Excerpt: Applefruit

I blinked my sightless eyes, my fingers skimming the familiar Braille in front of me for perhaps the last time. I felt my stomach shiver with excitement and moved my hand onto my leg, tapping out a pattern. Finally, I leaned forward over the car seat and tapped my mom on the shoulder.
“Hey, Mom?”
“Mm.” I heard her head turn, and continued.
“When will we be there?”
She made a noise that sounded like a strange mix between laughter and a sigh. “Honey,” she said. “I know you’re excited. Just hang tight, okay?” I heard her pause, and rolled my eyes. I knew what was coming next. “You’re sure you’re ready?”
“Mom,” I said, keeping her from continuing. “I’m sure. I’m fine. I’m ready for the test.”
She sighed again. “All right.”
I bit my lip and felt around for her shoulders, giving her a small hug. “You don’t want me to grow up, do you?”
She laughed, but I could hear the wet sound behind it. “No,” she admitted.
I stretched my lips into a small smile. “Don’t think of it like that,” I said. “I’ll be able to see. I’m excited.”
“I know you are,” she said quickly. “It’s not like I want you to stay blind…and I know it’s a rite of passage. But just…it feels like it’s all happening too quickly.”
I sighed and sank back into the seat. “Yeah,” I said. “I suppose.”
We pulled into the parking lot and I clasped my book in my hands. I had read it so many times…I could feel the spine and it was nearly broken. The cover was torn. I loved the story so much, and had it memorized down to the punctuation. But I didn’t want to lose it.
I sighed again and followed my mom into the building that every child passed through at the age of thirteen.

***

The door swung closed behind us, and I shrugged off a shiver. Even though I had lived in complete darkness for the last decade and change, I never thought of it like that, because all of my friends were the same. I had always seen my world with light and color through my imagination. Now my dreams were about to become a reality.
“Hello.” The doctor’s voice pierced my thoughts, and I turned in the direction that the voice was coming from. I felt my face assume a smile.
“Hey,” I said, not worried about being polite. Even so, I tacked on “Nice to meet you” at the end. I stuck out my hand, hoping that I didn’t look like a complete idiot, groping around in the darkness. But then again, sightless kids were all that came to this building. So what did I even care what I looked like?
I heard the doctor draw in a small breath before continuing. “I’m Julia Redford, your doctor. And you are?”
She put her hand in mine, and I clasped it and shook. “Rebecca Syhr.”
“Sigh-er?” I heard Julia Redford ask, and she took her hand from mine to write on a clipboard. I sighed inwardly, knowing that I would have to take the survey afterwards that all the older kids complained about. What would you change? Was one of the questions everybody tsked at. Everyone said the same thing—they would change the fact that they couldn’t see for thirteen years.
But that was up to the government, not the sight clinic. So I forced a smile and spelled my last name for her.
I could hear the smile in her voice as she took my hand, unaware of the fact that she was underestimating my abilities—all of our abilities, us kids thirteen and under—and led me to a room that smelled cleaner and colder than the last. She sat me down on a chair and I heard her voice close to my ear.
“This might sting a little,” she said softly, and then I felt fire shoot through my eyes, burning them, burning my face. I made the supreme mistake of opening my mouth, and was punished by letting out an unearthly scream that echoed throughout the building, stabbing the heart of any pour soul listening.

***

An unmeasured amount of time later, I opened my eyes in wonder. I felt my stomach drop and my face go white. My heart sped up, and I slowly stood up, my hands shaking. I could see. I could see.
All the other kids had warned me that it could be difficult at first to get used to, that it would come as a shock, but I hadn’t listened. I had wanted it so badly for the last thirteen years, and now I was inserted suddenly into a scary new world, where nothing made sense as it had before.
“Rebecca?” I heard my mother ask, and turned around. I nearly sank to my knees in shock. My mother? This was my mother? Even though I knew it was strange, I slowly walked over and put my hand on her cheek.
“Mom?” I whispered, but she didn’t answer. She knew I didn’t really want her to. I ran my fingers through her hair, my world crashing in around me. Everything was so new, so different…so unfamiliar. I bit my lip, my old habit that I thought I had broken, and turned away. She looked so…so different from who I had grown up with. I had always imagined her differently. And now…how could I possibly expect to derive the same amount of comfort and safety from her presence as I had before, when I was shocked at the very sight of her?
She came up behind me and put her hand on my shoulder. “I know it’s a shock,” she said. “But believe me, you’ll get used to it.”
I shook my head, not looking at her. But when I didn’t, she turned back into the mother I had known and loved for so long. “I won’t,” I said.
She clapped me on the shoulder softly. “Look around you, Rebecca,” she said softly. “All the colors…all the beauty. Isn’t this what you’d always wanted?”
I nodded mutely, staring at the ground, feeling overwhelmed tears springing to my eyes. To my shock, my vision began to blur.
“Mom!” I cried, grasping onto the unfamiliar-looking woman. “Mom, it—it’s going away!”
She laughed. “No, honey, that’s what happens when you cry. You just couldn’t see it before.” She wiped away my tears with a laugh. “You’re fine.”
Julia Redford walked up to me. She looked about the same as I had imagined her—long, white, clean coat, hair net, doctor’s mask. She took it off and put it around her neck. “Have you seen yourself yet?” she asked me. I shook my head, my stomach dropping like an elevator whose cable was cut. She clicked her tongue and walked into a room, meaning for me to follow her. Against my wishes, I did.
I was floored when I walked into the room. Even though I knew I had much bigger things to think about, I couldn’t deny my enormous pleasure at the simple fact that I was…pretty. My long, thick, wavy dark brown hair cascaded to my waist with a simple elegance. I had light blue eyes and a porcelain complexion, and a small cherry mouth. I blinked my large eyes in shock, and put my hands to my face.
“This is me?” I asked in wonder.
Julia Redford laughed. “Yes, it’s you,” she said. I fought the urge to glare at her. She had been able to see me when she met me—I hadn’t. It was like meeting myself for the first time.
“Honey,” my mom said, and all of a sudden, of course she was my mom. She stood next to me in the mirror, and I could see that I was almost a mirror image of her, except younger and smaller. Her hair was shorter than mine, but was the same shade under the silver strands. Her eyes were covered with glasses, but they were the same as mine.
I saw my vision blur again and didn’t stop it. “Mom,” I said softly, feeling tears running down my cheeks. I reached out to hug her, and she didn’t let me go. It was all so new, so strange. But so wonderful at the same time. How could I have lived without this for more than a decade? Couldn’t that be considered some form of child abuse? All of a sudden, I felt a rage bubble up inside me and pulled away from my mother’s embrace to glare at the doctor, Julia Redford.
“If I could change one thing,” I said icily, “It would be that I was deprived of sight for the first thirteen years of my life.”
Her eyes turned cold, but her lips turned up at the corners. “That’s not what I asked you,” she said. “But I’ll take it anyway.” She scratched it down on a sheet of paper and threw it into the garbage. I glowered, and she threw up her hands in a gesture of helplessness. “I can’t do anything about it,” she hissed. “Don’t complain to me, complain to the head honcho!” She gestured at a framed picture on the wall. “I’m sorry.” Her eyes fell to the ground.
“Yeah,” I said quietly. “I guess.” I looked back up at her. “Thanks,” I added acidly. But I meant it.
She saw past my irritation and smiled genuinely. “You’re welcome,” she said. “Kids always forget to show gratitude when they first get their sight. After all, it wasn’t free—you had to earn it.”
I blinked. “I did?”
“Yes, you did,” she said. “Your mom has been monitoring you all these years, sending in reports of how you were doing. You’re in advanced classes, you love to read, and you’re very social. You’re also very empathetic,” she said with another smile. “And you have a wonderful imagination. So to us, that meant that you deserved sight.”
I let this sink in, and then asked, “What about those who you don’t think deserve sight?”
She blew out her lips. “They don’t get to see.”
I stared at her in disbelief. “You mean…they get deprived of all this?” I waved my hands around me, and she needed no further explanation.
“Yes,” she said shortly. “I’m sorry, but I have to go.” She turned on her heel and left. My mom was looking at me with an expression that was a cross between amusement and irritation.
“Becky…” she sighed, and put her hand on my back. “Do you always have to look out for the underdog?”
I blinked, confused. “Should I not?”
“Well…” she said. “I’m not saying that. I’m just afraid you’re going to try to save the world.”
I stared at the ground. That was the last thing we said for a while that day.

***

That was ten years ago. Since then I have founded multiple organizations to help change the law that deprives children of sight for the first thirteen years of their lives, and also the one that leaves whether or not a child gets sight up to the opinions of three or four people that get paid, no matter what.
Sometimes I think it’s too much, and that there’s no point in trying. But I succeed in the case of a child every so often, and the look of gratitude and wonder on the child’s face when they open their eyes for the very first time makes it all worth it.