can still call you Eddy.”
    “Will you go with me?” he blurted. He wasn’t even sure where the question had come from, if it was genuine, or if he was just desperate for her to stop talking. “To the hospital, I mean, when it’s time.” And he realized it would be nice to have someone there. Nana would have Curie and his father certainly wouldn’t show support. That left him with Locke.
    A soft smile crossed her lips and her voice became sweeter than he’d ever heard it. “Of course. I’d be honored.”
     
     
     
     
    Edison found it excruciatingly difficult to focus on his homework. He was exhausted and part of him saw it as pointless, knowing that his education would take a wildly different approach soon enough and all these quadratic equations would be useless.
    He was a prisoner at the kitchen table as his pencil bounce-tapped back and forth on his open text book. Then he heard his father come into the house. At first they didn’t speak. His father entered the kitchen, returned his leftovers to the fridge and seemed to contemplate its interior thoughtfully without actually removing anything. Then Edison heard the clink of a cup, the shut of the wood cabinet and a pouring of some fizzy beverage into the cup itself.
    Then his father did the surprising thing of sitting down beside him, after weeks of not so much a word to the boy. He took it even farther by asking a question. “Where is your grandmother?”
    “She took Curie to the park,” Edison replied. He continued to look down at the open textbook without actually seeing it.
    “Do you need help?” his father asked. His father had not offered to help him with his mathematics homework since year three when it became clear that Edison needed no help at all.
    “No.”
    “You look stuck,” his father pressed. Lifting the cup to his lips before setting it down again.
    “Are you going to file the appeal?” Edison asked. He didn’t want to play whatever game this was.
    His father’s eyes shift-clicked from his cup to his son’s school books to Edison himself before answering. “I don’t know.”
    “Nana’s right,” he adds. “I’ll find a way.”
    Mr. Jacobi considered him again. “Have they taught you the history of our ocular implantations yet? I know it is standard Settlement instruction—or at least it was.”
    Edison put his pencil down to prevent revealing the shaking tension in his hands. “They told us about before, when eyes were still—” Edison searched for the word. “Organic.”
    “The organ of sight,” his father said. “Did you know the iris was supposedly colored—each pair unique to its host? I believe you expressed an interest in color with Dr. Barnard.”
    Color, yes. Do you remember what I told you about the sky?
    “Why do you think we lost our