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at a Weekends on Wednesdays party. But then, my vision had come back in seconds.
    This time was different.
    This time, it wasn’t going away. And the longer I waited, the worse the feeling got. I sat very still in my seat and listened to the kaleidoscopic sounds of gunfire and screaming. I knew I had friends on either side of me, but that almost made things worse—to be surrounded by people I cared about but couldn’t see. I felt like I had disappeared. Like I was a black hole. Soulless.
    The bell rang, and the movie cut out. What would I do now? The room filled with the sounds of shuffled papers and hitched-up backpacks as everyone prepared to file out to their next class.
    “Aren’t you coming, Lo?”
    “No,” I said, looking in the direction of Alex’s voice and her violet-scented body spray. I knew that the room would be empty next period. “Not right now, anyway. I feel pretty nauseated—same thing as yesterday, you know? I’m just going to chill here for a few minutes.”
    “Do you want me to stay with you? Or take you to the nurse’s office?”
    I could hear her voice, but did she even exist? Did I?
    TranquiLo. Take with water. Do not operate heavy machinery. Limit exposure to sun.
    “No thanks,” I said. “I just want to be alone, I think, until it passes.” I didn’t ask if Mrs. Laramie was still in the room because I didn’t want to betray my blind condition, but judging by the quiet, Alex and I were the only two people still there.
    “Okay,” Alex said with concern in her voice. “Feel better, doll. I’ll let Mr. Rodriguez know that you’re running a few minutes behind for English.”
    “Thanks, Alex,” I said, closing my eyes to another blanket of darkness and resting my cheek on the cold desk. “For everything. I mean it.” Alex rubbed my back, then departed, taking her floral-smelling skin with her, leaving me in a state of nothingness.
    • • •
    About an hour (I think—I couldn’t consult a clock) after the final bell rang, my sight came back. First the enameled wood of the desk shuddered into view, and then I slowly raised my head to the window and saw the sun penetrate the venetian blinds. The sun. I would never complain about it again.
    Before I could start contemplating a life of solar worship, I was assailed by a rush of horrific thoughts. What if I’d been walking down the hallway when the blindness struck? What if I’d been driving? I would’ve plowed into a roadside saguaro stand or something. I could have
killed
someone. What if my parents found out things were this bad? Or Dr. Osborn? No, my current condition was totally unsustainable. I wouldn’t be able to hide these symptoms for much longer. Everything was going to change. Life as I knew it was going to be totally upended. I’d never felt so scared, so disoriented. I gathered my things and rushed down the empty hallway and out into the parking lot. I had to do something, and I had to do it immediately.
    The way I saw it (now that I could actually see), I had one option, as crazy as it sounded. Well, maybe not so crazy for Santa Fe.
    Jay’s ritual.
    But to do that, I’d need four friends.
    I couldn’t imagine taking Juanita to meet Jay. I loved her, but for one, she’d never take something like this seriously, and for two, what was her burden? That she’d recently gotten stuck behind a minivan full of kids in the drive-thru of Taco Sandy’s? That Luis persisted in buying her regular instead of diet at lunchtime? That her boobs were so big they caused her mild back pain? And Alex had nothing wrong with her except for what she termed her “spaghetti legs.” Everybody loved her. She was . . . happy. Like a character at the end of one of her mother’s romance novels. My friends weren’t shallow; they just weren’t searching for answers right now. They didn’t even have the questions.
    No. If I was going to find real suffering, something more akin to mine, I would have to get creative. I would have