"Sybil has an eye exam tomorrow," Mom announced as she ruffled something that sounded like she was picking up a paper. The TV was on, with some sports playing, and I was sitting to the left of Dad on the couch, feigning interest in it. I wasn't sure what sport was even playing.

"At school," Mom continued. "Apparently that's what they do there."

Oh yeah, the eye exam, I distantly remembered Mrs. Kim said something about that. I might finally get glasses and be able to see! That would be nice for I was getting pretty tired of only blurry colors everywhere.

"Can't we just do it here? Carlisle could give it to her, and Sybil could have a day off school," Dad suggested. I felt the couch shift as he leaned away from me and the TV and more toward my Mom.

Well, that wouldn't work well for me. Not at all. Not with me keeping up my façade of not communicating with my family. I haven't really acknowledged anything my family ever asked or told me before, with the exception of Nessie when we were alone, and a select few times around my family. Never so many instructions as I'd get in an eye exam. How was I supposed to get glasses if I was ignoring the instructions I was given? Maybe I'd have to break my rule and do the exam as I'm supposed to. Or I could go longer with being blind. That was always an option if I was willing to deal with that when I didn't have to.

"There's nothing on the paper that says we could get an eye exam somewhere else, so I don't think we can do that," she replied.

Good, so I didn't have to worry about showing my family I was able to acknowledge them.

"Is the exam even going to work for her? Don't you have to read letters off of a wall or something?" Jacob asked, somewhere from the left side of the room, not too close to me. I hadn't realized he was even in the room, he was so quiet. I should have realized, though. He was around my cousin quite a lot, for reasons I was still unaware of.

"Do kids even know how to read? I thought they were too young for that," Fad asked. I sensed eyes on me, so he, and maybe others, had glanced at me after that statement.

"They have a special test for those who can't read, and for special needs children," Grandpa answered, who stood near Mom on the right side of the room.

"But she doesn't acknowledge when anyone gives her instructions, except for a couple that are part of her routine," Mom countered.

"That's not true, she follows a lot of instructions just fine," Nessie spoke up.

Oh crap, Nessie was going to blow my cover that nobody knew I had. They would probably come up with some kind of explanation for it, though, and I would go along with it.

"What do you mean? She never listens to us when we try to get her to do something new," Mom asked, sounding confused.

"Last week when I babysat, we climbed a tree and she climbed up the whole thing by herself with my instructions."

"You guys climbed a tree?" Mom repeated, sounding horrified by this idea.

"You knew how to climb a tree this whole time?" Dad asked, appalled that he hadn't known this. I felt eyes watching me and wished they would turn away. "So much time wasted with those blocks when we coulda been climbing trees…"

"Look," Nessie said, walking across the room as she spoke. Dad left the couch, presumably to look at whatever she was showing them. There was a short pause before anyone spoke again.

"Why doesn't she do anything like that for us? We've tried giving her instructions just like you did there…" Mom's voice trailed off. What did she show them? Was Nessie recording us climbing the tree or something? How would they know how she gave me instructions?

"Maybe she's improving in her skills, in her ability to follow directions," Dad suggested, sitting back down where he was before. I heard footsteps, presumably Nessie's, walk back across the room to where Jacob stood. There was a pause before Mom replied.

"Yeah, you're probably right. That's really good, then," she said, the hope in her tone rising. She sat down on the other side of me and put a hand on my hair as if she were petting me. "We'll have to help her work on that."

Well, I guess that meant I had to acknowledge them a little bit more now, to go along with their theory and not cause them to question why I only acted like that around Nessie. If that's what it took to keep them from getting too suspicious and deciding I was too much trouble to keep, I would do it. The last thing I wanted was to be killed because they found out I had been tricking them this whole time. That would not be good. I didn't want to die so young again, so I would need to survive in whatever way I could until I managed to escape and live as normal a life as I could.

The next day at school, Mrs. Kim prepared us for the eye exam. We were lined up reading to go out to lunch and then recess. I was at the front with Mrs. Kim like I normally was.

"After we finish recess, we're all going to line up like we normally do, but instead of going back to our classroom, we're going to line up outside the nurse's office, where she's going to see how good your eyes are, okay?

"It's not going to be scary, the nurse is just going to ask you to do a few things to see how well you can see, so we can know if you need glasses or not."

"What if we already have glasses?" one of the kids asked. A girl, from the sound of it, standing near the back of the line. If I remembered her name correctly, she was Audrey.

"You still need to go in, and we'll find out if you need better glasses or not. Sound good?"

A chorus of "Yeah's" and "Yes's" sounded, and then we all lined up to recess.

Outside after lunch, I sat where I normally did, on a bench against the school wall facing the noisy playground. I couldn't exactly run around with the other kids, I would get hurt. I didn't really want to, anyway. I just waited until recess was over, ignoring the yelling children as best I could. And before I knew it, it was time to go in.

Mrs. Kim retrieved me from the bench and brought me over to line up like she always did, and reminded everyone that we were going to get our eye exams. It was finally time for people to realize how blind I was.

It wasn't my turn first, but I was near the front of the list. My last name began with a C, so lines that went alphabetically brought me to the front.

When it was my turn to go in, I was led to sit in a chair with a table in front of it. Mrs. Kim left me with the nurse to take the test.

I wasn't going to act like I couldn't follow directions or know what was being asked. I was tired of not being able to see, so I would make sure it was known I couldn't.

"Okay, Sybil, on the table in front of you there are three pictures. Which one matches the one on the wall?" the nurse asked me.

I could vaguely tell where the pictures were and I picked one up to look at it. I didn't want to put it directly in front of my face to look at it, so I drew it pretty close and squinted my eyes in an attempt to make out what I was looking at. At most, I could tell it was a simple drawing in maybe black Sharpie that didn't have much detail. What it was a drawing of, I had no idea. Maybe a dog? Or a cow?

"Dear, you have to hold it that close to see it?"

I debated with myself if I should nod or not, but I decided to just keep squinting at the paper, and moving it a little closer.

"Oh dear, you definitely need glasses. We'll run a few more tests, and I'll write a note for your parents to get you to an optometrist as soon as they can."

She ran those few more tests, and after I failed each and every one of them, minus one that was more color-based, she walked me back out of the room where my class and Mrs. Kim waited.

"The girl's blind as a bat," she told Mrs. Kim, clicking her tongue. "Here's a note I wrote for her parents, could you make sure it gets in her backpack?"

"Really, you're sure?" Mrs. Kim paused. "I'm surprised her family hasn't noticed, I thought she was related to that doctor…it must just be a coincidence. Same last name, different family."

To me, it wasn't so much of a surprise how they didn't know. They got all the normal exams when I was a baby, like the hearing tests and eye exams, but when those were done, my eyes weren't bad enough for them to notice. Babies already didn't have good eyesight, so what I couldn't see was expected. The problem was, it never got better like it was supposed to. It just got worse, and they never took me to get more eye exams since then.

"I wouldn't know, but it is a mystery how she went on so long without anyone knowing, the poor girl," the nurse sighed. Then, after a short pause, "Best to get on with the list, now… I need Brady Dawson."

Mrs. Kim helped me more than she usually did after that, making sure I knew where everything was, and leading me where I needed to go. It did make things easier, and it would be even easier once I got glasses. I wouldn't need to worry about new surroundings and running into things. I should have made my poor eyesight known earlier, but late was better than never, at least.

~~~

When I came home with that note from the nurse, my parents were shocked. They were even more shocked, though, when they took me to an optometrist and saw how strong of a prescription I needed for my glasses.

In the two weeks it took my glasses to arrive, everyone treated me more like glass than they normally did. They barely let me walk around on my own at all, as if I hadn't lived here for years and didn't have the layout memorized. It was infuriating.

Who knew, the biggest problem I'd have with living with vampires was them being annoying. And the obvious, of course. Couldn't forget the obvious.

The first moment I had my glasses on, it overwhelmed me. I could see so many things I couldn't see just a few seconds before. My home looked beautiful, and my family was all in front of me, along with some of those random guys who for some reason were always at our house.

My family looked like I thought they would. I had a mental image of them, and of course they differed from it, but not to an extreme extent. They were gorgeous, of course, with flawless skin and perfect hair and perfect everything. What I was surprised wasn't the same as my mental images were their eyes.

Weren't they supposed to be red?