Author’s note: 100% ficticious work. Hope you enjoy! If there are any mistakes, they’re all mine and I apologize. This is part 1, and there are several more already written if you like it and want to read more.
They’d been in the drugstore for what felt like an eternity, but had only made it through about two thirds of the aisles. Laura found herself half hoping the staff would threaten to kick them out soon, because she was fed up with Chylie’s sniping at everything in the store. She met Jessica’s eyes and glanced meaningfully at Chylie, and Jessica rolled her eyes. Oh, good, they agreed. Jessica winked, then just turned and continued down the aisle, leaving Chylie to rant about the supposedly crappy hair products she was currently going on about. Rosa and Sarah followed Jessica, and Laura brought up the rear and quietly left Chylie to her bitching.
She caught up with the others at the end of the aisle, where they’d stopped by a spinning display of those cheap reading glasses you can find at dollar stores, gas stations and other more or less unexpected random places. Rosa had already removed a pair that was a bright, obnoxious pink from the display and was putting them on.
“I love the color… but I can’t see shit!” She moved closer to the narrow strip of mirror on the display, but then she laughed. “I can’t get my whole face – the mirror is too small. Someone please take a picture of me.”
“OK,” Laura said and pulled out her phone, and Rosa turned to her and posed for a couple of snaps before removing the glasses and coming over to look at the pictures. “Oh, they’re cuuuute!”
They did indeed suit her style well enough, Laura thought, as it was already full of bright, sometimes clashing and always bold colors. “Why don’t I need glasses, though?” Rosa pouted, looking at the pair she was holding.
“Why would you want that?” Chylie piped up, having just rejoined them and heard the last sentence.
“They’re hot pink, and they’re cuuuute!” Rosa explained and put them back on. “Look!”
Chylie glanced at Rosa, then shrugged. “Fugly.”
Jessica stepped in. “Your mood is the only fugly thing here. Shut it. Can I try them, Rosa?”
The brightly dressed, black-haired girl handed them over, and Jessica slipped them on. “Laura, take a picture of me too.”
She did, but Jessica laughed when she looked at it. “They suit Rosa so much better than me! Do you want to try them, Sarah?”
“Uh, ok.” The short, brown-haired girl took a step forward and accepted the glasses, facing Jessica and Laura as she put them on. Jessica nodded to Laura, who snapped a couple of pictures of Sarah as well. The pink was ok with her coloring, but the frame was rather big for her face, Laura thought. Judging by Sarah’s face she didn’t exactly love the way they looked either. “Not the best for you,” Jessica agreed. “Laura?”
She shrugged. She’d much rather try glasses she’d never wear than listen to Chylie’s snarky monologue. Sarah handed them over and Laura put them on, then handed her phone to Jessica and posed for her own pictures. Jessica looked bigger through the lenses – and closer, Laura noticed, but other than that she looked fine. Why had Rosa said she “couldn’t see shit”? She glanced at the others’ faces and then across the store while she waited for Jessica to decide if she was happy with the pictures. Ok, so things far away were actually blurry. But when Jessica held the phone up, her face staring back at her was definitely not. “Wow, that looks weird,” she blurted out.
“Weird how?” Jessica asked. “I think they look good on you.” Both Rosa and Sarah nodded. “Almost as good as on me,” Rosa added with a smile. “But I couldn’t wear them if I want to be able to function.”
“Do you think they’re that bad?” Laura asked as she got her phone back. Rosa laughed. “Yeah! You don’t?” Laura shrugged and looked from her phone to her friends. “I mean, it’s not like I can see across the store with them on either.”
“Hand them back, would you?” Rosa requested, and Laura did. The world shrank and things moved back to normal distance again as Rosa slipped them on. Sisterhood of the wandering glasses, Laura thought with amusement.
“Can I borrow your phone too?” Rosa asked. “Thanks. See, if I want to be able to see this picture clearly, I need to move it… about here. Anything further away is blurry.”
Laura looked at where Rosa held the phone, and realized she’d been able to see fine much farther away herself. Luckily Jessica stepped in, saving Laura from having to comment. “Then they’re obviously not working for you. If you love them so much, you can try to see if they have the same frame in a different strength. Like basically no strength.”
“Ooh, yeah!” Rosa removed the very pink glasses and started scanning the rack. Laura did as well, trying to help her, while out of the corner of her eye she saw Sarah pull out a smaller, brown pair and look at them. Laura left Rosa and now also Jessica to hunt for pink frames, and stepped over to Sarah.
“Do you want me to take a quick picture?” she asked quietly, and Sarah looked up at her. “Ok, if you don’t mind…”
“Not at all.”
She ended up taking a lot of pictures of a lot of frames on both Rosa and Sarah, and a few of Jessica as well. Chylie just kept pouting, and they pretty much all ignored her. Rosa definitely wanted a pink pair, but eventually settled for a purple one as it had a lower prescription. She said she still couldn’t see distances clearly, but she was ok for close-ish things. Sarah ended up putting all the ones she had tried back, but Laura had a feeling it was mostly because of their presence.
Jessica didn’t buy any either, just shrugged and said they were fun to play with, but unnecessary. Laura tried to ignore that she had obviously seen a lot better than Rosa with the pink glasses, but as they finally moved on down the next aisle the thought kept coming back. Her phone had been so clear, bright and colorful, and Jessica’s face had been the same. Nothing had ever looked like that before, and she had a distinct suspicion of what it meant.
It took more than a week before Laura had a chance to go back to the mall by herself, and she headed straight for that same drugstore. Rosa had worn the purple glasses she’d bought off and on, but couldn’t in class because then she couldn’t read the board. Laura was amazed she still wanted to keep wearing them. It also turned out her hunch about Sarah had been correct – during class yesterday she’d pulled out a pair of subtle wire-rimmed glasses and put them on, but they’d disappeared again at the end of the class. Laura had smiled to her and mouthed “cute!”, which was enough to make her blush, so Laura hadn’t commented further.
But now it was finally her turn to try to figure this out for herself. Unfortunately the pink pair was gone, so she’d never know what strength they had been. She’d better just get started somewhere. Laura looked around, not seeing anyone familiar. It wasn’t absolutely critical because she could lie and say she was picking them up for a parent or grandparent, although it would be harder to explain why she was trying them on first. And her friends probably wouldn’t buy it considering last week. So no, she really didn’t want to be seen.
Laura ended up picking out two pairs with the same frame but different prescriptions of +1 and +2. The latter felt similar to the pink ones from last time, while the former made less of a difference – including in the distance, which seemed fine with these. Laura paid for the glasses and a couple of other items, and put the bag quickly into her purse before leaving the store. Now she wanted to go home so she could try them – that was definitely not going to happen with all these people around.
Coming home a little while later, Laura stopped just inside the door and listened. Her brother Dominic wasn’t supposed to be home yet, and indeed everything seemed quiet. Good!
She brought the bag into the bathroom she shared with her brother, using nail scissors to remove the price tags from both pairs of glasses. She looked at them, turning them over in her hand. In the end she had picked one of the pairs Sarah had tried – brown tortoiseshell plastic frames in a shape something between wayfarer and cat-eye. They’d seemed to suit her ok.
Finally she put the +1 pair on, and looked at herself in the mirror. They looked decent on her, if not exactly amazing. Good enough, though, and besides she wasn’t planning on anyone seeing them. Ever. They felt a little strange on, but she seemed to be seeing just fine – which was the reason she’d gone back and bought them in the first place. Rosa still couldn’t see all that far with hers, which Laura believed were also +1, so clearly she didn’t need them at all. But she could, so clearly she did.
Leaving the bathroom, Laura picked up the second pair of glasses and the tags she’d cut off them and went into her bedroom where she threw the trash in her own trashcan before going over to the window. The real question was whether or not she could see far away with them, she knew that much. And yes, she soon discovered, she could. She really could just wear these.
Next she pulled out her phone, and discovered things looked brighter and clearer again, although the difference didn’t seem as big as last time. She switched glasses, smiling as she looked at her phone again. Yes. This was it. This was great!
Laura spent a couple of minutes looking at things on her phone, then glanced out of the window again. No, she still couldn’t see clearly in the distance. But again it didn’t matter, as she could only really wear them alone in her room anyway. Excited and curious, she pulled out her books and sat down to do her homework. This was amazing, she soon discovered, the words big and bold and nearly leaping off the page at her. She had never seen print look like this before.
Laura had finished her homework and was relaxing with a novel when she heard the front door open. Immediately she sat up and yanked the glasses off, putting them away with the first pair. She’d skipped the obvious hiding places of a desk drawer or under the bed, and put them instead carefully on top of the books on her top shelf, pushed to the back. There. Good.
She sat back down with her book, but it looked so different now and wasn’t as easy to read as before. After about a page she put it down and went downstairs to say hi to Dominic and grab a snack instead.
Laura had only worn the glasses for maybe two hours, but she spent the next several hours missing them far more than she could have ever guessed she would. She hung out in the living room and watched TV with Dominic, she started dinner, her parents came home, they all ate… and through a lot of it, she was surprisingly aware of the difference in how she was seeing.
Only after dinner did she go back in her room, and it only took a minute or two before she pulled out the glasses again. No one was likely to come in without knocking, but she still kept an ear out for any movement outside her door as she slipped the +2 pair on again and pulled out her phone. Oh. Hell. Yes.
And just like that, a new habit was born. Laura would get up, get ready and go to school, maybe hang out with her friends afterwards, but as soon as she stepped into her room she’d put the glasses on before doing homework, playing on her phone or just reading a good book. But as the days and then weeks went by she missed them more and more the rest of the day. Reading and doing exercises in class was hard sometimes, and she didn’t spend as much time on her phone during lunch and on the bus. It took her a while to really notice the changes, but then one day it hit her as she sat at her desk at home, looked out of her window and discovered she could now see everything just fine. She removed the glasses to make sure it wasn’t the +1 pair, but it wasn’t. She really had hardly worn those. Clearly she needed glasses, and clearly it was becoming a bigger and bigger problem ignoring that.
But what do I do? Laura wondered that night as she tried to fall asleep. She didn’t want to have to wear them to school. And if she wore them around her parents they would ask a lot of uncomfortable questions and then demand she get tested. Which she understood – she just didn’t want it. Because if her parents knew, she’d probably have to wear the glasses to school, and that was not happening. Yes, Sarah had started wearing them in class, but that was Sarah. Almost all the other kids wore contacts instead… wait, was that an option? She needed to do some research, and in the meantime maybe she should wear the +1 pair instead for a while.
The latter part of her plan didn’t happen because the +1 glasses frustrated Laura, but she did sit down to do some research the next afternoon. Oh, good, so there were online stores who’d just send you contacts in whatever prescription you ordered, but that didn’t solve the problem of figuring out the right size or how to handle them. She’d need an actual appointment for that. Darn.
Laura debated back and forth a few more days, but realized she either needed to move forward with the plan to get contacts, or she’d have to wear the glasses to school soon. Where would she go, though, and when, and how would she explain? She didn’t actually want to get an eye exam, just learn about contact lenses.
A couple of days later the last question was answered for her by way of a Halloween-themed ad for those creepy monster contacts some people would wear as part of their costume. She could just say she wanted to be a witch or a cat or something for Halloween! Good, that was one problem solved. As for the rest, she couldn’t go to the local mall in case she ran into someone she knew. She’d have to go elsewhere, which meant more time and a bus to get there, and also pay with cash… Sounds like I’m planning on trying to score some drugs, she mused, but it was more sad than funny. Still, it was either this, wear the glasses she had to school, or tell mom. This was easily the most tempting option… or least unpleasant, rather. Well, she’d better find a place to make an appointment, and the sooner, the better. Halloween was approaching, and so her excuse had a definite expiration date.
It had been about a month and a half since Laura had picked up her two pairs of glasses, and somehow they’d become an absolutely necessary part of her everyday life. Her mom had asked why she spent so much time in her room – was she ok? Jessica was starting to call her a flake since she’d sometimes go home rather than hang out with them. And lately she was starting to worry that she’d forget the glasses on one morning and not realize it before someone caught her. Oh yes, because at some point she’d found herself wearing them in the morning too. This was not a lasting solution. In fact, this was heading for crash and burn territory one way or another.
So she looked at a map, her schedule, and then called a small optician about half an hour away by bus and made an appointment for next Monday after school. Now she just needed to get through one more day at school, and then the weekend. It shouldn’t be too bad, as she could probably spend most of the weekend in her room happily wearing glasses. But of course, it wasn’t like she’d actually have contacts on Monday either, although if the one website was true to their promise they should arrive on Wednesday. That was six more days, then. Laura sighed. Right now that felt like a lot.
She slipped her glasses off, happy she’d thought to pick frames without nosepads that left revealing marks. Suddenly everything in her room looked kind of blurry, which she had noticed happening more and more lately. She could make things come into focus again, but she had to think about it and sort of make her eyes focus. In the beginning the world had just snapped back into focus right away, but that had gradually been changing. It was especially noticeable with really close things like her phone or whenever she was reading something. So school kind of sucked lately, and she mostly avoided looking at her phone while she was out. This had to change before she flat out couldn’t see something one day – or before her mom caught her squinting.
Laura already knew she’d inherited a lot from her mom. The Italian coloring she did quite a bit to hide, which reminded her she also needed her highlights touched up within the next week. Her stature, although she wasn’t quite as short as her mother’s 5'0. Her general shape. But up until recently she hadn’t known that she’d also inherited her eyesight, which Laura knew was about moderately bad without glasses even though her mom claimed it was terrible. Still, point being, if her mom saw her squinting she would 100% be forced to have an eye exam. It wasn’t the exam she minded so much as her mom knowing she now needed glasses, because it was equally certain that she’d be forced to wear them whether she wanted to or not. Somehow, she didn’t think contacts would be an option right away, and if she had to go to school wearing glasses she would rather sink through the floor and never reappear.
Nope. So instead she took matters into her own hands, and was quite satisfied with her plan so far.
Laura woke up on Saturday by someone knocking on her door. “Yeah?” she hollered groggily, opening her eyes a crack. “Breakfast is ready in five,” her mom said on the other side of the door, but Laura barely heard her. Because right in her line of sight were the glasses she’d evidently put on the nightstand next to her bed when going to sleep last night. Shit. Sloppy!
She yanked the glasses off the nightstand and under the covers with her, then remembered her mom. “Ok, coming,” she replied, feeling her heart galloping in her chest. What if she had come in instead of just knocking? Holy crap, this could all have been over, and all due to laziness!
Her heart rate didn’t return to normal until after breakfast, because once she came downstairs she was hyper aware that she couldn’t squint. It wasn’t that she even thought she did it, she just knew that her mother would pick up on it right away if she did. Luckily she made it through, and was just about to escape back to her room when her dad told her to wait.
No…. So close, but so far, she thought, but she did stop and turn around.
“Your mom and I thought we’d all go do something fun together today. It’s been forever, and we feel like we’ve all just been way too busy with our own things lately and haven’t spent enough time together as a family.”
Laura tried to not let her intense internal cursing show on her face. Please, not a whole day of forced family togetherness!
Oh, but yes.
“We thought we’d go to the amusement park until we’re all sore and want to puke, and then go have dinner. It’s quiz night at Maurice’s tonight.”
Normally, Laura would have been excited about either of those things, and even more about both on the same day. Now she was counting the hours until she could expect to be back home. 8, at least. Probably more. I’m fucked. But unless she wanted to tell her parents about the glasses, she had to pretend like nothing all day long… starting with seeming happy about their plans.
“Wow, that’s great!” she said, genuinely trying for cheerful even though she was crying on the inside. “We haven’t been in such a long time.”
She didn’t sound all that convincing to her own ears, but her parents didn’t seem to pick up on it. “I’ll go get ready. When are we leaving?”
“Preferably half an hour,” her mom replied. “An hour at the most.”
Laura nodded, and finally she could escape to her room for a little bit. This was going to suck! Once she had shut her door behind her she put her glasses on and went over to her closet. She needed something comfortable, yet practical. Layers. Hair out of the way. Maybe a blazer that she could put on before going to dinner.
While finding something to wear, she pondered how she was going to get through this day. Could she play sick? Nope, too late for that now. And no attempt at “oops, I have a previous engagement” would work either, she knew that much. So unless she literally barfed in the car there was little hope of getting out of this, she reasoned. Great. I really am up the creek this time.
She wished she could leave her phone at home so she wouldn’t have to worry about looking at it all day, but realized that would be ridiculously out of character for a nearly 16-year old. There really wasn’t anything much she could do to make it easier on herself. And a quiz night at the end of the day made her worried. She was probably going to be exhausted by then. The questions were up on a big screen in the restaurant, and Laura honestly had no idea if she was going to have a hard time with that or not. But she would have liked to not have to worry about it.
Once they got in the car, Laura soon decided to fake falling asleep for the hour drive to the park. No one would ask her any questions then, and she wouldn’t have to look at anyone or anything. Because everything in the car was far too close for comfort, and she wanted to save herself the extra work this early in the day.
Her plan worked more than adequately – she ended up genuinely falling asleep after a while, and woke up feeling decent when they arrived. It was a good starting point, at least, and she was soon grateful for it. The rides didn’t require much in the way of visual acuity, but standing in line for ages with her family right in her face was going to drive her nuts. She soon gave up on actually focusing on their faces most of the time, and saved the effort for when it was needed. Looking back she couldn’t say when it had become such an effort to focus on people she was talking to, but these days it was quite noticeable.
And then, right after lunch, Dominic decided he wanted to do a shooting game, so of course they were all going to do that. Laura usually liked games like that and was good at them, so she couldn’t believably get out of joining the others. She discovered she still did okay – probably not as good as before, but not so terribly that they all noticed – but that it cost her a surprising amount of effort to focus well enough for long enough to do it. Thinking about how many hours were still left of the day made her anxious and almost claustrophobic, if being stuck in an unpleasant situation could be called that.
By the time they got to the restaurant Laura had a pretty nasty headache building. She’d tried to rest and fake nap in the car on the way, but hadn’t gotten very far with it this time. Jessica constantly texting her and demanding pictures definitely wasn’t helping with that. By the time their food arrived it was around 6.30 and getting darker, and Laura almost wished she’d had the glasses with her so she could have just given in and put them on. But no, she’d wisely (or not) left them in her room as always. She caught herself wondering how different her mom’s glasses could be from hers, and then made herself stop it. This was an utter waste of energy. She needed to hang in there another couple of hours, probably, and then she could go to her room and hide. But not now.
She looked across the table, and found her mother looking steadily back at her. Immediately she was worried. Had she been obvious when she’d looked at the menu? It hadn’t taken her more than a day after buying her glasses before she’d discovered reading without them was easier if she held things further away. But she tried to be careful about doing it, knowing at least her mom would pick up on it easily.
“Are you ok?” her mom asked, and Laura’s heart felt like it skipped a beat. “Uh yeah, why?” Laura tried not to stutter, and hoped it was too dark for her blush to be obvious. “You’re so quiet today. Just wondering if you’re feeling ok.”
Laura hesitated. No, she fucking well wasn’t fine. At all. She wanted to put her head down on the table and cry, she was so exhausted. But did she want to explain any of that? Not at all. So she shrugged, making herself smile slightly. “Just a bit of a headache. I’m sure it’ll disappear with dinner.”
Giulianna studied her daughter thoughtfully. “Do you need a painkiller?”
Laura hesitated again, but finally nodded. That wasn’t unreasonable, was it? Her mom grabbed her purse and handed over an Ibuprofen, and Laura swallowed it with a sip of her soda. Hopefully it would help enough that she’d make it through the quiz without screaming. She already knew it was definitely going to be a challenge.
In the end Laura didn’t scream, but it wasn’t because she didn’t want to. Instead her mom cornered her in the bathroom just after the quiz ended, now looking more concerned than earlier. “Honey, what’s wrong? You look miserable.”
Laura tried to avoid having to look at her, as much because she didn’t want to start crying as it was because she didn’t want to have to try to focus that close. “I’m just…” she didn’t know how to continue the sentence, so she trailed off.
“Do you still have a headache?” her mother wanted to know, and Laura hesitated. It wasn’t a complicated question, not really. “Mmmm yeah,” she finally admitted. “Why didn’t you just say so?”
“Um… I didn’t want to wreck the night for everyone else. It’ll go away.”
“Well, from what I can tell it has only been getting worse. Let’s get you home and into bed.”
Laura just nodded, knowing she’d be choking up if she tried to talk now.
She got to actually nap a bit on the way home, and the minute they walked through the door her mom ushered her upstairs. “Go get ready for bed, and I’ll bring you a snack.”
Laura didn’t have the energy to argue. She went into the bathroom to wash her face and brush her hair, then got changed into her pajamas and crawled into bed. A quick look around confirmed that she hadn’t forgotten her glasses out where someone could see them, and so she relaxed a little while she waited for her mom.
She felt a bit bad that she couldn’t explain what was actually going on as her mother fussed over her, but not bad enough that she chose to speak up. Once her mother had left, Laura got back out of bed long enough to go get her glasses, then settled back into bed with her phone. Text had long since stopped leaping off the page when she wore glasses – now it just looked normal, while it was annoying to flat out painful without them. When things got close enough or she was really tired, there were times she really couldn’t fully focus. Right now it felt more like she was wearing the +1 pair, except that couldn’t be the case because she’d tucked those away somewhere else ages ago since she never used them.
With a soft sigh she quickly looked at a few things and sent Jessica one last text, and then she dragged herself out of bed to hide her glasses again before she could forget about it. This day needed to be over.
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