Not If I See You First by Eric Lindstrom

Not If I See You First is Eric Lindstrom's debut novel, about a young blind teen who discovers that there are more ways to be blind than just not being able to see. As she discovers this she learns about forgiveness, reconciliation and second chances.

High school junior, Parker Grant lives in the town of Coastview  with her Aunt Celia and her Uncle and her cousins, Sheila who attends the same high school, and Petey who is only eight years old. Parker lost her sight when she was seven years old as a result of a car accident that killed her mother and tore her optic nerves. Then three months ago Parker found her father dead on his bedroom floor. Because a bottle of Xanax was found in his room, the insurance company denied Parker his life insurance benefit and she lost the house to her Aunt Celia. To help Parker adjust to the loss of her father, her aunt and uncle moved in but the adjustment has been difficult for all.

Parker attends John Quincy Adams High School. There used to be another high school, Jefferson, but it closesd, o Adams is now jammed with new students including Parker's long ago ex-boyfriend Scott Kilpatrick. Parker and Scott had been best friends since grade four. In grade eight they became boyfriend-girlfriend. One day during lunch they went to an empty classroom and while they were kissing, unknown to Parker, they were being watched by Scott's friends. Seven boys in all. Parker fled the room and had her dad pick her up from school. Scott tried to explain to her what happened and kept calling her. He tried to tell Parker he was sorry but she refused to talk to him. If he was in the same class as her she ignored him and eventually they both graduated and went to different high schools. Now Scott is attending Adams.

At the start of the new school year, Parker has been assigned a new buddy, Molly who will help her get around the school. Unlike many visually impaired people, Parker does not wear sun glasses but instead wears a scarf wrapped around her head, covering her eyes. Since going blind Parker has a list of eleven rules, the most important being "Rule #1: Don't deceive me. Ever. Especially using my blindness. Especially in public." and "Rule #INFINITY: There are NO second chances. Violate my trust and I'll never trust you again. Betrayal is unforgivable."

After dinner that night, Parker's best friend Sarah calls her and reveals to her that Scott Kilpatrick, "Parker Enemy Number One" was in her Trig class that day and that he may try to apologize to her again. However, Parker simply steels herself and tells Sarah she will just ignore him. 

On a shopping trip to the mall to get a new pair of running shoes, Parker meets a nice sales clerk named Jason Freeborn. Parker is attracted to Jason who is a senior at Adams because he treats her like a normal person. Several days later Parker meets Coach Underhill who explains how she can run using a guide. After doing a trial run on the grass the coach tells Parker that she's fast and that means she will have a hard time finding a guide who can keep up with her.

As the days go by Parker learns that Scott seems to still care about her. When she takes a nasty fall on the field after working with Coach Underhill  she learns from Molly that Scott was one of the first over to see that she if she was hurt. When out on a date with Jason, he tells her that Scott was the one who intervened when two guys were harassing her at school and stole her phone. This leads Parker to text Scott and ask him why he did what he did to her in grade eight and what he was trying to tell her back then. He tells her the truth of what happened in Ms. Kincaid's classroom four years ago. Scott also tells her that he hopes she never forgives him and that he stopped making excuses for what he did. He tells her that he did the unforgivable.

Discussion

Not If I See You First chronicles the journey sixteen year old Parker Grant undergoes during her junior year as she is forced to confront the reappearance in her life of the boy who was her best friend and her first love. She lost that friend because she rushed to judge what he'd done without fully listening to his side of the story. She made the decision to never to forgive him and this decision has a profound effect on her life because Parker loses her ability to trust people.  But while Parker continues to ignore him after he reappears in her life she discovers that he still cares for her. And this makes her question what happened and her decision not to forgive him. Suspecting she might be missing the truth of what really happened that day she reaches out to him and discovers something about herself in the process.

Parker is still angry at her ex-boyfriend Scott Kilpatrick for what happened when they were thirteen years old. When she learns he is now attending Adams, Parker tells best friend Sarah what what he did was unforgivable. "I'll say fuck you Scott Kilpatrick and your sad little story about being a stupid kid. When people do dumbass things everyone has to live with the consequences..."

But a series of events with her new boyfriend Jason, with Scott, with her cousin Sheila and with best friend Sarah make Parker realize that she has become so focused on herself that she has become blind to what is happening in the lives of those around her.  Parker learns from Molly and Jason that Scott has been watching over her and has unknowingly come to help her several times. Unsettled over Scott's concern for her, Parker decides she needs to know his side of the story and she texts him. She discovers that he did not set her up when his friends caught them kissing and that he cared only about her that day, running after her to try to explain. Then Sarah breaks up with her boyfriend Rick but she won't tell Parker much about what happened, leading Parker to realize that they almost never talk about Sarah's life. When Sheila comes to pick up Parker at school she has music playing loudly in the car. This supremely annoys Parker until she discovers that Sheila is doing this to cover up her crying. When she tries to apologize Sheila angrily tells her that the world does not revolve around her and her problems. Parker admits to knowing this but Sheila accuses her of not really understanding. "I hear the words but everything else tells me you don't know. Yeah, you got big problems...You really are blind! You can't see you're not the center of the universe! That other people have lives and things happen to them all the time and you know nothing about it!...You just don't care. Say whatever you want but in your head it is all about you. Except it isn't, Parker. It really, really isn't."

Parker has always acted as though she is sure of everything around her because she feels she can't trust anyone but herself. She recognizes why she does this: she pretends to be sure of everything because the alternative is much scarier. "I know why I'm so sure of everything all the time; it's because I can't stomach the alternative, that I can't be sure of anything ever....the hard truth is clear. I was wrong about pretty much everything that happened in this car ride. And if I let myself think about it, I might be wrong about a lot of other things too.

She was so sure of what happened years ago in that classroom that she never considered maybe she didn't know what really happened. Now suspecting this might be the case with Sarah, Parker decides to talk to her best friend. Sarah tells Parker that Scott still loves her despite the way Parker has treated him.She knows this because of how he looks at her. Sarah realizes that Rick has never looked at her the way Scott still looks at Parker and this leads her to want more out of a relationship with a boy. She tells Parker this because she knows Parker can't see Scott's reactions. When Rick surprises Sarah by being very upset over their break-up Sarah wonders how badly Scott must have felt when Parker dumped him. This is something Parker never thought about because she was so wrapped up in her own feelings. Parker comes to the realization that the person she's always been is not someone who's very good.

When she confronts Scott to admit her mistake she tells him that it seems like "Everyone is a secret. There's no way to know what's in anyone's head." but Scott tells her "People are full of things you don't know but that doesn't mean they're secrets; you just don't know everything yet." When she asks if they can be friends again Scott declines because he believes he has permanently broken Parker's trust, an important characteristic of a true friendship.

Parker tries to convince Scott that she wants to be friends again and that she is able to trust him. However Scott is having none of it because she's a person who doesn't trust and he can't imagine her as someone who does. The Parker Scott now knows is the one who tells a fellow student during one of her "relationship advice sessions" with Sarah that getting back with an old boyfriend won't work,
" The point is...if he wasn't happy before, why would he be happy now? Either he's changed or he's hoping you have. Have you changed?"
"I don't think so."
"He hasn't either, sorry to tell you. People don't change. They just learn from experience and become better actors."

Despite Parker's efforts to convince Scott that she feels differently about him now that she knows the truth of what happened, Scott is unwilling to be more than just friends. Scott also has trust issues. Like Parker who thought Scott was someone who would betray her, Scott believes Parke is someone who would just throw a "friendship away in an instant, and...just bail without even a word." Parker understands that Scott can't trust her because she didn't trust him but she tells Scott that "...trust needs proof." Parker forces Scott to make a choice: either he is her boyfriend and he continues doing the things he's been doing to look out for her, or he is not and he has to stop watching out for her.

Lindstrom has crafted and entire set of realistic, believable teen characters in his novel. Parker Grant is completely blind (something Lindstrom does mention as usual as most people with visual impairment can see some light or shadows) but she's no stereotype. That much is evident from the very beginning of the novel when she is portrayed as a person known for speaking her mind and not caring how others feel. Parker describes herself at the beginning of the novel as "I'm the reigning queen of not giving a shit..."  She's not a nice person. When she is nasty to the boy in Trig class she states, "The silence that follows is the perfect example of the thing I love most about being blind: not seeing how people react to what I say." She has an attitude, she's self-centered and as Trish describes her later in the book, she's a "Blind Bitch".  But Parker's struggles to come to terms with several tragedies in her life make her an endearing character too.

Not If I See You First is a brilliant debut novel for Lindstrom and marks him as an author to watch for in the future.

Book Details:

Not If I See You First by Eric Lindstrom
New York: Little, Brown and Company      2015
310 pp.

Blind. A Novel by Rachel DeWoskin

Blind is novel that explores one teen's journey as she tries to cope with a life-changing injury that leaves her permanently blind.

Emma Sasha Silver has lost her eyesight as a result of a terrible fireworks accident  on July 4 of the previous year. She missed half of grade nine and spent the remainder at Briarly School for the Blind were she learned to  read braille and navigate the world as a blind person. This summer she continued at Briarly working on further developing her skills using a white cane and the old Perkins Brailler.

Now she's back at her old school, entering grade ten at Lake Main with her best friend Logan. Emma will have a paraprofessional who will read the blackboard to her. Although life at home for Emma and her six siblings, Sarah, Leah, Naomi, Jenna, Benji and Baby Lily seems to be heading towards some kind of normal, Emma begins to fully realize what being blind will now mean.

Emma's narrative about her present day life with her six siblings at home, attending her regular school, Lake Main, and her visits with her therapist Dr. Sassoman is punctuated with flashbacks that recounts her journey over the past year struggling to come to terms with her loss of sight.

In the present, with best friend Logan at her side and her K9 buddy Spark, Emma begins the new school year feeling she is a freak and wondering how her fellow students will relate to her. The start of school is further marred by the discovery of the body of classmate and friend, Claire Montgomery in Lake Brainch. Emma is met with a mixed reaction that includes those who are too traumatized about Claire to care much about Emma, others who are angry at her and others who are curious.  Emma is greeted by Coltrane Wilson, a super smart, cute guy in her class who is nice to everyone.

Assembly at school reveals nothing about what happened to Claire and only that grief counselors are available. As Emma leaves her first day of school she wonders about her dark future. "I just want to stop thinking about forever in the dark and my endless, claustrophobic tunnel of a future. Because I'll never drive or get a job, or get married or lose my virginity. Maybe I'll never even kiss anyone."

At this point, Emma narrates what happened to her a little over a year ago, during the summer. Emma's life took a sharp turn when she was injured in a fireworks accident. She awoke in hospital to discover her head heavily bandaged and to learn that her eyesight had been permanently lost. Dr. Sassoman began to slowly help Emma come to terms with what had happened, although Emma spent weeks crying and screaming over the loss of her vision. Logan came to visit Emma six times a week despite her parents going through a break up. After she left the hospital, Emma refused all her mother's attempts to go out and she told Logan she would never return to Lake Main. But the arrival of Spark, her K9 buddy helped Emma begin to come out of her funk.

In October, Emma's mobility coach, Mr. Otis, arrives and begins the long process of helping Emma develop strategies that allow her to function in everyday life, like organizing her clothing, using her white cane, walking on the sidewalk and using her phone. Emma must relearn everything because of her vision loss. "The work was a choking, incessant reminders that I was back at zero flatter than any baby starts at...It was all a matter of survival, even though it was literally stuff like learning to walk down the sidewalk or across the street."  After Mr. Otis leaves, Emma continues to struggle to see a future. She is certain that many things most people take for granted in their lives will now never be possible for her, including getting a job, making enough money to support herself, attending school, walking, running or even falling in love.

So that she can practice the skills that Mr. Otis taught her and eventually re-integrat back into a regular school, Emma is sent to Briarly. At Briarly, Emma meets a boy, Sebastian Metropole, who is a year older than her. Seb tries to help Emma, accepting the rocking that she does to comfort herself but telling her she needs to stop it, encouraging her to try skiing despite being blind. Seb tells her that Briarly will help rid her of the PBK (poor blind kid) vibe. Emma attended Briarly until the following June but it was Seb that gave her her first glimmer of hope - something Emma only begins to realize five months later when she is back at Lake Main.

Now during the current school year, Emma is beginning to settle into Lake Main again, although some things she concedes will never be the same. She won't return to playing the piano, and she might even consider skipping classes. When Seb from Briarly attempts to contact her, Emma does not return his calls being both afraid and ashamed. She can't face Seb at this time.

An autopsy reveals that Claire had numerous drugs in her system before she died. Emma is concerned that no one is really talking about what happened to Claire. Emma wants to understand why Claire was alone, taking drugs, and then somehow drowned in the lake. Logan and Emma decide to ask Zach Haze, whom Emma is crushing on, to meet to discuss setting up some kind of get-together where people can talk about what happened to Claire. At this meeting they decide to ask people to meet at an abandoned house known as the Mayburg place near the I-92.

As she heads to her friend Logan's house for a sleep over so she can attend the Mayburg meeting, there is evidence that Emma's world is beginning at times to right itself. "Maybe because the night was unfolding so deliciously in front of us, I felt as good as I have in forever, kind of extra human. Like a cartoon hero with sidekicks and special powers or something, my bones and my ears and mind and dog and stick doing the work my eyes used to think they were doing."

Emma and her friends invite a number of people to the meeting including, Blythe Keene, Claire's best friend, Amanda Boughman, Joshua Winterberg, Deidre Sharp, Elizabeth Tallentine and Christian Aramond whose father is the French teacher. The group of friends meets at the abandoned house and Emma tells them that they are there to figure out how to keep each other safe and to see if they can figure out what happened to Claire since very little information about her death has been released to the public or her friends. However, little does Emma know that the Mayburg meetings will result in new revelations, test friendships and lead Emma further on her journey to recovery and hope.

Discussion

Blind is a novel about the process of recovery and rediscovering one's identity. Emma was an attractive, accomplished girl, who played piano, was popular and had a best friend. After her accident, she is blind and has been disfigured with a scar over her left eye which is permanently closed. She feels scared, unlovable, and cannot imagine a future being forever blind. It is as she explores the death of Claire, that Emma begins to realize some truths about her situation and to face them. One of her friends points out that if Claire did kill herself, even in her darkest moments she was rejecting all the possible futures where she might be happy.

The concert is a defining moment for Emma when she comes to realize that despite being blind, she is happy she is alive. As she is experiencing the colours and texture of the music from the quartet she considers "how Claire will never taste chocolate again or see a single color let alone hear a symphony." She wonders "How do you decide you'd rather be dead, and never hear music or eat chocolate again?" The music instills in Emma a desire "to be even more alive than I am, than anyone is. It made me want to feel everything, to be in love. It made me want to start my piano lessons again immediately, to ride a bike again, to call Sebastian, to swim." These are all things Emma had been refusing to do because of her blindness.

When Emma reconnects with Seb and goes on Briarly's school ski trip she realizes that she now thinks differently about life than she did a year ago. "...I hadn't realized yet that it was possible to be both blind and capable of thinking about anything other than the fact that you're blind." Unfortunately, when she tries to restart her friendship with Seb, whom she acknowledges earlier in the novel gave her the first glimmer of hope that things wouldn't always be dark and dismal, Emma finds it is too late. Seb is no longer interested.

Emma's journey continues when she is taken to visit a young girl named Annabelle, who has lost her eyesight to disease and who will also likely go deaf. Emma recognizes herself in Annabelle and like Seb a year earlier, wants to help Annabelle cope with being blind. Emma tells her that she spent most of the past year trying to forget her time at Briarly because she thought it would make her life easier. Instead it had the opposite effect, making her a terrible friend to someone who had given her hope, and making it longer for her to accept her blindness.

Eventually Emma comes to realize that in order to live with her blindness she has to remember everything and she has to live her life. She comes to believe that she almost was like Claire who once told her friend Amanda who was struggling to cope with her parents divorce that she "shouldn't think my life was over, because I would be a totally different person in two years. So if I killed myself then, I'd be killing that other person, too, and who knows, she might be super happy." Emma comes to realize that if Claire did kill herself, for whatever reason, she forgot what she told Amanda. And she forgot about the reality of death and the possibility of a better future. "And maybe in that moment, after the drugs, during the time in the water, it's possible to think that you don't care whether you die. If it is, that's only because you don't care whether you die. If it is, that's only because you don't know what it means to be dead, inside forever in the dark. You can't know about dead until you're dead, not even if you're me."

Emma understands this because she's been where Claire was, wanting to die, seeing only dark in her future as a blind person and not understanding the possibilities of the future or about the nature of death. This is what Seb was trying to show her at Briarly when he let her touch his face - that the future contains hope. Emma, however, was not ready for that message yet.

There's an interesting symbol woven throughout the novel which is expressed through the use of eye glasses. In English class Emma's teacher asks about Atticus's broken eye glasses and Emma tells her that this represents Atticus having a new point of view, of seeing things from a different perspective. In Blind, Emma adamantly refuses to remove her sunglasses because of the "livid" scar over her left eye. To Emma that scar defines her and represents what blindness is - ugly. But by the end of the novel, Emma decides to remove her glasses, remarking that "Sunglasses make great headbands." demonstrating a new perspective on blindness and who she is.

Blind is a long, detailed novel that explores the themes of identity, death, blindness, disability and life. Readers will perhaps find the novel slow in the first one hundred pages but as Emma uncovers the changes in herself and others, the novel becomes more interesting. It simply takes the author a bit of time to develop these themes.

DeWoskin appears to have researched her subject well, as Emma's experiences, first coping with the loss of her vision,  at the school for the blind and as a visually impaired teen are well portrayed. Characterization is a great strength of this novel; there are a number of well drawn principal characters including Emma, Logan, Sebastian, and Emma's sisters Leah, Sarah and Naomi.

Overall Blind is an excellent, well written novel.

Book Details:
Blind by Rachel DeWoskin
New York: Viking      2014
394 pp.