Rare Sight

For the first few years after my accident, I avoided crowds. I found them to be just too overwhelming for me to deal with. Bad enough to be subject to the awkward complications of one-on-one interactions- the idea of having to deal with hundreds, even thousands of impressions at once... well, it was exhausting. And I didn't feel up to it.

But eventually my older brother decided he'd had enough, and he put his foot down.

"Jackie, I am taking you out to an event, and you are going to like it," he said. I tried to argue, but he threatened to hide all my books if I didn't cooperate (he's always fought dirty, even when we were little).

"Fine," I gave in with a sigh, but the burst of pleasure I felt radiating from him almost made up for the ordeal I knew was coming.

I could feel the whispers as we walked toward the stadium- kids, mostly, but the occasional adult, too. "Did you see her?" "Was that a cane?" "Why would a blind person go to a fireworks show?"

I'd asked Steve that, myself.

"Right," he had said dryly. "Because fireworks are a silent art, completely undetectable if you just close your eyes." And then he had pulled me out of my chair and steered me toward the door. Jerk.

He found us a spot in what he assured me was the center of the field, and we sat side by side on the itchy old blanket he'd stolen from Mom's house. It smelled of mothballs, and I told him so.

"Well duh. You don't have to have blind girl super-powers for that one, little sis." I stuck out my tongue in his general direction. "Missed me," he laughed.

"No I didn't." He laughed harder and I couldn't help but grin back.

The crowd actually wasn't as bad as I'd feared- by and large the emotions surging through it were positive, and for the most part not really strong enough to affect me, anyway. There was the occasional child about to burst with excitement, but that wasn't an unpleasant feeling, at all. In fact, I consciously let it feed my own mounting anticipation.

We had to put up with a live band and choir that weren't of the highest quality- and I could tell I wasn't the only one to think so. Most amusing was the dissatisfaction I could feel radiating off a few of the band members, obviously thinking back to bygone days of college marching. But there was a certain sweetness to the unadulterated joy coming from one off-key singer, so happy to be part of something, and it made me grateful for my strange "blind girl super-power" that made me privy to such a moment.

After that there was a speech or three I tuned out, until Steven poked my arm and told me to wake up.

"They've turned out the lights," he said. I wondered if he was going to narrate the entire show to me. I hoped not. A hush came over the crowd, and then-

I thought I would hear the crack boom first of all, but that's not what happened. No, light moves faster than sound, and thought faster still, and so my first impression was... like nothing I'd ever experienced before. I was caught in multicolored sea of wonder, spiked with the occasional flash of fear- every person in that stadium saw that first explosion differently, and I saw every one of their reactions all at once. It was staggering, it was overwhelming, it was drowning me...

It was beautiful.

By the time the sound hit, tears were streaming down my face- but good tears. This was better than seeing it with human eyes- this was... transcendent. And then it happened again... and it kept on happening.

"Are you okay?" asked Steven, and I suddenly knew he must have been watching my face instead of the fireworks, wanting to see if he'd done wrong or right by me.

"Yes," I whispered, and leaned my head against his shoulder. "I'm wonderful. And so are you."


(4th)