Time After Time

1

"I'll just have a blueberry muffin," I point to the first thing I see on the display case sitting next to him, and he nods, bending down to pick one out.

"Here or to-go?"

"To-go." The boy plops the muffin into a small little paper bag and slides it across the counter to me. Instead of looking at his face, I just watch his hands. It's harder to look at people's faces now for some reason, but it's mainly just because I don't want to anymore. What's the point, if my brain's just going to throw it out anyway?

"Three eighty-five," he says in a voice I can barely hear. I remove a five from my wallet and hand it to him silently. He fumbles with removing the change, taking a bit longer than he's supposed to. When he drops cold metal change in my hand, I find a small crumpled-up slip of paper falling into my hand along with the coins. I look up, and he grins shyly. The fact that he's just so cute just makes me feel even worse. "Call me" he mouths.

I absently bob my head in affirmation, though. "Will do," I manage weakly, throwing on my jacket, turning and walking out the door of Allie's Tea and Coffeehouse. My fingers wrap around the change and the paper, forming a tight fist, which I shove into a pocket. I bury half my face into my coat, feeling the autumn chill as soon as I walk out and join the other pedestrians.

Like I said, I don't like offending people, so I walk a bit, hands still in my pockets. Then, when I reach an intersection, I throw out the small piece of paper that the cute coffeehouse guy had just handed me less than three minutes ago. The walk sign across the road flashes just as I do so, and cars obediently slow to a halt. I calmly cross the street.

Prosopagnosia, the doctors called it. When I first heard it, I thought it was another one of those weird Greek words English had adopted, and I was right. My family got into a research frenzy after the diagnosis, and we learned that it meant face-obviously-and something else that I can't quite recall. The name for the condition for the rest of us, as in the people without medical degrees, was face-blindness, which is more straightforward than some Greek terminology.

Okay, it's not that straightforward. It doesn't mean that I'm selectively blind or something, that I can't see people's faces. That's just ridiculous. I can see anyone's eyes, or nose, or mouth, or some distinct facial feature like scars or birthmarks or pimples or whatever. The thing about face-blindness is that I can see all these things perfectly, but I can't piece them together to form any sort of recognition of the face I'm looking at. I can't recognize anyone by their face-not at all. I can guess age or gender and everything, but I can't say if this person is a stranger or a close friend or even a relative.

No one noticed it at first. I wasn't banged up much from the accident, just a few cuts and bruises, some scrapes, the doctors told us. It wasn't until my family made their first visit that they noticed all the weird stuff. My parents, Quentin and Quinn strolled into the room, but they stopped a few feet from my bed. They must have known something was wrong from the confused look that was probably on my face. Things got even worse when I asked them-rather rudely, I admit-if they had been directed to the wrong room, because they weren't my parents.

The neurologist was called in, and after a small game of Name-that-Celebrity that I would normally find amusing yet stupid, it was pretty obvious. I didn't get a single answer correct, I just sat there and stared and wondered who the hell was the person in the photo he was showing me. It's sort of depressing and very embarrassing to stare blankly at the faces of Justin Bieber and Ellen DeGeneres and Barack Obama and have no recognition of who they are at all.

The diagnosis killed Mom. She cried real hard, and I watched as Dad and my brother and sister went over to console her. Having a face-blind daughter wasn't the end of the world, they said, After, all I was still their daughter, and I still loved them very much. I could still recognize them, just not through something as easy as face. I would identify them by the other things, like body shape, hairstyle, fashion sense and voice. It's tiring. I have to give everyone a big once-over just to identify who they are.