Free Because You'll Never Meet Me by Leah Thomas

my pain receptors to ice. My goggles broke against my forehead; the right lens popped free from the frames. They slipped from my head, scratching and tearing my face in stinging lines as they peeled away.
    People shouted. Cheering Lenz on? It was so noisy with their words. I could see the drool in the backs of their throats when they hollered. They rooted to see my face caved in. Watching a live freak/fag/retard’s face avalanche is quality entertainment. Regardless of whether you’ve got MBV or 20/20 vision, or you have to squint through glasses.
    â€œ
Freak
,” Lenz spat.
    A great yanking at my upper arm: Herr Gebor pulled us apart. He glanced at my face and swore beneath his breath before releasing me, Ollie.
    Deprived of my goggles, I scratched my hair down over my eyes. Scratched and clicked and scratched and clicked.
    One person kept her head. One of the few people Isomehow lost sight of in my frantic, haphazard MBV. She grabbed me beneath the arms. Hoisted me to my feet. Frau Pruwitt looked me dead in the face as if I had eyes she could meet.
    I know that there’s a customary cliché about librarians being what crass people might call “hard-asses.” Frau Pruwitt is granite. Had I tentacles underneath my goggles, she would not have batted one eyelash. She must have heard the fuss from the hallway. She unceremoniously shoved a wad of tissues right under my gory nose. Pursed her lips.
    â€œA
tussle
, Mr. Farber?” She sighed. “Come along, then.”
    I was still seeing too much while I was dragged to the headmaster’s office through throngs of pupils who parted like Moses’s sea before us. Seeing so much, I felt as if my head would divide itself just as the crowd did. My jerking heart might do the same. Imbecilic thing.
    At some point I was deposited in the headmaster’s office. I understood, through the haze, that I had been suspended. I was left to wait and catch my breath and brain and heart rate on an uncomfortable sofa in the hallway outside the main office. Left to hear the sound of mites in the brown carpet clicking away in time with my own clicking, click-clicking. On the opposite side of a glass wall behind me, I could see/hear men and women in the office whispering. One man, my history instructor, clutched his rumbling stomach. As if the sight of me made him downright unwell.
    â€œBut he
must
be blind.”
    â€œHe’s still making that sound. What is that? A tic?”
    â€œWhy don’t we have more information about this? He should have accommodations in place.”
    â€œHis guardian only told us he was photosensitive. When he was enrolled. That was all.”
    My physics teacher: “I thought the goggles were a harmless affectation. He doesn’t have many friends; if he wanted to use ‘photosensitivity’ as an excuse, I couldn’t blame him. I had no inkling that he was actually …”
    â€œWe’ll be held accountable. A plan should have been in place. Aside from all the rest, he has a pacemaker! Of course he’ll be at a disadvantage among normal students.”
    Oh.
Normal
students, Ollie.
    I finally despised you then, Ollie. My head was tearing itself asunder. I could not filter a single whispering thing out. The thing about having no eyes is that you can never close them.
    I clamped my hands over my ears. Tried to hear only my irregular heartbeat. The gentle buzzing of my pacemaker. The air whooshing through my lungs. The blood pulsing through my veins and arteries. The sounds of my skeleton. The sounds that I am never rid of.
    In my lap were my battered goggles. Frau Pruwitt waited beside me, arms folded.
    â€œCheer up, son,” she said gruffly, without looking at me. “Soon be Christmas.”
    It is February.
    It was only after I sent you the enraged letter that I remembered something vital.
    There were too many stimuli in that gym that day, Ollie. Too much noise. It took me until late that night