Puzzle Pieces (formerly Reach for the Sky)

Chapter 8

When I arrive at my house that afternoon, Angelina is already home. She skips into the room and jumps up to hug me, babbling the whole time.

"Guess what, Autumn? Daniella is coming here this weekend to play! She's my best friend in the whole world! And do you know what else? Mrs. Newberry said she had never seen a second grader reading such high level books! And in gym class today we played kickball and I caught it once when someone kicked it so I got them out. And did you know that koalas have pouches just like kangaroos? I didn't know that until today. Mrs. Newberry told us in class. I think she knows everything. And–"

She continues for several more minutes, barely pausing for breath. Just when I'm starting to think she'll chatter till we're both old ladies, she asks, "What did you do at running practice today? Do you have a best friend in the whole world?"

I hear Grandmother enter the room and begin to listen quietly to our conversation as I smile and respond, "I have too many best friends to name just one! And something pretty exciting happened at running practice today."

I tell Grandmother and Angelina about my conversation with Coach Davidson as I begin very carefully chopping the vegetables for dinner that Grandmother has set in front of me. I know it doesn't seem like a good idea to give a blind girl a knife, but for some reason I always wind up with the veggie-chopping job. I've been doing this for years and I still have all my fingers, though, so I suppose I'm careful enough.

The conversation soon begins to drift in other directions, Grandmother and Angelina and I all talking and laughing. I want to remember this afternoon forever, this ordinary and yet special moment.

"Will you tell me a story, Autumn?" Angelina asks, pulling me from my thoughts.

"What kind of story?"

"A funny one!"

"Do you want to hear a funny story of something that happened in my English class a week ago?"

"Yes!" Angelina comes and sits down next to me, so that we're both squeezed onto the same chair.

"In English class, we're reading a play called Macbeth and acting it out. I get to act it out too, since classics are available for free on my Braille tablet. And I play a lady who is crazy!"

Angelina giggles. "How crazy?"

"She thinks there's blood all over her hands, and she talks like this–" I imitate a shrill, scratchy voice– "'What, will these hands ne'er be clean?' So just as I'm saying that line, do you know who walks in?"

"Who?" inquires Angelina, with great interest.

"Mr. Gibson!"

Angelina giggles again. "The mean math teacher?"

"That's him. Except I didn't know he had walked in for a few moments, so I kept on acting and rubbing my hands together, trying to wash off imaginary blood. And it took a couple moments for me to realize that the whole class had gone silent."

Still laughing, Angelina asks, "So Mr. Gibson was just standing at the door watching you pretend to be crazy?"

"Uh huh, and then he told us we needed to be quieter because we were disrupting his class, and then he walked right out."

"Then what?"

"And then Henry started acting out his part right where we had left off, just as loud as before."

Angelina laughs hysterically, finding my story far funnier than it actually was. And for a moment, I forget that my mother is dead, that my father hardly speaks, that most people are able to see while I cannot. I would not change my family or myself for anything in the world.