The first week of school seemed to fly by. Sure, I seemed a bit...itchier than usual, but aside from whatever strangeness had happened to Biff on Monday, things had calmed down enough for school to get on as usual. At least that seemed like it was behind us.
I set my bag down as I walked into Mrs. Gorman’s classroom. After the first day, I began sitting near Jon, as you do when you actually have a friend in class.
“Good morning, class,” she began. “While normally we’d start with a vocabulary test today, that won’t start until next week. So I figured we’d do something light to end the week.” She instructed us to turn to a page in those big readers. “We’re gonna read aloud to each other this short story.” I opened the book, slipped on my glasses, and saw the title “By the Waters of Babylon” printed cleanly across the top of the page. “I want to get you back in the mood of reading stories for tone, and what better way to do that than by reading out loud? Reading out loud makes you contemplate every decision an author makes in word choice, pace, and mood setting. So I want you to trade off paragraphs.”
I looked back at Jon, who sat behind me. “Karyn, do you want to go first?”
“Sure, why not?” I looked down and began to read. Kind of a weird story, I remarked to myself as I read the opening sentences and rubbed my eyes a couple of times. “Alright, your turn.”
“My father is a priest; I am the son of a…” Jon began reading, but he suddenly came to a halt in the middle of the passage. “Wait, what… Why did everything go blurry on me?” Jon tilted his head. “Karyn, I...can’t see.”
“I dunno, blink a bit. It’s just…” I trailed off as I started to hear the commotion of people reading as usual replaced with some wondering why they couldn’t see. “Hey, my eyes aren’t itchy…”
“Karyn, I can’t see!” Jon repeated, in a more urgent tone.
“I dunno what to say,” I offered. “Here, I doubt this’ll help, but feel free to try my glasses.” I took the cute, but kinda tomboyish, frames off and handed them to Jon. “Wait…” I mused moments after I took them off that I could still see perfectly without them. “What the…”
“Here goes nothing,” Jon declared as he put them on. I watched with surprise as their plain gray color shifted to pink. “That… That’s better,” he continued as he assessed his new eyesight. “What the heck? Why are these pink!? Is this some sort of joke?” Jon took the cute glasses off, however, seeing he had no choice, resigned himself to wearing them.
“I’m not sure…” I then noticed his eyes were hazel...like mine. “Jon, I thought you had brown eyes?”
“Yeah, I do…”
I pulled out my compact mirror to let him see. “Well, you have my hazel eyes now… Wait…” I thought a moment before turning the mirror back on me to see brown eyes—just like Jon had!
My jaw dropped. Did we just...switch eyes?
