Give Me a Sign(27)

“I’m so sorry,” I say and sign before reaching up to accept his hand, but I recoil as the scratched skin on my palms stings on contact.

Oliver climbs down from his chair. “Oi, do you need some ice?”

“I-c-e?” I sign to Isaac, wincing as I form the letters with my burning hands.

Isaac nods and follows Oliver inside the lifeguard station. I want to go with him, but Blake grabs my arm and Natasha beats me to it.

“Come over here with me,” Blake begs, pulling me to the fence where the rest of our team has already found a seat.

“Um, in a minute. Let me go check on Isaac.” If the pain in my elbow is any indication, Isaac’s head must really hurt.

They return quickly enough, with Isaac holding a ziplock bag full of ice to his forehead while Natasha walks circles around him, attaching the bag to Isaac with several feet of plastic wrap.

Oliver walks straight up to me, carrying something in one of his hands. “Here, hold this,” he says, reaching out and placing a few small ice cubes in my palms.

“Ahh, that’s so cold.” A shiver goes down my back.

Oliver taps my shoulder and says something I don’t catch.

“Sorry, what was that?” I ask. “Pardon?” I add, with a cheeky smile.

“That was quite the collision,” he repeats, grinning. “I take it you’re okay?”

“Yes, thank you.” I hold up my cupped hands in gratitude.

“All right, back to it.” He returns to climb up to his lifeguard post. Ben’s already taken his place, so the two sit closely side by side in the large chair.

I walk Blake over to the other campers. “Wait here, I promise I’ll be right back.”

She digs her feet into the sand and sighs. Part of me empathizes with Blake. But I like to think I was always much more open to the Camp Gray Wolf experience than Blake has been so far—hopefully after a few days of settling in she’ll tone it down.

I toss the cold ice cubes back and forth between my hands and walk back across the beach to Isaac. He is leaning up against the fence, shoving away Natasha, who is still giddy with her plastic wrap. He reaches up and rips the end of the strand from the container.

“You look like—” She sticks both arms out and walks like Frankenstein’s monster. Isaac rolls his eyes.

Natasha supposedly has a thing for Jaden, but it pains me to admit that she and Isaac would make a cute couple. They probably just have a comfortable sibling dynamic, but what if Natasha’s really in a love triangle with Isaac and Jaden? Just because she’s interested in Jaden doesn’t mean that Isaac couldn’t also have a crush on her. I mean, isn’t that who Isaac would want to be with? Someone who doesn’t have any communication barriers?

I’m intruding, but I need to apologize. Isaac was just trying to help my team, and now he’s got ice attached to his face. Natasha ignores the fact that I’m standing next to her and secures the loose end of the wrap.

Isaac peers out at me, shoving the bag up so it’s not falling in front of his eyes, and smirks. “Coming back for more?” He mimics throwing back his elbow.

I bite my lip and shrug, dropping the ice and drying my hands on my shorts before signing, “I’m sorry.”

I should have thought through my apology to come up with more signs to put together. I could sign the word “okay” and raise my eyebrows in question, but that doesn’t feel sincere enough. I don’t want to only speak and make him carry the burden of lipreading—that’s kind of the worst.

Don’t get me wrong, lipreading is helpful. In fact, I generally need to see someone’s mouth to “hear” them. But it’s far from reliable. Not the magical process you see on TV.

When I speech-read, I use the mouth shapes I see to supplement the slivers of words that I hear. Combining them, I get something resembling the sentence that was spoken, but there are often gaps, leaving me to do guesswork and make assumptions to fill in the missing pieces. Sometimes clarification on a single word is enough for me to solve the entire puzzle. But I’m basically playing the part of Sherlock Holmes . . . all day, every day. It’s exhausting. And not how I want to communicate with Isaac.

“Are you okay?” I sign.

Isaac immediately sticks a thumb to his chest. “It’s fine. I’m good.” But in his current wrapped state, he looks the opposite of fine. “Really,” he adds, then gestures to Natasha. “She’s just ——。”

I recognize the sign but can’t place it. “Again, please.”

He signs the letters slowly. “J-o-k-i-n-g. Joking.”

I nod, getting it on the first spelling, but he looks skeptical, unsure if he can trust that I actually did.

Natasha stares at me. Isaac signs something fast with the word “worried,” but that can’t be right. He nudges her to interpret what he signed for me.

“How do you not understand? He’s signing so English,” Natasha mutters, maybe assuming I wouldn’t catch it, but it makes me feel even more intimidated around her. She sighs and translates for me. “He says it was an accident. And not to worry about all this, because I can be a little extra with stuff like this.” She heads back to her campers.

“Can you help me?” Isaac asks, undoing the plastic. “I don’t need this. It’s freezing.”