I never learned lipreading. I’m the worst in the whole class!
You read and write English, though. And S-k-y-l-a-r will sign.
I can’t understand when he talks.
February was torn between hugging Austin and reminding him that this was how nearly all his peers felt at home. She decided to do both. Austin didn’t try to shrug her off like some other kids might. He was attentive as she reminded him that his whole family was still fluent in ASL, that CODAs still counted as “big D” Deaf, and whether or not Skylar could hear didn’t change anything. Of course, whether he believed her was another thing entirely. She wasn’t even sure she believed herself.
At some point, it occurred to her that Austin was probably not the smoker she’d been seeking. His had been the dry, urgent cough of an amateur. The snitch code at any residential school was ironclad, never mind the additional wagon circling of the Deaf world. There was no way he’d tell her who the real culprit was. But what kind of headmistress would she be if she didn’t try?
Two weeks cafeteria cleanup. One if you tell me who’s been smoking in the dorm.
Bummed this from a guy at the mall, he said without missing a beat.
It’s a fire hazard.
Sorry, don’t know.
So his roommate, February thought, sighed. She did not want to have to punish the Quinn boy, not after everything he’d been through. And she’d specifically paired the two as roommates because she’d pegged Austin as most impervious to influence when Eliot’s rebellion inevitably appeared. But perhaps that wasn’t fair of her. She had set him up, in a way.
O-k. Two weeks then.
You won’t call my parents?
Not this time, she said. This is your warning.
Austin thanked her, but stayed standing, unsure what to do next.
Go on then, she said, then gestured toward the cigarette under his foot. And throw that out.
She watched him go, then pulled out her cell. What would a boy like Austin do next year at a school like Jefferson, or Covington High? Would the Workmans send him over to St. Rita, or to live with relatives so he could board up north or out-of-state? Either way, his world was going to be shattered, there was no way around it. She was relieved on baby Skylar’s behalf, though she felt guilty even as the thought was forming. But what was she supposed to do—pretend like hearing kids’ lives weren’t easier than deaf ones’？
Which reminded her, she still had to deal with Serrano. February had been gentle with her, too, but she had no illusions that a stint in Drama Club would have magic rehabilitative properties. And anyway, whether or not the girl went around calling her a “bitch” was the least of her worries—Charlie wasn’t the first and she wouldn’t be the last. There was still the matter of her academics. February would have to put in a call to Victor Serrano. They would have to formulate a plan.
figuratively speaking
DID YOU KNOW? Like any language, ASL has idioms that, in context, can mean something different from the denotations of the signs and handshapes of which they are constructed.
ASL-ENGLISH GLOSS: train go sorry MEANING: missed the boat
ASL-ENGLISH GLOSS: many question marks MEANING: your guess is as good as mine no idea
ASL-ENGLISH GLOSS: closed small c or x handshape MEANING: cool
ASL-ENGLISH GLOSS: lump in throat MEANING: embarrassing cringeworthy
ASL-ENGLISH GLOSS: innocent plus MEANING: old-fashioned uptight
square
ASL-ENGLISH GLOSS: finish touch MEANING: been there went
have visited
ASL-ENGLISH GLOSS: swallow fish MEANING: gullible
ASL-ENGLISH GLOSS: true biz/true business MEANING: seriously literally
deadass
no kidding
real talk
charlie was eager to put the rocky week behind her. At Jeff she’d always looked forward to the weekend, a break from school and its sounds, but by Thursday afternoon, she noticed some of the others were organizing to meet downtown for ice cream, or forging signatures on permission slips to stay at one another’s houses, and found herself wanting more time with her classmates.
Want to meet up this weekend? she asked Kayla that night.
Can’t. We’re going down to KY. My cousin’s wedding.
O-k, cool.
Charlie could feel her face burning pink—she was not one to put herself out there. Kayla undoubtedly noticed, too, because after a minute she said:
Maybe another time?
Yeah, definitely, Charlie said.
Emboldened by the exchange, she woke Friday morning determined to tag along to wherever Austin might be headed to that weekend, but he wasn’t at lunch, and when she finally caved and texted, he didn’t answer. Afterward, she felt embarrassed that she had messaged him at all. It wasn’t like they were friends; he was literally assigned to be nice to her. As she sat alone on the couch in her father’s apartment, her thoughts returned to Kyle.
Kyle was tall, gangly, nondescript, and when it came down to it, she knew little else about him—he’d been a supersenior when she was a freshman, and they’d had no mutual friends or classes together, had crossed paths only in study hall. Part of her knew she was too young to be with him, and knew that he knew this, but another part of her didn’t care, and study hall had offered some plausible deniability. It was unusual for a freshman to be in study hall at all—Charlie was an exception, since it alternated with her speech therapy and reading tutor appointments—so maybe Kyle just assumed she was an upperclassman.
For Charlie’s part, people rarely noticed her, and never in a positive way. Strictly speaking, Kyle wasn’t her first. She had exchanged rations of her self-worth for protection, or to be left alone, mainly on her knees in darkened classrooms and custodians’ closets. Though none of the encounters were pleasant, there had also been moments in which she’d felt powerful, to have something someone else wanted so intensely.
With Kyle it was different. She’d been ecstatic when he first started paying attention to her. Their exchanges had been genuinely friendly, then flirty—him holding her arm tenderly as he markered silly stick figure doodles on her skin. The more time they spent together—mostly hooking up and getting stoned on the couch in his basement—the clearer it’d become that they had almost nothing in common, and that her excitement about being with him would’ve probably been the same whoever it was, as long as he was nice to her. And Kyle was nice enough, despite his proclivity for referring to them as “fuck buddies.” They’d met up from time to time throughout the year until, she presumed, he graduated. She’d messaged him once or twice over the summer, but never heard back.
She knew she shouldn’t text him now, tried to convince herself that River Valley was her chance to leave Jefferson and all it stood for behind. She spent Saturday night in an Instagram rabbit hole, scrolling through the feeds of old classmates, friending new River Valley ones. At certain points their feeds were indistinguishable—peace-sign-wielding girls posing for selfies in crop tops, football games and cheer squads and smoothies—and then every once in a while she was jarred from the mindlessness of the exercise when an RVSD student posted a video, their signing bright and sloppy and still largely much too fast for her to understand. She passed out around midnight and woke early, dead phone still in hand. She plugged it in and watched its revival—still nothing from Austin—then shuffled out of her room and into the kitchen.