“I've been thinking pretty much the same thing,” she admitted.
“It's too bad I'm not straight,” he whispered.
“Yeah, it is. Maybe you'll get cured.”
“Of what?” He sounded shocked.
“Being gay.”
“Are you serious?” Their friendship was about to end.
“No,” she said, and he burst out laughing.
“I like you, Annie.”
“I like you too, Baxter.” They both meant it, which was sweet. It seemed like a miracle that they had found each other in the cafeteria and sat down at the same table. Two blind artists in a sea of people. There were eight hundred adults in the school. There was a youth section, but there were far more adults. And it was thought to be one of the best training schools for the blind in the world. They both suddenly felt lucky to be there, when it had seemed like a punishment before.
“Best friends?” he asked her before they left each other for their respective journeys home. Hers was a lot shorter and easier than his. His sounded like an odyssey to her.
“Forever and ever,” she promised as they shook hands. “Have a safe trip home.”
“You too. Try not to fall flat on your face again on your way out. It gives the school a bad name. It's okay on the way in, but leaving you should at least try to look like you know what you're doing.” She laughed again, and he disappeared.
There were guides in the hallway to help the new students find the main door, and to assist them with transportation outside. Annie explained to one of them that she needed a cab, and he told her to wait, and he'd come to get her when he had the cab. She was standing in the main lobby, feeling lost again, when someone spoke to her. He had a calm, pleasant voice.
“Miss Adams?”
“Yes.” She looked hesitant, and suddenly shy.
“I'm Brad Parker. I just wanted to say hello and welcome you to the school. How did your first day go?” She wasn't sure if she should tell him the truth. He sounded very grown up, unlike Baxter, who sounded like a kid, even younger than he was.
“It went fine,” she said meekly.
“I hear you had a little mishap on the way in. We have to get the city to do something about that curb. It happens all the time.” She felt less stupid about having fallen when he said it, which seemed kind, whether it was true or not. “Are you all right?”
“I'm fine. Thank you very much.”
“Did you find your classes all right?”
“Yes.” She smiled. She didn't tell him that she had stumbled into the lesson about condoms. She didn't know him well enough.
“I understand you're fluent in Italian and lived in Florence.” He seemed to know all about her, and she looked surprised.
“How did you know that?”
“It's on your form, and I read them all. I was interested in that, because I spent a lot of time in Rome. My grandfather was the American ambassador there when I was a child. We used to visit him in the summer.”
She suddenly wondered and decided to ask, since he knew so much about her, even that she had fallen down. “Are you blind?”
“No, I'm not. But both my parents were. I built the school in their memory, with a bequest they left for this purpose. They died in a plane crash when I was in college.”
“That's pretty amazing.” Annie was impressed, and he sounded like a nice man. She was touched that he had bothered to talk to her, had read her application prior to that, and even knew about her fall. He was well informed, particularly in a school that size.
“We've grown considerably since we started. We've only been here for sixteen years. I hope you enjoy it, and if there's anything I can do for you while you're with us, let me know.”
“Thank you,” she said demurely. She wouldn't have dared to call him Brad. She had no idea how old he was. But as the founder of the school, she had to assume he wasn't very young, and he sounded like he was a man, not a boy like Baxter, so she couldn't kid around, and didn't want to seem rude.
As they spoke, the guide came back inside to get her. He had a cab waiting outside. He greeted Brad informally, she said goodbye, and the guide took her outside and helped her into the cab. She thanked him and gave the driver her address. And as she promised she would, she called Sabrina at her office to tell her she was on the way home.
“How was it?” Sabrina asked, sounding anxious. She had worried about her all day.
“It was okay,” Annie said noncommittally, and then smiled in the back of the cab. “Okay… it was pretty good.”
“Well, that's nice to hear.” Sabrina smiled in relief. “I felt like I'd sent my only kid to camp. I was a nervous wreck all day. I was afraid you'd hate it, or that someone would be mean to you. What did you learn?”
“Condoms 101.” She laughed as she said it.
“Excuse me?”
“Actually, I wandered into the wrong class, after I fell on the curb outside. We studied braille.”
“You'd better tell me about all this when I get home. I'll be home in about an hour.” Annie had left the school just after five. They went to school from eight to five every day, five days a week, for six months. It was an intensive course.
When Annie got home, Candy was still packing for Milan, and there were suitcases all over her room. She was leaving for three weeks, but after Sabrina's lecture that morning, she had kept all of it in her room, so Annie didn't trip and fall when she walked in. And then she saw the knees of her jeans. They were torn and soaked with blood.
“What happened to you?” Candy looked instantly sympathetic.
“What do you mean?”
“Your knees.”
“Oh, I fell.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I'm fine.”
“How was school?”
“Not too bad,” Annie conceded, and then smiled at her, looking more than ever like a little kid. “Actually, it was almost cool.”
“Almost cool?” Candy laughed. “Did you meet any guys?”
“Yeah. A guy in my class who's a graphic designer. He went to Yale, and he's gay. And the head of the school, who's about a hundred years old. I'm not going there to meet guys.”
“That doesn't mean you can't meet them if you're there.”
“That's true.”
Candy could tell that she had been favorably impressed, and other than the skinned knees, no harm had come to her. It seemed like an acceptable first day, to all of them. Tammy called to check in the following morning, and she was relieved to hear about it too. Sabrina asked her if things were running more smoothly than before she left for the holiday.
“Not exactly. I'm dealing with a wildcat strike. And about four hundred other headaches, but I'm okay.” She sounded stressed, and she had been worried about Annie. All of the sisters were pleased with Annie's first day at the Parker School, and so was she.
Sabrina hoped it was a good omen for the future, and they celebrated with a bottle of champagne that night.
Chapter 18
Tammy's week went from bad to worse. Problems with actors, problems with the network, problems with the unions and the scripts. By the end of the week, she was a total mess. And she felt guiltier every day for not being with her sisters to help deal with the aftermath of her mother's death. Her father sounded terrible. And Candy was in Europe for three weeks, so Sabrina was handling everything alone. She was singlehandedly supervising Annie, trying to bolster their father's spirits as best she could from the distance, and carrying an enormous workload at her office. None of it seemed fair. And now with Annie to take care of, and their father to visit whenever she could, she felt as though she hardly had time to see Chris. He slept at the house a few times a week, but she said she barely had time to talk to him. All of the responsibilities were on her shoulders, and no one else's. And even when she had been at home, Candy was too young and immature to really help. She was twenty-one going on twelve, or six.