I'll Be Seeing You

“Janelle, I’m sixteen years old and I’ve never had a date,” Carley said. “Why do you suppose that is? Could it be because I’m not pretty? Why isn’t my wonderful personality taken into consideration?”

“Now you’re being sarcastic.”

“No. I’m being realistic. I’m never going to have a date. No guy’s ever going to ask me out anywhere in public.”

Janelle sighed heavily. “I know it seems that way now.”

“You bet it does.”

“Kyle might just be the one if you’d give him half a chance.”

“So long as he’s blind and so long as we don’t have to mingle with the rest of the world, Kyle and I can have a thing for each other. But the minute his vision clears, it’ll be over between us. Trust me. I know what I’m talking about.”

ALSO AVAILABLE IN DELL LAUREL-LEAF BOOKS

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Waldtraut Lewin

GATHERING BLUE,
Lois Lowry

HEAVEN EYES,
David Almond

THE RANSOM OF MERCY CARTER,
Caroline B. Cooney

PLAYING FOR KEEPS,
Joan Lowery Nixon

GHOST BOY,
Iain Laurence

THE RAG AND BONE SHOP,
Robert Cormier

SHADES OF SIMON GRAY,
Joyce McDonald

WHEN ZACHARY BEAVER CAME TO TOWN
Kimberly Willis Holt

THE GADGET,
Paul Zindel

“G
ive it a rest, Reba!” Carley Mattea said. Only her friend Reba Conroy could get excited about a new patient admitted to their floor. “We’re not Knoxville General’s social committee,” Carley added. She balanced on her crutches, flipped the gears on Reba’s electric wheelchair, and guided it backward toward Carley’s room. Her new friend was an incredible optimist. Carley couldn’t understand it.

“I heard his name’s Kyle Westin,” Reba reported. “I asked a nurse and she said he’s from Oak Ridge, like you. Maybe he even goes to the same high school. Wouldn’t that be a fabulous coincidence? You come to the
hospital but end up making friends with a cool boy.”

“You’re all the new friends I want to make while I’m here, Reba.” Carley tried to smile sweetly. Reba was too much, talking about boys. A few days before, Carley had undergone surgery on her leg for a nasty break that had occurred the day after Christmas. An infection had landed her in the hospital on IV antibiotics. Carley wasn’t so sick that she was confined to bed, but she’d been bored stiff. Then Reba had rolled into her room and started a conversation. Now it seemed as if they’d known each other forever.

“I like making new friends,” Reba volunteered. “It’s fun.”

Carley had a totally different attitude about meeting new people. Actually, the only place she felt comfortable was in the hospital. People were used to kids with problems, so they didn’t stare at her as much. Sure, a broken leg was a common enough thing to see, but her face—
that
was a different matter.

Carley propped her crutches against a
chair and struggled up onto her hospital bed, where she punched the TV remote control button. “Oak Ridge High School isn’t so small that I wouldn’t remember a guy named Kyle Westin, and I’ve never heard of him. Besides, I’m sure we’d never end up in the same crowd.”

“Would you please turn that dumb thing off? We have strategy to discuss.”

“Strategy?”

“Sure. Like how we can meet him … get to know him.”

Carley rolled her eyes. “I don’t want to meet him. He probably doesn’t want to meet anyone either.”

“He’s just been admitted. Give him a day or so. He’ll loosen up.”

“From the back he looks perfectly normal,” Carley said, turning up the volume with the remote control. “Believe me, Reba, normal guys aren’t interested in girls like me.”

The eighth floor of the giant hospital was reserved for adolescent patients with a variety of medical problems. With his face
turned to the wall and his covers pulled up to his shoulders, there was no guessing what might be wrong with Kyle Westin.

Reba looked crestfallen, and Carley momentarily regretted dashing the fourteen-year-old girl’s good spirits.
It’s for her own good
, Carley told herself. Carley had learned early on that if she didn’t set her expectations too high, she didn’t get hurt. “Look, I didn’t mean to rain on your parade. I’m sure Kyle will become one of the ‘gang’ once he realizes that he’s a prisoner and there’s nothing he can do about it.” She leaned forward conspiratorially. “Unless, of course, he makes a rope out of his bedsheets and lowers himself out the window.”

Reba giggled. “You’re so funny.”

“Sure, a real comedienne,” Carley said without humor.

She liked Reba. The girl had been born with a type of spina bifida. She had a dwarflike appearance and used a wheelchair. But she had an effervescent personality and a sunny disposition. She had been hospitalized for corrective surgery to her abdominal area.

“Once Kyle gets to know you, Carley, I bet hell like you.”

“I told you, guys don’t like girls who look like me.” She almost used the word freak, but stopped herself.

“Maybe dumb, immature guys. My dad says that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”

“Reba, get a grip. In the years between twelve and twenty, guys don’t think with their brains. Or see with their eyes. They see through the eyes of all their friends. And of their friends’ friends.”

Reba laughed. “Well, maybe Kyle will be different. Maybe he’ll like you for who you are.”

“Sure … and if cows could fly, we’d all be wearing football helmets.”

Afternoon sunlight filtered through the large window of Carley’s room, which looked out on the expressways of the large city. Flecks of snow clung to the outside windowsill, and although it was the second week in January, faint smudges of the words
Merry Christmas
could still be seen on the inside of the glass.

Reba fiddled with the controls on her chair. “You’ve got to stop putting yourself down, Carley. Sure, your face is messed up, but at least you’re alive.”

“That’s what my mother tells me,” Carley said dryly. “It didn’t help when I was twelve. It doesn’t help now.”

A nurse stuck her head through the doorway. “There you are,” she said to Reba. “We’ve been looking everywhere for you. It’s time for afternoon medications. Come on back to your room.”

Reba made a face. “Do I have to?”

“Yes, you have to.” The nurse stepped into the room and tugged at the wheelchair. “You can visit Carley later. Your doctor wants you on bed rest before your surgery.”

“Go on,” Carley told Reba. “I’ll come down to your room after they deliver dinner.”

When she was alone, Carley switched off the TV. She elevated the head of the bed until she was sitting upright, crammed the bed pillow against the small of her back, and sighed. She’d start physical therapy (PT) on her leg soon. The process would be painful,
but she could endure it. No use having two parts of her body messed up. Yet it didn’t seem fair to her that they could fix her leg but not her face. They could never fix her face.

Carley’s phone rang. “Hey, Sis,” the voice on the line said. “Are you driving the doctors and nurses nuts yet?”

“I consider it my sacred duty.”

Janelle laughed. “Listen, Jon is driving me over tomorrow after school. I’ve got a
ton
of work from your teachers.”

Carley had an instant image of her pretty eighteen-year-old sister and her boyfriend dragging in boxes full of homework. Today was Wednesday. “Don’t they ever let up? I’m stuck in the hospital. Who has any energy to study?”

“Getting your leg healed and functioning again isn’t a round-the-clock process,” Janelle kidded. “I’m sure you can find an hour or two to hit the books. Oh, Mom said that she and Dad will be over Saturday morning to visit. Is there anything you want me to bring when Jon and I come?”

Carley was looking forward to seeing her
family. Her home in Oak Ridge was sixty miles from the hospital. With the distance to the hospital and everybody’s work and school schedules, daily visits were hard to fit in. “Could you bring new batteries for my cassette player? And some more of my Books on Tape. They help pass the time.”

“You should make friends while you’re there. Don’t clamp on that headset and ignore everybody.”

“I’m in the hospital. How many friends can I make in a place like this?”

“You never know.”

“Believe me, I know.”

Just as Janelle hung up, the supper trays arrived. After eating, Carley went down the hall to visit Reba, whose room was full of relatives. Carley ducked away before anyone could see her and stare or ask questions. She hobbled back to her room as quickly as she could on her crutches. She watched TV and finally drifted off to sleep.

Carley awoke sometime in the night from a bad dream and lay wide awake, staring up at the ceiling. She couldn’t recall the dream, only that it had left her heart pounding and
her body damp with perspiration. She took slow, deep breaths to calm her heart but knew sleep wasn’t going to return anytime soon. She decided to walk down the hall to the nurses’ station at the far end. She was too antsy to stay in bed.

The corridor was quiet, and as usual for the night shift, it was dimly lit. She hopped out of her room and paused at the door to the room next to hers. It was the room of the boy Reba was so eager to meet, Kyle Westin. She wondered if he really was a hunk and where he went to school if he did live in Oak Ridge.