Transparent Eyes

Chapter 1

Transparent Eyes

Chapter 1

“Who was he?” Lindsay asked, raising her eyebrows. Patrick was still silent, in shock.

“I don’t know,” I complained. My friends and I were sitting in a small café and I had just told them about what happened yesterday when I forgot to put on my lenses.

Patrick and Lindsay were the only two people, other than my parents, who knew about my transparent eyes. When I was a baby, my parents used to tell everyone that my eyes seem transparent but they’re actually blue and they color will be clearer when I grow older. They believed them. When I turned one, my parents started trying to put on contact lenses for me. My mom was an eye doctor, ironic yet beneficial, so she knew how to deal with the contact lenses. When I reached the age of seven, I was able to put them on and take them off on my own.

I had a post-it note on my lamp in my room that says ‘remove lenses’ because it was the last thing I turned off before going to sleep. I had only forgotten to take them off twice in my whole life but was thankfully reminded to do so by that note.

No one except my parents, Lindsay, and Patrick knew about my eyes because if they did, they would treat me differently, as if I was a freak, and if doctors knew then they would want to do experiments on me to know why I had such strange eyes.

My mom, even though she was a doctor, never tried any experiments on me. She tried to keep me away from doctors who would use me as a lab rat. Even now that she didn’t live with my dad and me anymore, she still kept it a secret.

Yesterday, at the supermarket, was the first time I ever forgot to put on my contact lenses. Usually when I woke up in the morning, I put on my lenses even before even brushing my teeth but yesterday I was feeling really lazy and kept on falling asleep so I took them off and forgot to put them back on when I left.

“He doesn’t know you,” Patrick said. “So I doubt he can do anything.”

“I guess you’re right,” I said, biting my lips.

“Right about what?” I jumped when I heard Belinda’s voice.

“The weather,” I immediately blurted out. Belinda was another one of my close friends. The four of us usually hung out together but I never told Belinda about my eyes for two reasons. One, she is the newest member in our group. She became our friend in grade 7 while we three have been friends since grade 5. Two, her name meant beautiful snake so that’s not really very reassuring. I was a strong believer in name meanings. I believed that names defined a huge part of a person.

She gave me a confused look.

“He said it was going to be sunny today and look it is sunny!” I said quickly. I heard Lindsay snort. Belinda gave me a weird look.

“Okay Elle,” she said slowly.

I cleared my throat awkwardly. “So, how’s summer vacation?” I asked her as she grabbed a chair from another table and sat between me and Patrick.

“Great!” She said with a bright smile on her face. “I had the best first week of summer vacation!”

“Really?” I said, smiling at her.

“Yeah,” she replied enthusiastically. “My cousin invited me to go with her and her friends to a party last week and I met one her friends who is really cute. We’ve been texting ever since and I’m seeing him again tomorrow!”

“Ooh interesting,” I said, winking at her even though I couldn’t really wink. “What’s his name?”

“Freddy,” she said.