Girl, Stolen(10)

“Occipital lobe injury.” “Damage to the visual cortex.” “Wiped out the vascular system in the back of the brain.”

What it meant was that all of Cheyenne’s central vision – the 20/20 part, what most people thought of as seeing – was gone. Most of her peripheral vision was gone, too. She had been left with only one ten-degree slice on the very left edge of what had been her old field of vision. But the problem with peripheral vision was that it wasn’t 20/20, but 20/200. Legally blind. The way the edges of everyone’s vision were, except they didn’t know it. People saw with clarity only whatever they focused on, not what lay on the sides. So now what a normal person could see at two hundred feet, Cheyenne could see a tiny slice of at twenty feet.

What she was left with was a blurred sliver of color and shapes that usually was more distracting than helpful. Now, if she wanted to see anything at all, she had to turn her head away from it. It seemed like a metaphor, but Cheyenne didn’t know for what.

Paying attention to that slice of vision usually only gave Cheyenne a headache and didn’t yield anything useful. A lot of times she just closed her eyes or wore dark glasses. For one thing, it made other people feel more comfortable. They didn’t like to talk to someone who might or might not be looking directly at their eyes.

The sound of her footsteps changed. The space had narrowed even further. A hall. It was colder here. She felt Griffin lean past her. A door creaked open. He nudged her forward. Once they were inside, Griffin put his hands on her shoulders and turned her around to face him.

“Sit down. There’s a bed just behind you.”

A bed. The thought made her nervous. Maybe it made Griffin nervous, too, because his voice was too loud, the way sighted people often were when they talked to her.

“Can you untie my hands?” She stood with her shoulders curled over and made her voice weak and small. She wanted Griffin to see her like that.

Cheyenne tried not to think about how she really was weak and small.

“No,” he said in a tone that said there was no use arguing. “Now, sit down on the bed.”

Cheyenne shuffled backward until she could feel the mattress against the backs of her knees. She sat. She heard him run out of the room, but before she could react, he was back. Until she felt him touch her ankle, she didn’t know Griffin had crouched down next to her. She let out a little shriek that immediately shamed her.

“Sorry,” he said. “I just have to tie you to the bed so you don’t take off.” She felt a smooth narrow cord go around one ankle. “I’ll leave you enough slack so that you can lie down.” His hands finished the knot and then tugged at it. “Okay. Now you’re going to have to stay in here for a while. Don’t even think of trying to get away. We’re miles from nowhere. And even if you did manage to get out into the yard, Duke would swallow you whole for supper.”

Duke, Cheyenne thought. Griffin and Duke and Roy. And doing something with electric saws out in the middle of nowhere. There can only be one place like this.

“Please, mister,” she said, “can I have a glass of water?” There. Maybe calling Griffin “mister” would make him think she didn’t know his name. Cheyenne gave a little fake cough, but it quickly turned into a real one. She coughed and coughed until her lungs ached. She heard him leave again, then water running, his footsteps hurrying back.

“Here.” He put his hand on the back of her head and tried to tilt the glass to her lips. Most of it sloshed over her coat. Some of it ran down her neck. Cheyenne gulped, choked, sputtered. A little of it went down her throat, which felt as if it were on fire. Awkwardly, he patted her face with her scarf.

“You should lie down,” he finally said. She heard him set the glass down. “I’ll be back later.”

He closed the door. She listened for the sound of his footsteps disappearing down the hall. The front door opened and closed. As soon as it did, she rolled off the bed and began to search. With her leg tethered, she was only able to get a few feet from the bed. But Cheyenne used her free foot. She turned around and fluttered her fingers against anything she could reach with her hands tied behind her back, even bent forward from the waist and literally nosed around what she thought was a desk.

She didn’t know what she was searching for, and she didn’t know that she would know even if she found it. Cheyenne needed something. Something that would tip the balance. She knew it was too much to hope for a pocketknife, a telephone, a pair of scissors. But even a pen would be good. She might be able to hide a pen and use it later to stab someone. The room was surprisingly neat and empty. Even though they didn’t seem like the kind of people who would have a guest room, maybe that’s what this was.