What the Glasses Revealed

Chapter 1: Flowers

The first thing I noticed through my new glasses was that our kitchen wallpaper had tiny blue flowers on it.

For fourteen years, I had thought the walls were covered in random gray dots. I stood in the doorway that morning, staring at the delicate petals while my mother packed my lunch.

“What?” she asked.

“There are flowers on the wall.”

She stopped spreading peanut butter and looked at me.

“Of course there are flowers on the wall.”

“I never knew.”

My mother smiled, but it was not a happy smile. It was the careful sort adults use when they are trying not to show that something worries them.

She had worn that same expression at the eye doctor’s office the week before.

My parents had never believed I needed glasses. I could read books without holding them close to my face, and I never walked into furniture. Sometimes I complained that street signs were blurry, but my father said everyone had trouble reading small words from far away.