Taboo Pleasures

"Danny, is there something on your mind?" Miss Riley's voice interrupted the almost silence of the classroom.

My eyes darted to her, then down to the book I should have been reading, then where they had started -- on Raven on the other side of the classroom.

"No," I lied.

That's what a third grader does with their teachers when confronted about basically anything.

"Wouldn't it be a really great idea to have science on your mind instead of nothing?"

I shrugged, then pretended to read my science textbook, but looked at Raven out of the corner of my eye.

My eyes wouldn't even focus that close, but Raven's nose almost touched the page of the book as she read. My sister's entire head moved back and forth across the page instead of just her eyes.

I almost didn't see her before she disappeared around the corner of the school building.

The basketball coach wanted to talk to me about why I hadn't come to the try-outs the previous day, and made me late getting outside to meet Raven.

I couldn't tell if my sister struggled because the other girl led her by the hand too fast, or because Raven didn't want to be following her.

"Stop it!" Raven's voice reached me as I rounded the corner where I had last seen her.

I didn't see anyone, so I sprinted toward the outbuilding where they stored the groundskeeping equipment for the football field, nestled against the back of the football bleachers.

I probably imagined the swish of Raven's cane as she swung it in front of her, but the grunt the older boy made as he jumped away from Raven and my shoulder met his rib cage was real.

The hands that dragged me off the ninth grader under me were also real, so were the feet that kicked my ribs and the fists that followed up with punches to my face.

"Fucking seventh graders, they never know their place. This is a reminder, Boy Wonder."

I recognized the voice. It belonged to the ninth grader that had warned me of the consequences if I went to the basketball tryouts.

I assumed the other two boys I had seen before tackling that one were also basketball players.

I didn't know the girl, the one who had led Raven there, but assumed she too was a ninth grader.

I probably moaned in pain. My ribs, all of them, were throbbing, I felt one eye swelling closed and I tasted blood in my mouth.

"Stop touching me!" Raven demanded. The swish of her cane in the air definitely was not a figment of my imagination this time.

"Rae..." I moaned.

"Leave me alone!" she growled and I heard her cane cut through the air above me again.

"They're gone," I coughed through my swollen lips.

"Danny?"

I felt the gentle nudge of her cane on my hip, then the tentative touch of her hand on my calf.

"Get up, Danny. We're gonna miss the bus."

I rolled to my back and tried to sit up, but the sharp pain in my sides forced me to stop.

"What just happened, Rae?"

"It sounded like somebody got beat up."

I opened the eye that would, and looked at her. She was squatting next to me, staring under the football bleachers. Her fingertips barely rested on my shin.

My sides hurt even though I held my breath and clenched my muscles, but I managed to stand without much more fuss.

Raven turned her face toward mine as she straightened up to stand next to me. She looked scared.

"Are you okay, Danny?"

"I'm fine. Come on," I instructed her, then put her hand on my arm as I started back to the front of the school and the bus I hoped was waiting for us.

"If you're fine, why are you talking funny?

"What?"

Raven sounded annoyed, and had stopped her fingers in the middle of the page she was reading.

Even in the flickering light from the muted basketball game I was allegedly watching on the television, I knew her tone was a ploy to goad me just a little.

"What what?" I asked her.

"I can hear you looking at me."

I had to laugh. She chose hear this time, but it was just as likely she might have chosen taste, or smell. She never said see. Everybody knew that wasn't true, and she almost never chose feel because that was the obvious choice.

My favorite, no matter what, is smell. "I can smell you looking at me" is so much funnier than hear. Taste would be pretty funny, too.

Honestly though, she probably could hear me looking at her. Boston's tail thumped lightly on the carpet next to her chair, just like it did whenever he was off work and thought he might possibly get my attention and a scratch behind his ear or a pat on the head.

"You know I hate people staring at me. They're trying to figure out what it's like to be the poor blind girl, but you already know what that's like, so I'm asking again -- what?"

I looked back at the game, our college alma mater against their archrival, and listened. Boston's tail was silent now.

Three years ago I played in that game. I came off the bench to score twenty-three points and we won by ten. This game didn't look like it would be such an easy win, if we won at all.

"Now you can't even look at me?" Raven accused me, but I could hear the implication of a giggle in her voice.

I looked back at my sister, and Boston raised his head and started with his tail again.

"I'm just trying to decide when I should tell you something that will change your mind."

"I'm dying to find out what you think is going to change my mind. Now is probably as good a time as any."

"You know it's time, Rae. He's old..."

"Don't say it, Danny," she whimpered.

Raven called me Danny when we were kids, but when we got to be teenagers she started using Dan almost exclusively. We never talked about it, but I learned that "Danny" was her safe word, only used now when she was terrified.