Both Lisa and I knew that Maddie had glasses, but we’d hardly ever seen her wearing them. Once or twice, she had put them on while we were playing dressing-up games in her bedroom, but we’d never seen her wear them outside her house. We had also tried them on when our parts in the games needed us to wear them. They weren’t very strong, and I could see just as well with them, as without, for just a little more concentration. Maddie had arrived late to school one Wednesday morning, and she was in a foul mood, but she refused to say why. At play time, she spent most of the twenty minutes in the toilet, and had done pretty much the same when lunchtime came. I was worried that she might have been unwell, but all I could get out of her was that she was “Fine, thanks,” and not a word more. I don’t think Lisa, my twin sister, got much more out of her, so we just shrugged at each other, and decided to let Maddie be in a bad mood as we couldn’t do anything to snap her out of it. After school, the three of us usually walked home together. It only took about 5 minutes, as there was a short-cut through the park, and with loads of other people around, and only one road to cross, our parents had allowed us to walk together since the start of the school year. It made us feel so much more grown-up, even though we were still only nine years old. We met, as usual, by the school gates. We waited until the church clock showed twenty past three, by which time we knew that none of our parents was coming to get us, so we had to walk home together. As Maddie was still not really talking to us, we walked more slowly than usual. It took a lot of coaxing from Lisa and me to get Maddie to tell us what the problem was. “I got new glasses this morning, but I refuse to wear them. They want me to wear them all the time, but I shan’t. I don’t even need the stupid things anyway. I can see perfectly well without them.” She reached into her bag, took out a hard red glasses case, and threw it into the bushes, about twenty yards away. “Oh dear, I seem to have lost them,” she said, rather sarcastically. “Good riddance! And don’t you go and get them,” she commanded, as both Lisa and I took a step towards the flower bed. “I don’t want them.” The rest of the way home, we walked in silence. At least we knew what Maddie’s problem was, even if neither of us was able to find the words to pour oil onto troubled water. Her bad mood was somehow infectious, and Lisa and I shut ourselves away in our bedrooms as soon as we had got home. I was still rather annoyed when Mum knocked on my bedroom door to remind me that it was my turn to take Rover out for a walk. I hadn’t got a good enough excuse to get out of it, so I put my coat on and found the lead I put it on to Rover, and set off for the usual 15 minute walk around the park. As I was passing the point where Maddie had thrown her glasses into the undergrowth, curiosity got the better of me. I wondered whether she had come back to retrieve her glasses (or, knowing her mum, been made to – they could both be as strong-willed as each other), or whether they were still there. It didn’t take me more than 30 seconds to find them, so I gave the case a quick shake, to make sure that there was something inside it, and then put it into my pocket. By this time, Rover had been to the toilet, so I picked up what he had left behind, and deposited it in the next bin, about two minutes further away. When I got home, I was faced with a dilemma. Did I contact Maddie and let her know that I had retrieved her glasses, wait for her to say something about regretting having thrown them away, or just look on it as a game of “Finders, Keepers.” In the meantime, curiosity got the better of me, and I opened the case to see what was inside. From Maddie’s reaction, I was expecting some really hideous frames, with massive, thick lenses. What I found was a very ordinary pair of brown, plastic framed glasses. They would probably have looked very good on her, if only she had been prepared to wear them at all. Moving over to the mirror, I took the glasses out of the case and put them on. They looked pretty good on me, too. In fact, if I ever had to get glasses, I would probably get a pair just like Maddie’s. I corrected myself. Both my parents were short-sighted, so it was probably more a case of “when” I had to get glasses. The lenses were a little on the strong side, but it wasn’t too difficult to adapt to seeing through them, and I could see how they made my face look a little narrower, just like my parents’ glasses did. Yes, I could definitely get used to seeing myself like this. The following morning, I put the glasses into my school bag, right at the very bottom, so that I had them in case Maddie said anything. She didn’t, and nor did she say anything on Friday, either. I did make sure I had taken them out of my bag by Saturday morning, as Mum was in the habit of making us empty everything out of our school bags. It was her only way to find those letters we had been given in the previous five days, so that she knew exactly what was going on at school. It was another week or so until I told Lisa what I had done. She agreed that I had probably done the right thing by our friendship in rescuing them, but not telling Maddie that I had got them. As Maddie had not said a word, neither of us wanted to be the one who raised the issue. Lisa insisted on trying them on. As we are identical twins, it was no surprise that the glasses looked good on her, too, but she did remark that they seemed “quite strong” to her. I told her that I thought I could see quite well with them, so she bet me that I couldn’t wear them for at least two hours a day every day of the Easter holidays. I wasn’t going to be beaten by her silly bet, so I put them on, and kept them on until we were called to dinner. The next day, we went out as a family, so there was little opportunity to wear the glasses then. I had to wait until we were back home, and Mum was busy cooking dinner, before I was able to put them on. Although we still had another week of school before the holidays began, I was determined to win the bet, so I put them on as soon as I woke up, took them off to go to school, and put them back on afterwards. I probably wore them for about three hours a day, that week. By the time I had to take them off, for dinner, I usually felt that I was seeing quite well with them, although I could see just as clearly without. I won the bet easily, but neither Lisa nor I knew what to do next, as we had not agreed on either a prize or a forfeit. In the end, we agreed that she would take my turn in walking Rover for the first two weeks of the Summer term; any more than that, and Mum would have become suspicious. I say that I won the bet easily, and that was true; I got so used to seeing myself in glasses, that I sometimes had to remind myself to take them off. Indeed, there were a couple of days when I only took them off for mealtimes. I’m not quite sure what made me do it, but the first day back after Easter, I took the glasses to school with me. Lisa was surprised when I put them on for the first lesson, and then kept them on for the rest of the day. I made sure that she didn’t get the chance to talk to me on my own, and told all our friends that I had been told I needed glasses for school, although Lisa didn’t. I took them off at the end of the day, before our walk home. Maddie was nowhere to be seen; her parents had taken her off to Florida, so I didn’t face any questions from her, either. However, I knew I wasn’t going to avoid the questions forever, and they started just as we were entering the park. “Why did you wear Maddie’s glasses in school? You’ll ruin your eyes, you know. What if I tell Mum what you’ve been doing? Those glasses are really strong. Maddie’s supposed to be wearing them all the time. What will you say to her when she gets back from her holiday, and finds you wearing her glasses?” “I’ll tell Mum that you bet me that I couldn’t wear them, and that’s why you’re walking Rover every day. As for ruining my eyes, we’re both going to have to wear glasses in the future, because both Mum and Dad do, so if anything, I’m just bringing it forward a bit. And they can’t be that strong if Maddie doesn’t think she needs them at all. Anyway, we’ll probably both get dragged off to the optician’s again in the next couple of weeks, so we’ll find out for sure then.” The couple of weeks ended up being four. By that time, everyone at school was used to my routine. Maddie had returned from her holiday and had not said much. She was now wearing her glasses all of the time. When she had lost the previous pair, her mum had ordered a replacement immediately, and her parents had refused to let her leave the hotel without them on. She had only been allowed not to wear them when washing, swimming or sleeping. She had become so used to seeing clearly, that she didn’t want to be without them. I wasn’t surprised when I was told that I needed my own pair of glasses. I knew Maddie’s were too strong for me, but I had reached a point where I could focus clearly on the board at school with her glasses, and not really see it at all without them. Lisa was a little surprised when she was told that she, too, was showing the first signs of becoming short-sighted, but she could probably wait another year before getting them. I chose a frame which was as close to Maddie’s as I could, and somehow managed to persuade Mum that I should also get contact lenses. An appointment was booked for a fortnight’s time, when my own glasses would also be ready for collection. I left that appointment with a brand-new pair of glasses, in their case, and a pair of contact lenses in my eyes. I also had eight more pairs to wear, and was to receive more through the post shortly. When we got home, Lisa wasted no time in coming to see me in my room. “I told you so, Laura,” she said. “Yes, but you’re going to get glasses next year, so at least I won’t have to go around unable to see clearly for the next twelve months.” Once she had tried both pairs of glasses on, I managed to persuade Lisa that I couldn’t possibly have ruined my eyesight by wearing Maddie’s glasses, as they were clearly stronger than my own. In fact, the frames were identical, although Maddie’s lenses were just threatening to stick out behind the frame, where mine weren’t. The following day was the only one where I wore that pair of glasses to school properly. We met Maddie outside her house. She was a little surprised to see me wearing glasses there, but when I explained that I had also got contact lenses, she accepted that it made sense to wear my glasses as much as I was going to be wearing contacts. She even tried my glasses on, to compare them with hers. I was so glad that I had chosen to wear my own, as she declared they were quite a bit weaker than hers. I’m not sure that was entirely true, but I wasn’t going to argue. I would have found it hard to explain how I knew. She didn’t know how strong her glasses were, but they were certainly stronger than my -1.50s. The following day, I was back into Maddie’s glasses from waking until sleeping. My wearing time for my contacts was not long enough for me to wear them to school yet, so I just put Maddie’s glasses on as soon as I woke up, and did not remove them until bedtime. In fact, it wasn’t until the Friday evening that I did battle with the two slippery discs of plastic, which seemed to take ages to put in. My other justification for not wearing the lenses more often was that I only had a limited supply of them, and I didn’t want to run out before I got my first real supply. Instead of wearing contacts to school and glasses at the weekend, it became more a case of doing it the other way around. This continued, even once I had received my first three-month supply. Only on those occasions where it looked like it was going to rain all day did I go to school in contact lenses. Once the new school year had started, in September, I realised that there was another reason why I preferred to wear glasses to school: I could see better. Once or twice, my mum commented on the fact that I didn’t seem to wear my contacts much. I didn’t feel I could tell the truth, so I started putting them in at the start of the day, and then wearing my own glasses over the top. This worked well for a month or so, before curiosity got the better of me, and I started to wear my contacts and Maddie’s glasses to school. The combination was too strong at first, but I knew that I’d soon get used to it, so I persevered. I knew that, when I eventually got new glasses, they would have to be stronger, but that was always going to be the case, so I didn’t worry that I might have been making my eyes any worse than they were going to become anyway. After I received my supply of contact lenses in January, I worked out that I was going to run out about three weeks before the next lot came. It was abundantly clear to me that I needed both the lenses and Maddie’s glasses if I wanted to see clearly. The days when I had to go around in just my lenses was quite hard, and I took every opportunity to nip into my bedroom and put the glasses on as well. It still took me a month to tell my mum that I didn’t think I could wait until April to get my eyes tested again. After that, it seemed like an age until the appointment came around. Lisa came, too. It seemed silly for her to wait another six weeks, and she was quite excited at the thought of getting her own glasses. She was the only one of the four of us who didn’t wear them, so I think she felt a bit left out. She wasn’t disappointed. As she sat in the chair, she struggled to read a couple of lines that I, although seated several feet closer to the chart, didn’t even know were there. She was told that she didn’t need to wear them all of the time, but I was pretty sure that she would, because she was like that. When we swapped places, it made me realise just how much worse my vision had become. I could read less of the chart now, with contact lenses in, than I had been able to read ten months earlier with nothing in front of my eyes. This was further reinforced when the person testing my eyes said that she would go and see if they had any lenses in stock which were “strong enough” for my new prescription. I was also told that I should have had my eyes tested again much sooner, and needed to go again in six months’ time – earlier, if I felt the need. As Lisa and I were identical twins, we made a point of choosing the same glasses frames. In fact, they were the same as my old ones and Maddie’s old glasses. I suspected that Lisa might attempt to switch the frames at some point, like I had done, but I couldn’t voice my thoughts out loud, for fear of dropping us both in it. Either way, neither of us would be wanting to wear the other’s glasses. When the glasses arrived, it didn’t take an expert to tell the difference between the two pairs. Her -0.75 lenses looked only mildly different from plain glass, while the lenses of my -4.00s stuck out a millimetre or so behind the frame. When we got home, we both tried all four pairs on (I even tried them over my new contact lenses), but I made doubly sure that Lisa only ended up with her own pair when we finished. Maddie was the first to remark upon the fact that Lisa had now joined the four-eyed brigade, but she was even more shocked when she realised that my glasses were definitely too strong for her. For some reason, this filled me with an enormous sense of pride. I knew she was due to get her eyes tested shortly, so Lisa and I had not said a word to her about our own eye tests – especially as Maddie had spent the last few weeks bemoaning how much worse her eyes had become over the last month or so. It was great just to be able to wear a single pair of glasses and see clearly. My new contact lenses also gave me excellent vision, and, for several months, I often wore them to school. and saved the glasses for the weekends. Lisa and I found our roles reversed. A year earlier, I had been the one in glasses, while she had been bare-eyed; now, we had traded places. As the year rolled on, Lisa and I both celebrated our 11th birthday. We were looking forward to starting a new secondary school in September. I was also acutely aware that my six months between eye appointments meant that I would be starting that school with a new pair of glasses. By late June, I was becoming aware that I was no longer able to see as well as Lisa, so one day, while she was in the bath, I made sure I had my contact lenses in, and borrowed her glasses to try on over the top. Clarity returned immediately. I knew I had been told that I might need stronger glasses sooner than six months, but I wasn’t desperate for them. However, I did still have a couple of dozen pairs of my old -1.50 contact lenses hidden away somewhere, so I dug them out. When Lisa asked why I had changed back to wearing glasses at school, I told her that it was because I didn’t want to run out of lenses during the holidays. If I wore glasses at school for a few weeks, I would have enough lenses in hand to see me through until I got some more, and I would be able to wear them every day of the holidays, if I wanted. Lisa obviously suspected the truth – that I was again wearing lenses under my glasses – but also seemed to buy my explanation that I only had a couple of pairs left, especially when I offered to let her have them. I also made sure that the appointment was booked for the Summer holidays – and that it was only for me. It did seem as if Mum was trying to persuade me that I didn’t really need to go, so I countered by reminding her that the expert had said I needed to go back in six months, and I was pretty sure that my eyes had got a bit worse. Unsurprisingly, I was right. I didn’t think my contact lenses were that strong, but they didn’t have any in stock, so I had to book another appointment to pick them up, on the same day my new glasses should have been ready – three days before the start of the new term. They did suggest putting thinner lenses in my new glasses, but I wanted people to notice that they were thicker than Lisa’s, so I declined. I had just three pairs of the -1.50 contact lenses left – and two weeks to wait until my new glasses were ready. I decided to save them for the last three days, so that I would be ready for when they arrived. It was hard, as everything beyond the four walls of the rooms I was in had a fuzzy edge to it, but I had little choice. Mum wasn’t going to want to make two trips into town, when one would be enough, so I had to bide my time. I also kept Lisa guessing on what sort of frame I had chosen. In actual fact, it was the same frame again, as I couldn’t see anything I preferred; at least, I could, but as I couldn’t decide between three different frames, I decided to go with what I had already got, before Mum became impatient. The trip into town was quite a long one. We had stationery to buy, school uniforms to pick up and there were one or two other things which needed doing. In all, we walked past the optician’s three or four times before it was time to go in. The glasses took a bit of adjusting, and I was pleased to notice that I could immediately see that the lenses were a bit thicker than they were in my old pair. My vision with the new contact lenses seemed a lot sharper, too, but I was still made to go through a sight test with them on. There was a lot of “better with or without?” before the test was concluded. Apparently, I was tending to favour a slightly stronger lens, so although I had been given some -5.00 lenses to take away, they had decided to increase my prescription to -5.25, to match my glasses. My Mum was also told that I might not be able to wait 6 months this time, but to wait and see anyway. I could tell that Lisa was green with envy over all the extra attention I was receiving – and all the more so, because there was nothing she could do about it. To most of the people in my new class at school, I was the twin with the thick glasses. It was strange to think that, a couple of years earlier, there had been little wrong with my eyes. If I hadn’t rescued Maddie’s glasses from the bushes, I might have been in Lisa’s position. Those who tried her glasses on were surprised that she wore them constantly; those who tried mine on couldn’t take them back off quickly enough. Maddie also noticed that I had new glasses. She went very quiet when she tried them on. When pressed, she said that she was worried for me. Once upon a time, I had found it difficult to see through her glasses. Now, she was finding it difficult to focus through mine. Lisa and I got stuck into all sorts of things at secondary school. There were new friends to be made, new subjects to be studied, and new activities to be tried. For the first time in our lives, we were in different classes, so we began to develop different circles of friends. Lisa was becoming more sporty, while I often found myself with my nose in a book. She could still see well enough to play netball and hockey without her glasses, and although I enjoyed playing them, I was never as good as she was. As it grew colder, I found a nice warm place inside the school buildings where I could sit and read while she did her sporting activities outside. It was Lisa who raised the issue of eye tests with Mum first. I was glad she had, as things were beginning to look fuzzy. She felt her eyes had changed, and also wanted to get contact lenses, as she was getting fed up of playing netball in the rain and not being able to see the ball clearly. From my point of view, it meant that I didn’t stand accused of wanting my eyes to be the worst they could be. My glasses were already stronger than everyone else in the household, and there were only a handful of people at school whose glasses were clearly stronger than mine, and they were all four or five years older than me. Lisa had tried to get the appointment to be just for her, but I didn’t say “no” when I was asked if I also needed an appointment. I had been trying to make it to the 6 months, but it didn’t quite happen. From a vision point of view, I had mixed feelings. I was glad I was going to be able to see clearly again, but just starting to get a bit worried that Maddie’s concern might have been well-founded, and that I might be starting to go blind. Lisa’s eyes had deteriorated, and she did get contact lenses ordered. So had mine. Her glasses prescription was now -1.25, still weaker than my first glasses, some 18 months earlier. My prescription had changed by -1.25 for my glasses, although my contact lenses were only going to be -6.00. I voiced my concerns to the lady who had tested my eyes. She didn’t seem overly worried, but explained that teenage girls often found their eyes got worse quite quickly for a few years, before things settled down again. This was only partially comforting, as neither Lisa nor I were yet teenage girls, but it was reassuring to hear that I was highly unlikely ever to go blind. When it came to choosing frames, we decided we both wanted something a bit different to all of our previous pairs of glasses. Nevertheless, as we were otherwise identical, the same frame shape suited both of us, and Lisa went for a dark green frame, while mine was more of a purple colour. I was offered the chance to get thinner lenses but, in order to avoid incurring any comments from Lisa about “special treatment,” I declined. With hindsight, this was a mistake, as the lens was twice the thickness of the frame, so I made maximum use of my contact lenses. The only times I went to school in those glasses were a couple of times when I overslept, and once when the expected supply of lenses was a couple of days late, and I had run out. . . . A couple of years later, Lisa and I were definitely young women. We were still the same height and shoe size, but most of my clothes were a size larger than Lisa’s, and we had both developed curves in all the right places. She was still very much the sporty one, although I was a grade better in most of the subjects we both studied, and my curves were even more pronounced than hers. Lisa was on to her fourth pair of glasses. At -2.50, they were finally the same strength as the ones I had rescued from the bush. They looked pretty normal. It was clear to everyone that she needed them to see, but otherwise, they were unremarkable. She also wore contact lenses most days, as she also did sport most days; she was definitely a lot fitter than me. I suppose there might have been someone in the school who wore really strong contact lenses, but I didn’t know who they were, if they existed at all. That left me with the strongest glasses. Even with very high index lenses, they were still three times as thick as Lisa’s. Nobody asked to try them on, as they had long-since realised that they wouldn’t be able to see anything anyway. In fact, people treated them as a taboo subject with me. We were of an age where we were starting to notice boys, and boys were starting to notice us – or so Lisa told me. More than once she found herself answering questions about my glasses, and how well I could see both with and without them, and from time to time I sensed a certain amount of jealousy in the interest that was being shown in me. My eyesight was lousy without my glasses, and I felt that it wouldn’t be long before I could no longer see well enough with my present glasses. However, from what Lisa was saying, perhaps boys did like girls in glasses, and thick ones at that. Maybe 13 would turn out to be my lucky number; or should that be -13.00?