Color Blind

Coffee....Outing

ANDY ORTEGA:

I squirmed uncomfortably, scrubbing my hands through my red and violet streaked hair, stealing glances at Rylan as he got patched up and tried not to shudder when the nurse put these weird antiseptic smelling green drops that gave the whites of his dead eyes a yellowish hue. He shifted uncomfortably, combing his fingers through his hair repeatedly as he waited for the nurse to finish patching the small scrape inside the bruise high on his cheekbone, gratefully sliding his shades back in place and hopping down, going back to the doorway after a brief farewell and his lips began buzzing again. I didn't comment this time, just stood and waited for him to finish and letting him lead the way when he had.

"Quit staring." He snapped, making me jump, half from guilt but mostly in shock, my mouth falling open.

"H-how...?"

"I can feel it. I can't see, but...everything else is magnified." He said, pausing his step, folding his arms over his chest. Apparently he couldn't walk and talk at the same time. "That's how I get through life. Scent, sound, feel, taste and a deep intuition. My gut. I follow it frequently, whereas you've likely learned to ignore yours. Who needs that creeping feeling on the back of your neck to tell you someone is looking at you when you can just turn around and see for yourself if they are or not?"

"So...that's how you knew I was in your desk?" I tilted my head, hiking my bag further up my shoulder and hooking my thumbs in the belt loops of my jeans. My gaze stared at his mirrored shades, studying them as if trying to catch another look at the shiner I'd left him. His kick hadn't even hurt, to be honest, it was more of a quick toe-nudge than actual kick, and having been so on edge from waking up in a pool of god-knows-who's blood mixed with the hangover had caused me to seriously overreact. That's probably what everyone was shouting about...trying to warn me that I was about to rearrange a blind guys face over nothing.

"Yeah...I don't have your cologne memorized. To be fair, it's not just the cologne itself. Your very skin has notes of your house, the fabric softener you use, things you walked by this morning, even what kinda juice you had with breakfast. Otherwise, I'd be convinced that there were fifteen guys going to this school tops. Your taste in body wash don't branch out nearly as much as the girls." He joked lightly, fidgeting his fingers.

"So...the counting thing?" I ask, suddenly wanting to know how in the hell he did it.

"It's how I remember how to get where I need to be. You know...fifty three steps, left turn, eighty six steps, face right, office doors...it's not rocket science." He smirked.

"But, why? Why do it alone? Why not let someone take care of you?" Sure...it wasn't the most sensitive approach, but I was honestly curious.

"Why? You think I should cling to someone's hand through the hall? Have someone lead me to the bus and to my house? Use a cane to tap about everywhere I go? Maybe get a seeing eye dog and making a real spectacle of myself?" I could feel his unseeing gaze on me through those mirrored shades that showed me my own befuddled face.

"Well....yeah." I shrugged.

"Because that would mean me accepting this fate. Accepting I'm blind. And I don't." I stood, staring at him in awe. I could knock a man twice my size in the jaw and take him out in one hit. I could fell a tree thick as my thirty one inch waist in fifteen swings of an ax. Run a six minute mile without breaking a sweat and could punch out a windshield in three good hits. I knew about strength. But standing here in front of this willowy waif of a boy that I mistook for a girl before he spoke...I felt weak.

He had a brand of strength I knew nothing about. A solid titanium core. I was way too quick to anger to even imagine how long it had taken him to memorize every step he took, to the point that he could recall how to get himself wherever he needed to go. To not use his glaring disability as a crutch to breeze through life as I would have done. Rylan licked his plump, pallid lips and fingered his tresses again. "There's this non-invasive operation...it could remove the scar tissue in front of my pituitary gland that's blocking the light from refracting and sending images to my brain...and I could see again. That's why my eyes look like this. Because the passage way is blocked with scar tissue and no light can absorb, so it all reflects back, making them a creepy white. I used to have green eyes...before the accident."