Give Me a Sign(33)

“It’s not Monday again already.” She checks her phone. “Wait, how is that possible?”

“It pains me that you dread our time together that much,” Bobby jokes, but he genuinely smiles when Simone reaches out for his hand. “Is there someone else you can go with, Lilah?”

Natasha and Jaden are standing by the door, and Isaac walks over to me. “Did you need to go shopping? Come with us?”

“Yes, please,” I say and sign before turning back to Simone and Bobby. “Don’t worry, I’m tagging along with the others. Enjoy your evening. Remember to watch the campers.”

On the way to the parking lot, we run into Ethan, who needs to pick up some supplies for tomorrow’s activities. So all five of us pile into Natasha’s little car. Jaden claims the passenger seat. Isaac hops into the back, and Ethan tells me to take the middle, motioning for me to slide all the way over until I’m practically in Isaac’s lap.

Natasha turns to sign. “Food first?”

Everyone agrees, and she hits the ignition, music immediately blaring from the speakers. The car shakes the entire way to the Mackie’s across the street from the Super Mart.

Jaden opens the Notes app on his phone and types in his order, passing it around for the rest of us to enter ours. We pull up to the drive-through. Instead of stopping at the speakers, Natasha heads straight for the window. When she parks, she adds her order to the note as well.

We’re waiting, but no one is there. Natasha waves until an employee finally comes, but they don’t open the window.

“We’re Deaf,” Natasha signs, pointing to her ear and cochlear implant. She holds out the phone with the orders on it.

But the worker ignores her and points back to the speakers. I can read part of what he’s saying—“don’t order here.”

Natasha points to her ear again and holds out the phone. He just shakes his head. Ethan types “We’re Deaf, here’s our order” on a large-text app on his phone and gives it to Natasha. But after Natasha shows the message, the employee just walks away.

“W-t-f,” Natasha signs. “He left?”

A car arrives behind us, flashing its headlights. The employee comes back, this time with their manager, who opens the window.

“We’re Deaf, here’s what we want,” Natasha signs one-handed, holding out the orders on her phone.

The manager mumbles something back. Natasha makes the gesture asking him to write it down. The manager squints to look at all of us in the car and shakes his head.

Ethan catches what the man says next, and signs up to Natasha, “He thinks we’re faking . . . ”

“We’re far from the city right now,” Jaden signs. “Maybe not a lot of deaf people ——。”

The car behind us honks. The manager shouts and gestures for us to move our car. Natasha is braver than me—she holds out her phone again. With her strong Deaf accent she says, “This is what we want.”

Isaac is tensing up beside me. I lean into him; my hand drifts to rest near his knee. He inches his own closer until our pinkies are side by side.

The manager is still yelling and refusing us.

“Could try a-p-p?” I sign one-handed to Ethan, guessing we might try to just enter the order ourselves. I mean, I don’t have it downloaded and the service around here might be too spotty to do so, but maybe someone else has it already.

“No, let’s go,” he says.

Natasha nods, flips off the manager, and drives away. When we’re back on the road, she screams out her frustration.

“Seriously, why’d they do that?” I frown.

“I swear, that could’ve been the easiest order of the night for them,” Ethan says and signs. “It was all written down right there. Takes two seconds. Then we’re gone. But they’d rather pull that shit.”

Following some more venting, the rest of our evening errand trip is swift and joyless.

I notice eyes on us as we sign throughout the store, but I’m learning to ignore other people. Ethan stocks up on the arts-and-crafts supplies for tomorrow, then Isaac, Jaden, and Natasha grab a bunch of snacks to get us through the night. I find a perfectly average cheap swimsuit. We fly through the self-checkout line and head back to our safe haven in the woods.

* * *

The next morning, the grass is still damp from dew, but we gather the campers in a circle on the ground to play a game before our scheduled Tuesday afternoon hike. The person standing in the middle has to pick someone who is seated and say, “Honey, if you love me, please smile,” and then that person has to get through a response of “Honey, I love you, but I just can’t smile” without actually smiling in the slightest, to avoid going in the center.

I’m a champ at this game. So far when we’ve played to fill time between other activities, no one has managed to get me to the middle of the circle. Ethan announced that right now we only have time for one more round, so I’m in the clear. That is until, for the first time, Isaac is the one who steps toward me.

He fakes going to the camper to my right but pivots and stops in front of me, batting his eyes and holding up four fingers on each hand to sign the word for “eyelashes,” channeling the theatrical nature of the game. The campers are dying with laughter. I clench my jaw tight, but my lips quiver and threaten to betray me.