This was the detail that made it real for my mother.

The doctor asked if I could see stars, and I said that I hadn’t seen them in years. My vision would contract, like looking through a paper-towel roll. As the disease progressed, the rod cells around the edges of my retina would die, followed by the cones. After a series of tests, he sat us down and said that I had retinitis pigmentosa, or R.P., a rare disease affecting about a hundred thousand people in the U.S. I complained about night blindness, but my mother assured me it was normal-it was dark out there! Eventually, though, she brought me to see an eye doctor. At the movies, I got up to get a soda, and, when I returned, I couldn’t find my mother in the rows of featureless bodies. But, on the way down, I quietly put a hand on Hank’s shoulder. My friends laughed-“You’re stoned, aren’t you?” Chad said-and I played up my intoxication for effect. At one point, I walked right into a piñon tree with prickly branches. The moon was bright, but I found myself tripping on roots and stones and wandering off track. After dark, we hiked up the hill behind the house to get a view of the city. Nina danced alone in front of a boom box to Jane’s Addiction, throwing around her bleached hair. One night, in Hank’s room, our friend Chad sat on a beanbag chair, packing a pipe with weed. We hung out at Hank’s house he was our charismatic leader, and his mom was maximally permissive. I was a freshman in high school, in the mid-nineties, and had recently been accepted into a clique of older kids whom I admired-the inner circle of Santa Fe Prep’s druggie bohemian scene. I first noticed something wrong with my eyes in New Mexico.

My talking hank level 100