《For Your Eyes Only》1

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Everyone around me was either scared of me or admired me. It could be a mixture of both and I didn't blame them. Sometimes I am scared of me too.

High school is hard and sometimes you need to blend in to survive. But after that night, the night that haunts my dreams and has me confessing my sins during Sunday mass, I feel myself becoming more and more scared. Feral, almost. Like I am afraid of losing my place or stepping out of line which could make my future disappear.

I wasn't the person to put the dynamite in those geeks' rocketship. And I also wasn't the person who laughed about it afterwards, shocked at first while riding in the bed of Daniel Greyson's truck, then nervously laughing until the site was behind us.

But I was the person who called 911 after the kid lit the chemistry experiment off in the open field. And I was the person who had Danny pullover so I could vomit on the side of the road at the thought that those kids could be dead at what was supposed to be a stupid prank.

This all started because one of those kids got Johnny a B on a paper instead the A that he paid them to get. My friends thought it was important to "teach those nerds a lesson," as Johnny Matthews had put it.

It sure taught me a lesson.

That all happened the summer going into my junior year. That school year, the chemistry club got canceled because of the "freak accident" and the parents became delirious that that could have been their kid. But instead, their kids took up chess club or spanish club while one boy spent the school year in the hospital.

That boy, Nathaniel Haynes, became blind after that rocket exploded in his face. Rumor has it, he was kept in refinement for physiological reasonings after coming to terms he would never see again. That's what kept him out of public school for the year.

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I never noticed Nathaniel Haynes before that night. I never paid much attention or acknowledged that he was top of the class academically, one above me. Nor did I pay attention that he lived just down the street from my two story, bricked home.

I kept tabs on the Haynes kid during his time in the hospital. I took up community volunteering and church work too. I did so as some sort of blanket of security that I could redeem myself for not speaking up that night. The guilt sometimes crushed my chest like a cylinder block being pressed into my sternum at the fact that I didn't tell my friends not to follow through with it, that it was a stupid idea and we should have gone out for a movie and pizza instead. Like I really wanted to do.

Things would be different if I had. Nathaniel would still have his sight, I wouldn't be so guilt ridden that I donate half my paychecks from my part time job as a waitress to the North Carolina Health and Human Service for the Visually Impaired every month. Nor would I troll past the Haynes' house and talk myself down into knocking on their door and spilling all the details of that night.

It really wouldn't make a difference in the end, I have told myself over and over again. It wouldn't bring back Nathaniel's eyesight.

Everyone around me seemed to think I had my life together. I was queen bee. I was the most popular girl in my graduating class and though, most days, I enjoyed the extra attention, I had no idea why that was so. And if I was being completely honest now... I couldn't care less. Not after that night.

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