Author: Margo Berendsen
Genre: Young Adult science fiction
Title: Startripped
I don’t usually have a problem putting makeup on. After the accident, my occupational therapist taught me how to count each touch of the brush to my eyelashes, each stroke of color to my lips. Now I don’t even have to check with someone to make sure I’m presentable, before I face the world with my guide-dog and my cane.
But today I keep messing up. My hands are shaking, and the brush keeps jerking and hitting the wrong spots. I’m dreading this party. I’ve had to wash my face off and start over again so many times that I just leave the water running in the sink. My face feels raw.
As I start another attempt, there’s a sharp rap on the bathroom door. “I’m not ready yet!” I yell. “Go away.”
David pushes the door open anyway. “Mom wants to know what’s taking so long. Everyone’s waiting for you.”
“If you’d stop interrupting me, I’d be ready sooner.”
He doesn’t take the hint. “Why do you bother standing in front of the mirror?”
“Go away, David.” He’s not a little brother. He’s a video-game villain that keeps coming back no matter how many times you shoot it.
“At least you don’t have to see yourself anymore. We still have to look at you.”
“Out!” I reach for the door and slam it, hoping it hits him but he’s too quick. In the process I drop the mascara brush and hear it hit the floor. Great, now it’s going to take me even longer, feeling around trying to find it. I don’t dare ask David for help – he’s had way too much fun switching my makeup around and mixing up the colors. On the other hand, at least he doesn’t treat me like fragile china, like my parents treat me now.
There’s a knock on the door again but this time it’s softer, and it’s my mother. “Hey. Need any help?” She’s using her calm, dealing-with-my-disabled daughter voice.
“No. I think I’ll just the skip the party and go out for a drive,” I say, with my let’s-piss-mom-off voice. The accident happened just a week after I got my driver’s license. I’ve only ever officially driven by myself two times. What a gip.
“Camria, I know you’re not happy about us planning this party,” she says. “But your Dad and I – we thought it was the right thing to do. Your sister… she loved these parties.”
No kidding. Liz went all-out planning our birthday parties every year. Last year we had underwater fireworks in the pool, and everyone at school talked about it for days.
But this year, a party just feels wrong. If losing my sight in a freak accident three months ago wasn’t bad enough, I also lost my twin sister in that same accident. Today is my seventeenth birthday. It should have been hers, too.
“And anyway,” Mom continues in a lighter voice, “if you skip out, you’ll miss meeting the new guy. I think he said he was a transfer student.”
Great. A party crasher.
“A new guy? And you let him in? What if he’s one of the Black Suits?
“He isn’t wearing a black suit.”
“You know what I mean.” How can she be an ex-NASA astronaut and astrophysicist and be so clueless? The National Security Agency Suits still visit me once a week, asking me the same pointless questions about the accident. Sometimes they use different guises, trying to act all casual, but I always recognize them by their voices. Sharpened hearing and other senses are my compensation for blindness. Not nearly enough compensation, if you ask me.
“He’s just a high school junior,” Mom reassures me. “Your friend Bei asked she could bring him along. I think you’ll want to meet him.”
“Why?” My mom-is-meddling radar starts beeping in my head. He’s probably got a disability of some sort, too, and she’s thinks we’d make a good match. Kill me now.
“He’s… interesting.”
Oh great. A vague disability. “You’re scaring me.”
Actually, I’m scaring myself – the fact I have a party crasher intrigues me.
“Here’s your mascara.” I hear her place it on the shelf next to the sink. “Let me help you with your make-up before all your guests leave.”
“Scram. I don’t need your help.” I conjure up one of my brave-face smiles to reassure her. It works. She turns to leave, but then she turns back and gives me a hug, enveloping me in her professorish white-board-marker smell.
After she’s gone, I manage to get my mascara and lipstick on without any more setbacks. Just before I leave bathroom, I slide my fingers across the mirror’s smooth surface. I imagine Liz’s hand reaching out to touch my fingers from the other side, from wherever she’s gone, reaching out to tell me she’s still there. “Time for our party,” I whisper.
###
As I walk out into the living room, my head buzzes like it always does when I’m in a crowd, my other senses trying to compensate to figure out who the people are. But there’s something different this time, too. In the din of a more than a dozen people, there is a single person who sets off a clear bell in my senses.
That’s never happened before.
Before I have a chance to figure out who is in the room, my parents start singing Happy Birthday and the voices join in. Heat rises up my cheeks. I’m not used to being the center of attention; that was Liz’s place.
“Happy birthday, dear Cam….” I’ve never heard this song on my birthday before without my sister’s name in it, too. At least the song helps me pick out everyone’s voices, so now I know who is in the room with me. Alicia’s voice is missing, no surprise. My ex-best friend. The other voices are familiar, a few of my friends from theater and lots of Liz’s friends, the popular crowd. I’m glad they showed up to remember Liz, though they make me feel uneasy – I’ve never fit in with them.
But there’s another voice that distracts me, a person I don’t know. I’ve heard his voice before, somewhere, but I can’t place it. He’s the one that set off the bell in my senses. The party crasher.
“Here’s your cake, Cam,” my friend Bei tells me. I smell sulfur and sweetness – someone has lit candles. I’m going to make a fool of myself, trying to blow out them out. Bei puts her hand on my back and gently directs me toward the cake. “Don’t forget to make a wish.”
Sure, a wish. I’m still waiting on that pony I wished for three years in a row. But before I have chance to censor it, a longing escapes my thoughts: I want my sister and my sight back. Bei turns me slightly, and my senses pick up the faint heat of the candles. And then – for a moment – I see them.
It’s the first thing I’ve seen in three months. Was it just my imagination? No, there it is again, a flickering light. This too weird, especially happening right after a stranger set off a bell in my senses.
“Go ahead, blow ‘em out,” someone urges me. I don’t have to worry about missing the candles, I blow them all out with one breath. Everything is dark again.
Before I have a chance to process this, someone yells, “Everyone outside, check out the pool!”
