Kill Switch by Penelope Douglas

“You could die tonight,” he went on as if he hadn’t heard
me.
I unlaced the other shoe and slid it off, letting it drop to the
floor. “I could die ten times on any given day. I could’ve died
when I lost my sight when I was eight.”
I was used to feeling endangered. Every step I took could
lead me off the side of a building for all I knew. Maybe that
was why I wasn’t as scared of him.
“What happened that day?” he asked.
When I lost my sight?
“I fell,” replied. “From a treehouse. I hit my head twice on
the way down. Optic nerve damage. Irreparable.”
“Were you pushed?”
I closed my right fist, still remembering the terrible feeling
of the boy’s hand slowly slipping out of it and knowing that
was all that was standing between me and the ground far
below.
I wasn’t pushed. Not exactly.
“I shouldn’t have been up there.” My voice had lowered to
a mumble. “I wish I’d never met him. I wish I’d never gone up
there with him. I…” How very different my life would be if I
could change that one day and never step foot in that fountain.
“I miss seeing things. Movies and the sea.” I paused before
continuing. “Your face.”
Not being able to gauge his body language or expressions
left me at a disadvantage.
I heard a chair scrape against the floor and then it was
placed in front of me before I heard his weight sit down on it.
He took my hand, but I jerked back, sitting up steel rod
straight in my chair and suddenly alert.
He took it again, squeezing my fingers a little tighter.
“Stand up.”
I guessed what he was doing, and I’d gone this far, so…
Hesitantly, I stood up from my chair, every muscle still rigid