I hated this stupid summer camp. I'm not 'disabled', I'm just visually impaired. I can still speak English, I can still walk, I can still exist as a normal, functioning member of society without aide. I just, like, can't see the society.

When I was nine months old, I said my first word. It was 'mama'.

When I was thirteen months old, I took my first unassisted step.

When I was four years old I learned to ride a bicycle. I mean, not well, but I learned how to balance and pedal.

When I was ten I learned how to play the recorder. That's not an accomplishment, but I thought I'd throw that in anyways.

I even had a girlfriend once, back in eighth grade. Though, now that I think about it, it feels a lot like she was taking pity on me. Most people do. They pity me. It's always 'do you need help across the street' this and 'do you want me to describe what's going on' that and it's always bullshit. I hate it. It makes me feel useless. I get exempt from gym class every year because the teachers think I'll get hurt or some nonsense like that. Like, there's plenty of things I can do that are sporting. I don't want to just sit in health class alone for seventy minutes while everyone else gets to play.

Like running, for instance. I can run, and I like to run. Yatsu showed me how keep pace with someone by touching elbows and matching gate, so we go out every morning to have a little brother bonding time and keep in shape. I tried with Scarlet that once during class and some dick sitting on the side of the track decided it would be funny to trip me. If only I could see, I think I would have beat his ass into next week.

Apparently I'm easy to pick on, since I can't do anything about it. Funny thing is, I can still hear the bad things people say about me. I'm not immune to teasing.

"C'mon, man, just paddle."

I would have whipped my head around to glare at him, but again. No point.

"Shut up, Scarlet."

"Look, all we have to do is make it over there, then you can get out and, I dunno, find a rock to mope on."

"I have no concept of where 'over there' is, you idiot."

"You know what, you get my point. Just paddle in a straight line. I can't be doing all the work."

I angrily dug my paddle in and pulled us forward. I could feel the boat start to twist to the left.

"Geez, okay, uh less power, more like this, see?"

"I see."

"Good, okay n- wait. You dick."

I snorted to myself. Now, I know what you're thinking. 'Uh, how does Scarlet get to be at camp with you, he's not disabled'. Well, how do you think I met him? That's right, the 'therapy' class we 'disabled' kids had to go to in grades nine through eleven. Because he is disabled. Just not obviously. He was born without the muscles around his heart, so instead he has a machine do the hard work for him. Sharing a tent with him is a real treat with that constant dull clicking that can't be turned off. Sometimes, when I'm still up because of the noise, I feel like I want to strangle him. But I'm sure he feels the same way about me sometimes.

"I'd stab you in the eyes if you weren't already blind."

"Yeah, me too. Then I wouldn't have to look at your ugly face."

"You don't even know what my face looks like."

"Ugly."

He laughed from over my shoulder. "Jackass."

The difference between Scarlet and I was our approaches to our problems. He was always a go-getter, a happy-go-lucky kinda guy. He didn't let his disability get him down, and I could commend that. My problem was that other people used my disability to bring me down. And I didn't like that. But I dealt with it. Scarlet helped a lot.

We hit the dock. Someone wasn't paying attention. And he was right, by the time we made it out of the canoe with him helping me basically the entire way out, I really just wanted somewhere I could sit and listen to music without being bothered. Lucky for me, the end of the dock was the perfect place for such an occasion. With all the other campers already ashore and in the process of setting up their tents by this time, no one would bother me if I stepped away and ignored them all. Scarlet would build our tent for us. You know, on account of how I couldn't see the damn thing.

He took our bags and ascended the hill to the camp as I sat carefully down on the end of the rather long and rickety dock, hanging my legs over the edge. I'd left my cane in the canoe, so that was a mistake. And now it was up on shore, so I'd need his help walking to camp anyways. Oh well, shit happens.

Lucky for me, I had my iPod with me, tucked into my pocket, which thankfully did not fall into the water as I pulled my life jacket off. I slipped my earphones up over my ears. Yeah, so my hearing was all I had left to experience the world around me, and by golly, I was gonna interrupt that with music. If anyone from the camp wanted to talk to me, they could shove it. It was Brahms time. Little bit of G Minor for me today.

I like music. I don't know why I do, but I do. It's... perceptive. I won't feed you any bullshit about how I can see with sound or anything like that, because that's not true. Same way that blind people don't touch faces to see what people look like, that's just as nonsense as the ability to regain sight through prayer or homeopathic remedies. All garbage.

I like music just because I do. I can't see colour, I might as well hear sound. And good sound. Besides, with my headphones on, nobody ever bothers me because they know better than to sneak up on the blind kid who can't see them coming. David learned that lesson the hard way when I elbowed him in the eye by accident the last time he snuck up on me. So I had at least forty-five minutes of silence from the god-awful camp before anyone would come looking for me. I lay back, swinging my feet over the edge so my toes brushed the water. It was nice.

For a bit.

Until I could feel the dock start to sway, the telltale sign of someone walking on it. The footfalls grew closer until they stopped right at my head. Funny, it didn't feel like Scarlet or David. The gait was shorter, narrower, with a defined skip of the heel. Very feminine. Not quite like Gwen, the other counsellor, since she was tall and walked in steel-toe hiking boots everywhere. No, this was in sneakers. They, whoever they were, sounded and felt short. I sighed. I couldn't see it, but I knew they were leaning over me at the moment, trying to figure out who the depressive loner on the dock was. I pulled off my headphones and tried to give an angry glare to where I imagined their face was.

"Can I help you?"

Nothing. Silence. Weird.

"If you're just gonna stand there and say nothing, do it to someone else. I have music to listen to."

Again, nothing. I was annoyed. I hated when people would just hover around me, but this was ridiculous. Not just around me, actually over me. Ugh.

Whoever it was chose this moment to turn heel and bolt, rocking the crummy old dock with every hard step they made. I sighed and pulled on my headphones again, the sweet sounds of my Hungarian Dance in F Major, this time, coming strongly through the ear pieces. The weird person didn't return at any time in the next long while, and I was pleasantly okay with that. Neither did Scarlet, though, so I'm not sure he was having any luck with our tent. Eh, I was patient. Been patient my whole life.

I just don't have patience for ignorant people, like whoever decided standing over a blind kid was a good idea. And then not even say anything? Sheesh.

By the time my CD had finished, I could feel that the air had gone down in temperature by a reasonably significant amount, which meant that the sun had gone down past the trees to what everyone else considered 'sunset'. I dunno about them, it's always dark. Well, without. Not exactly anything to compare to, so.

It was around eight or so when Scarlet came to find me on the dock, where his dumbass stomped his boots onto the dock right next to my head. I already knew he was there, of course, but I pretended for his sake, feigning shock and annoyance as he tried to surprise me.

"The hell, dude?" I 'yelled' up at him. "You know I can't see you coming!"

"Sorry, man. Just thought I'd let you know it's dinner time."

"I ate before we got in the boat."

"There's hot dogs."

I sat up. I guess that was a good enough reason. With some help on the rickety dock, I was able to get back up to dry land. Even without the 'gift' of sight, I could tell that the rest of the campers were congregated around the makeshift fire pit that would have been created by the counsellors upon landfall. And now, by the heat waves and smoke that it was giving off, I could make my way over to it with only minimal assistance from my asshat friend.

By the time I had slowly lowered myself onto a felled log, which had taken probably three or four minutes of fussing to make sure no one had pranked me, the chill in the air was ever present, cutting around the warmth of the fire and through my bare arms. I wish I had my hoodie, but it was in my pack, probably in our tent at this point. I wasn't interested in going to get that after taking all that effort in just sitting down. I'd just have to deal with the chill.

"Fox, put your hand out."

I didn't want to, but with the prospect of good food on the table, I was willing to take that chance on the possibility Scarlet might hand me a non-food item. Like a wet stick like he'd done on day one, the jerk. So when the actual hot dog was presented to me, char-broiled to a crispy deliciousness, I felt like I could probably trust him some more. I took a bite, enjoying the copious amount of relish somebody remembered that I liked.

"Hey man, I think you have an admirer." Scarlet said quietly in my ear.

"Shcuze me?" I said, mouth full of relish and bun.

He chuckled and clapped me on the shoulder, whispering "Yeah, there's this cute girl givin' you the eyes from across the fire."

"I don't know what that looks like, Scar." I whispered back.

"What, 'the eyes' or the cute girl?"

"Both, idiot."

"Heh. Well, 'the eyes' is when-"

"Not gonna help, just be quiet. And give me another wiener."

"What, she's totally checking you ou- ah, shit she noticed."

"So?"

There was a pause where I imagined he was turning to give me an incredulous look. The same one I would give him whenever he would use 'see what I mean' in conversation.

"It means she's left the fire pit and retreated back to the tents, dude. And her cute friend went with her, so now we're down two campers."

"Sounds like and advantage."

"How is the loss of two cute chicks an advantage?!"

I held up my hot dog.

"More food for me, someone who can't appreciate 'cute'."

Another presumed incredulous look. "You're never gonna let me have anything, are you."

"Nope."

"Wanker."

I twisted my face over to him and did my best glare.

"You know..." he started. "That would be a lot more intimidating if you actually had pupils."

I chuckled. Dick.

After another two hours of lame ghost stories and bad campfire songs, it was time for bed. Ghost stories don't work on blind people since we can't be fooled into false senses of endangerment by the 'flashlight under the chin' trick that Scarlet is a particular fan of. We also have no sense of what a little green alien would even look like, so if ever I was abducted by one I would probably just roll with it since they don't physically frighten me. The whole time Gwen was telling us stories, David was trying his best to sneak around behind us and scare us with jump scares, but an acute sense of hearing put a quick stop to that nonsense.

Scarlet and I made it to our tent, with him complaining the whole time about not being able to see the terrain and tripping like an idiot. Now he knows how I feel on the damn daily. Jerk. As I tucked myself into my sleeping bag, I thought a bit about what he said. I didn't know what it meant for someone to 'check out' someone else. It didn't mean like what a cashier does at the grocery store when you're done shopping, and it didn't mean that you had a cheque hanging out of your pocket or anything like that. I tried to imagine what someone's eyes did when that happened. I imagine not as dramatic and obvious as I was thinking of presently, with the deep bowing and scanning of the whole body. But probably more like a subtle up-and-down, looking away occasionally before glancing back over.

I dunno.

As I fell asleep, I drifted away thinking that sighted people were weird in the way they looked at one another. I just didn't get it.

Sleep came.

/.../

And sleep went.

Mornings as a blind person are weird. There's no real distinction between what sleeping and being awake 'looks' like, since there is no such thing as 'looking' for me. It just goes from abstract 'physical' sensations to concrete feelings and sounds that mean you're awake. It's about as weird an experience as you can imagine, but after seventeen years, I've just kinda gotten used to it at this point.

"Fox, buddy, it's time to wake up."

It wasn't Scarlet, but David, the bane of my existence. I knew he was trying his best to be helpful to every camper, but it was the overly excitable way that he did it that just dug in and made me feel weird. He was a good guy, sure, just uncomfortably happy all the time. Like, just calm the heck down.

"I don't feel like it."

"It's activity day. You love activity day!"

"When did I ever give you that impression, David?"

"Just c'mon and put some effort in, Fox. We've got two months left here, you need to find something to do."

"I'm convinced I don't have to."

"Just get up and have some fun, buddy."

He picked up my cane and tossed it to me. Unfortunately for the both of us, it unfolded halfway between his hand and my sleeping bag, wedging itself between the two sides of the tent like a limbo bar, creating a hazard for anyone walking through the tent. Well, you couldn't really walk in the tent, but it was wedged and that was annoying. I heard the tent flap flutter shut, meaning either David had left completely or was politely giving me privacy, and since I couldn't hear his footfalls departing, I assumed the latter.

"I hate this place."

Finally un-wedging my cane and re-folding it, I got up and got dressed into our dumb camp uniform. Which was less 'uniform' and more 'uncomfortable golf shirt and whatever shorts you wanted', so we were given at least some choice. When I finally left my tent, I was right, and David was patiently waiting for me. I didn't have my blackout glasses with me, having foolishly left them at home, so while everyone else was wearing shades, I looked like a fool who didn't want to protect his retinas. Heh, what retinas.

"So! What do you want to do today?"

I flipped my cane out, slamming the knob into the soil with a huff.

"Have breakfast, then ignore everyone."

"What about some art? We could set you up with an easel-"

"No."

I moved away from my tent. David followed like an obedient puppy.

"Come on, it would be nice if you did! The art club is always looking for new members, and I'm sure we have an extra mixing board and some paints for you."

"I don't know what colour is, David. How am I supposed to paint?"

"You don't have to know how to paint. The famous Turkish painter Eşref Armağan was born without eyes and he was able to paint beautiful pieces with no reference whatsoever!"

I shrugged.

"I'm not famous Turkish painter Eşref Armağan, now am I?"

"Wasn't my point, but alright. Uh, how about you and Scarlet go canoeing?"

"Scarlet's doing rock climbing."

"You and I, then?"

"You have a camp to look after."

"Gwen's got it."

I sighed, stopping and 'looking' down at my feet.

"What do you want from me, David?"

His hand found my shoulder, gripping down to try and comfort me.

"To have fun here, Fox."

"This is a summer camp, David. We're supposed to experience the environment visually. Not something I'm capable of."

"Tally's blind. She's an accomplished sculptor. Why don't you hang out with her?"

"She wasn't born blind, she knows what stuff looks like and also what colour is."

"You're intent on not having fun."

"Yup."

"If you don't like anything here, what do you like?"

"Music. Peace and quiet. Cornflakes. None of which I'm getting right now."

"What about puzzles games? Do you like puzzles?"

I exhaled gruffly through my nose, hoping he'd catch on. I mean, I did like word puzzles and mindbenders, but not very many Mensa books are printed in Braille.

"Yeah, kinda."

"Then I think I have something for you."

"Is any of it cornflakes?"

"Just come with me, I'll bring you breakfast."

Thank you, David. I let him guide me around the camp to where the picnic tables had been set up for us to eat lunch on sometime in the early morning. I had been kept awake by the sounds of the drill, which might have been ignorable by most people, just not me. When we reached them, I sat myself down and folded my cane onto the table.

"Okay, now what?"

"Okay, I'll go get you your cornflakes, then I'll be back. I have to figure out how to use the Brailler again, and I have to get the radios."

I shrugged. "Alright."

And that's what he did, taking twenty minutes to go and come back with some cereal and a glass bottle of chilled milk like I was some kind of royalty. Nice to me treated as such some of the time. The heavy radio thumped down onto the table in front of me, and so did two small devices. As he was fussing with the Brailler, I examined the one placed before me. It was a wooden board, no bigger than my hand, with a brass rocker button on it and a foam pad which I assumed was for my wrist. It was like an antiquated Brailler but only with one button. Just as I had a moment to play with the little device, A plastic sheet was slid over to my hand.

"Here, can you read this?"

I could feel the bumps along the surface. A sheet of Braille, fresh off the press. I was impressed by his speed, since even my parents couldn't type that fast on a Brailler after this many years.

"Uh, yeah. But I don't get it, it's just the alphabet and the words 'dot' and 'dash' a bunch of times."

He chuckled.

"That's right, it is. You know they don't actually make a Braille to Morse conversion page for camp use?"

I was blown away. "This is Morse code?"

"Yup. Figured you might be good at it. It's just like Braille, only in a line instead of in a square."

I nodded, taking in a few of the letters. I could read that he had replaced the pictographs of the lines and dots with the words representing them, but I understood what he was getting at. The little device under my hand was the coding device, meant to express and relay the information. Perhaps that was what the radio was for. I wondered who I might talk to.

"This is neat. Like an electronics history project."

"Thought you might like a little bit of a challenge."

He was right.

"So who am I talking to?"

"No one yet. You'll be listening in, though."

"Okay."

"There's two weather watch stations up in the mountains about forty kilometres northwest and due east of here that like to communicate with one another using modified HAM radios that output Morse signals. Your job will be to interpret what they're saying and relay it to us so we can know what the day's weather is."

"That's pretty neat."

"I thought so. I know a little Morse myself, but not enough to hold any kind of conversation. The guys up in the towers apparently talk for hours about stuff and play mind puzzles with one another. Eventually you'll be able to as well."

"Can I talk back to them?"

"You can, but please don't. They are weather stations, and they are in charge of watching the valley, so."

"Okay, don't mess with the marshals, got it."

"Excellent! Now, before you start interpreting them, I think you two should learn to interpret each other."

"Sounds goo- wait, what do you mean 'you two'?"

"Oh, sorry, it completely slipped my mind, your partner."

"The radio?"

"No, no, your table partner." he paused with a chuckle. "This is Neo. She'll be your second interpreter. So you don't have to do this alone."

"Oh, I'm sorry." I said, turning my 'gaze' across the table to where I logically assumed another person would be sitting. "I didn't realize I wasn't alone. My name's Fox."

"Oh, sorry, she can't understand you."

"Excuse me?"

"She's deaf. She can't hear you or speak to you. Neo, why don't you say hi?"

There was a pause. Then, the radio on the table started making some noises. First, four consecutive beeps, then two consecutive beeps.

"Very funny, Neo, nice of you to be literal."

"Wait, how can you talk to- right, sign language."

"Put your hand out."

I did. Then out of nowhere, a very soft, very lithe hand fell into mine and shook it, and very daintily so. I was almost shocked by the sudden touch.

"...jeez."

"I'll leave you to it. Try saying hello. If you need me, just holler. Oh, and be short and concise with your sentences. Makes it easier to translate."

"Thanks, David."

He left. I followed the sound of his feet as they retreated back to the main camp. I could hear some other campers playing a game of footy over in a clearing a ways off.

"Uh, hi."

Silence. Right, of course. She was deaf. And now my interpreter had left, leaving me awkwardly sitting at a table with a deaf girl and no way to communicate. Well, that wasn't true. There was a Morse code machine sitting between us. I guess trial by fire it is.

"Okay, so..."

I traced the conversion page for letters. H was somewhere. I tried my luck.

H...E...L...L...O

There was a pause, as I no doubt she was trying to convert it to text. A message started to come back to me. It started as the same pattern she'd used before, but it was followed by five segments I didn't know. I strained to try and remember all of them, but it was a lot even with her pausing for a good second or two between letters. I spun my wrist to try and get her to do the pattern again, which she clearly understood because it came through again.

HI THERE

I almost laughed out loud. This was gonna be both a fun and hilarious way of spending time.

"The blind man and the deaf woman. What a joke."

A good joke, though. I read through my sheet again, searching desperately for letters.

MY NAME FOX

I tried to be as concise as possible. It was hard to focus on the letters individually as their constituents instead of as whole words like you could with regular typing. It wasn't just one keystroke now, it was up to four. This was messing with my head. The beeps came through again, but slower. She could tell this was my first rodeo, and she was being considerate. I didn't have the luxury of being able to see the conversion chart.

YOU CAVE MAN

I was, as you might expect, taken a little aback.

"Excuse me?"

I fought with the paper again, making a questioning face as I clicked my response since there's no punctuation in Morse.

EXCUSE ME

She typed back. Still slowly. She obviously had a mildly tighter grasp of this than I did.

YOU FORGOT A WORD YOU SOUND LIKE A CAVEMAN

Such a long string of words was almost lost on me. Almost. I have reasonably good pattern recognition skills and good retention, a skill required for reading Braille. So I was able to keep up enough to realize that she had just sassed me. In Morse! This was not okay.

DAVID SAID TO BE CONYHS

I messed up royal, letting my hand slip on the button. She noticed. Obviously.

WHAT

Ugh.

CONCISE

OH WHY

DUNNO

The series of patterns wasn't difficult to remember after a while, as Morse doesn't really have characters that can be confused for one another, save for E, H, I, and S which are all just dots. We sort of agreed on a one second pause between letters and a two second pause between words to make sure we could be understood. It got pretty easy, as speed-reading my Braille sheet was my speciality.

WHAT ARE YOU AT CAMP FOR

I asked, trying to make conversation.

MY PARENTS SAID I NEEDED TO MAKE FRIENDS

That was conveniently the same reason as I was here.

SAME MY PARENTS THINK SCARLET ISNT ENOUGH

TWOS ENOUGH XD

It took a moment to realize she was using an emoji with Morse text, to which I proceeded to actually laugh out loud.

BUT I ONLY HAVE SCARLET SO FAR

GASP AM I NOT YOUR FRIEND

Quick witted and sassy? I wondered what she'd be like if she could talk.

I DONT KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT YOU

MY NAME NEO

"Pfft."

I grinned down at my hand on the button.

NOW WHO CAVEMAN

IM A GIRL DUH

TELL ME MORE

NO YOU FIRST 8C

"8-C?" It took me a second. "Oh, you're frowning at me. Wow, this is absurd."

I didn't quite know what to say, so I thought I'd start at the beginning.

I WAS BORN BLIND IM 17 I LIKE RUNNING

HOW DO YOU NOT FALL

HOLDING MY BROTHERS ELBOW

NEAT

WHAT ABOUT YOU

I WAS BORN DEAF IM 17 TOO I LIKE SWIMMING

So we had some things in common. Born with our defects, around the same time, and we both liked physical activities. I could build a friendship on this, yeah.

I CAN SWIM WITH A LIFEJACKET

DOESNT COUNT

SURE IT DOES

NOPE

"How is it possible that you can sass me without any tone, this is bullshit." I chuckled to myself.

UGH FINE

DO YOU LIKE ICE CREAM

Who doesn't?

YES I LIKE MINT CHIP BEST

I DONT LIKE THE COLOUR OF MINT CHIP

I frowned.

I DONT KNOW WHAT COLOUR IT IS

GREEN

"Perhaps I should clarify."

I DONT KNOW WHAT COLOUR IS

YOU HAVENT LOOKED HARD ENOUGH

"Feel like I have." I sassed back aloud.

WHATS YOUR FAVOURITE ICE CREAM

MOOSE TRACKS

NEVER HAD IT

THEY HAVE IT AT COMMISSARY

ILL HAVE TO TRY SOME AT LUNCH

OR WE COULD SNEAK IN AND STEAL IT

I leaned back on the bench, surprised. Now that was an idea I would never have considered.

OR WE COULD WAIT UNTIL LUNCH TIME

NAH NO FUN

My wrist was starting to hurt from the awkward angle I had to hold it at to operate the button. I still laughed at her absurd suggestion.

DAVID WILL GET MAD

YOU DONT LIKE DAVID

"No, that's fair."

"What's fair?"

"JESUS." I nearly jumped out of my skin. David had appeared next to me on the bench. "What the hell, David? Don't just sneak up on a blind guy, that's not cool!"

He laughed. "Sorry kiddo, I thought you'd have heard me. Anyway, it's lunch time and then we're going on a hike as a group. Sound good?"

"It's lunch time already?"

"You guys have been here for like two hours."

I guess typing, reading, interpreting and conversing in Morse was a lot longer of a process than either of us realized.

"Oh, damn. Can we come back to this after?"

"Of course. C'mon."

He stood up and waited for me to do so. Halfway through the process of standing, Neo knocked on the table to get my attention. I turned back to show I was listening. She beeped out another message.

LUNCH WITH ME

I smiled and reached back down to my pad.

BE GLAD TO