He saw his grandparents pull in the driveway and considered whether he should just blurt it out and be done with it, but they emerged from the car so happy to see him—their bright dentured grins, the suffocating hug from Grandpa Willis, and a cloying, perfumed one from Grandma Lorna—cowardice quickly won out. Surely his mother was better equipped to handle it.
As it turned out, Skylar would break the news herself. Austin, tasked with retrieving the gifts his grandparents had bought for Skyler from their car, let the screen door slam and Skylar winced and began to cry. Grandma Lorna noticed right away. Having come from a hearing family, she had cared for her siblings as babies, all the while carrying a piece of them within her, a genetic time bomb she knew was bound to surface eventually. Austin had been her great reprieve, and for fifteen years, her daughter had not tempted fate or Punnett squares to reveal another variation on the family DNA. Now, though, Lorna was giving Austin and his mother a knowing look, and neither of them could dodge it.
Grandpa Willis, on the other hand, had never studied a hearing infant for any length of time and didn’t catch on, though after a minute even he could tell something was off with everyone else.
What’s wrong?
Hearing, Grandma Lorna said, and pointed at Sky.
True biz?
Austin’s mother nodded. Austin braced himself. But Grandpa Willis only leaned in close over the bassinet.
Congratulations, S-k-y, he said. You won the easy life.
Then he went outside and smoked two cigarettes, one right after the other, and none of them mentioned it for the rest of the evening.
That night, when Austin got into bed, he finally opened a text from the new girl asking what he was up to. Just a few days ago he would have found this thrilling, but now he couldn’t bring himself to answer, or even just apologize for not answering, though the message had come through the day before. What could he say by way of explanation? That he’d thought his life was perfect but now that he had a hearing sister it suddenly wasn’t? He thought of Gabriella, started writing to her, but stopped halfway through. Even if she would understand the value of their intergenerational deafness, it wasn’t her he wanted to talk to. In the end he wrote to neither girl, stuck his phone on the charger, took out his chemistry textbook, and fell asleep doing Sybeck’s homework.
* * *
—
His father dropped him off at school Monday and Austin pushed through the morning. He hadn’t ended up writing back to Charlie, but he had been looking forward to seeing her, and so he was disappointed when she didn’t turn up at lunch.
He couldn’t bring himself to tell his friends about Skylar’s hearing, though he wasn’t quite sure what he was afraid of. It was no secret that his family history was what made him popular or, at the very least, why everyone on campus knew who he was, but did he really think they liked him only for this reason? He zoned out through the afternoon, was inordinately angry to find that he’d left his homework for Sybeck on his bed at home, though he knew his father would probably be on campus for a job at some point this week, and would bring it if he asked. What a waste of a day. He returned to his room after last period, letting the door swing wide and smack against the back of Eliot’s desk chair. Though Austin had rushed out of the upper school building, Eliot had still beat him home and was lounging on his bed messing around on his phone.
Hey. Eliot waved without looking up.
Austin plopped down on his bed but couldn’t relax. He stared across the room at the bare wall, at the pack of cigarettes on top of Eliot’s dresser. His roommate wasn’t even bothering to hide them, which was annoying—if there were dorm checks they’d both get in trouble. Of course, dorm checks were at the same time every night, it wasn’t exactly rocket science. Austin got up and examined the pack, pulled a cigarette from it.
Can I have this? he said.
Before Eliot could say anything, he tucked it behind his ear like he’d seen in movies.
Sure?
Thanks.
Where you going?
Out.
O-k, badass.
Shut up, said Austin.
He pushed open their window and stepped out into the hedgerow.
february was crossing the quad after a meeting with the secondary school teachers when she came upon her semester’s great mystery—the smoker! She heard him first, a hacking from behind the boys’ dorm. This was always how the kids got caught—sounds they didn’t think to stifle. Catching them that way felt like cheating sometimes, until she remembered she was in charge.
Around the back of the building, she was shocked to find Austin Workman doubled over coughing, a cigarette heavy with ash perched precariously between two fingers. When he saw her shadow, he jerked upright and she put her hands in a “surrender” position, as one might move toward a scared animal. She was thick around the gut and approaching middle age, no match for this lanky boy if he took off. Then she’d have to summon security, file a report, call his parents, all things she wanted to avoid almost as much as he did.
February fancied herself somewhat of an administrative progressive, at least for Colson. Teenagers got a bad rap, she thought, because people didn’t understand why they were so volatile. The problem, February had decided, was a simple lack of language. The vocabulary and logic that had served them in childhood were inadequate in the face of new and much more complex challenges and emotions. The teen years were, in effect, a second-wave terrible twos.
To combat these high-grade tantrums, February had instated the True Biz policy as a way to get the students to talk to her when they were up to no good. The implication was that she’d soften their consequences if they told her about why they’d done whatever they had; she’d probably dole out the same punishments either way, but they didn’t need to know that. Besides, she’d almost never had a chance to test it—kids always wanted to explain themselves.
In the moments it’d taken for February to approach, Austin had regained composure and crushed the cigarette beneath his sneaker.
What are you doing here so late?
Being the boss knows no limits.
When she was younger, February had considered “boss” and “champion” ASL rhymes, because of their matching handshapes; these days the similarities between “boss” and “burden” were much more apparent.
Real question is what are you doing?
True biz?
He said it like an informant who’d agreed to go “off the record” and wanted to confirm his deal was still in place. She nodded.
Go ahead.
My mom had the baby. A girl. S-k-y-l-a-r.
Heard from Walt. All healthy and good?
Yeah, healthy.
Congratulations!
Austin said nothing.
And this inspired you to suck poison into your lungs…why?
He looked at his feet.
You know, it tends to be cigars men smoke when a baby is born.
She’s hearing, the baby.
February tried her best to remain expressionless at this news. It was an almost comical reversal from the hearing parents who often appeared in her office, despairing about having a deaf child. But the Workman clan was somewhat mythical in the Deaf community, the playing out of a great sociolinguistic isolationist fantasy. And now—
My dad. He talks to her. Sings and everything.
The baby will be bilingual, like you.