He rolls his eyes, but he unfolds his arms. “Fine.”
“Promise me you’ll think about this. It’s okay if you want one. Really. I only want to make sure it’s your decision.”
“I said fine.”
He’s several feet away from me now, and I know I won’t have his attention much longer.
“Don’t do it because the doctors want you to, or even because Mom and Dad want you to. Do it because it’s what you want to do. What you think will make things best for you.”
“Okay,” he says plainly.
“And take time to think about it. You don’t have to rush into anything.”
“Okay-okay,” Max signs with a cheeky smile, trying to make a joke to end my lecture.
“Promise me?” I ask, needing to be sure I’ve gotten through to him.
“Yeah, whatever.” He steps away. But, wide-eyed, he turns back to look at me. “I promise.”
* * *
It’s time to head to the parking lot and say our final goodbyes to all the campers. Phoebe lets me roll her bag up front. The departure window is still a few minutes away, yet her parents are here early, already waiting.
Her dad takes the suitcase, while her mom gives me a smothering hug. “Thanks for helping our girl out,” she says.
“Nah,” I say, unsure how to respond. “It was fun.”
“I got an audiobook for the drive,” her mom says, returning to the passenger seat.
“Keep in touch, kid,” I say to Phoebe.
“I’m your age in, like, three months.”
“Well, I’m eighteen in, like, one month,” I say. “I’ll see you next summer. Don’t forget to tell your parents the great news.”
“You bet,” Phoebe says.
“Add me on Instagram or Twitter or whatever. If you—” I hesitate, unsure if she’s active on social media.
“Yeah, I use them. Screen readers are a thing, you know? Make sure you add alt-text to describe your pictures for me.”
“I’ll add a ‘hi, Phoebe’ at the end.”
She extends her arms wide into the air. “Hey, I’m trying to give you an awkward hug goodbye here.”
I tackle her. “We don’t live too far away, you know.”
Once she’s gone, I hang around the parking lot for a while, feeling largely unneeded. The younger kids are bursting with energy, while their parents were clearly hoping for exhaustion instead.
Honey and Blake come to find me for goodbyes. “Maybe I’ll be your counselor next year,” I say and sign to their delight.
Since Honey’s parents have arrived, I give her a big hug and am pleasantly surprised when Blake approaches her to do the same. “See you next year,” Honey signs to Blake.
“What’d she say?” Blake asks, nudging me.
I’m happy to relay the message. “ ‘See you next year.’ ”
“That’s what I thought,” Blake says, waving goodbye as Honey walks off.
Despite her late arrival, Blake isn’t the last camper to be picked up. Her dad climbs out of the truck and scratches his head. “Huh, not late this time.”
“Hey, Daddy,” Blake says, waving to him, using the sign for “father” against her forehead.
“I learned some sign language, too,” her dad calls out. He makes a thumbs-up, peace sign, pats his head, and taps his nose. Real amusing stuff. I’m proud that Blake doesn’t laugh.
“I know none of that is right,” she says.
“Toss your stuff in the back,” her dad calls out. “Long drive here and even longer drive back.”
Ethan helps Blake put her stuff in the truck bed. She opens the front passenger door but runs back to hug me and Mackenzie one more time before she leaves.
Max is one of the last campers to be picked up, since my parents probably wanted to let him have as much time at camp as possible, given that he missed an entire month.
“Are you driving back today?” my dad asks me while we wait for Max to say his goodbyes.
“Tomorrow. We’re going to Chicago tonight for an end-of-summer celebration.”
“That’s fun,” my mom says. “And I see you’ve got your hearing aids back in.”
I ignore that comment, seeing as I don’t plan on wearing them all the time now. Especially when I’m relaxing at home, I’ve learned it’s nice to be able to tune out the world around me. But she doesn’t need to know that right now. “Mom, I’ve been thinking, and you should wait a little while before Max gets a cochlear. Give him time to think about it.”
“But the doctor says—” my mom starts, but I cut her off.
“Max needs a better reason to have the surgery than ‘my parents want me to,’ ” I say before reassuring her. “I think he might go for it. And that’ll be fine. Just give him more time to think. From what I’ve heard, too many kids get them because their parents want them to, not because they want it.”
My mom is quiet for a while. “You know, when he was born, one of the doctors told us he might never speak.”
“Would it have been so bad if he didn’t?” I ask. “Being deaf isn’t something that needs to be fixed.”
“I know, sweetie. Hindsight is much clearer,” my mom continues. “But it can be scary as a new parent. You got your diagnosis at a couple of weeks old.”
“I thought I failed the newborn hearing screening.”
“On one of the follow-up checkups,” my mom says. “I already knew you were responsive to my voice, at least when I spoke loudly. I knew it would be a challenge, but I felt more prepared, somehow. I’d already gotten to know you. And sure enough, once we had you fitted with hearing aids, you did well. But with Max, they told us all this as I held him in my arms for the first time. And as he grew up, he didn’t make it all seem as easy as it was with you.”
“It wasn’t easy for me,” I say.
“I know.” My mom considers her words. “But I was never too worried about you.”
“Would you have been more worried if I had a profound loss?”
My mom hesitates. I can only imagine the concerns she had at the time—all a distant memory now. “Probably. But we would have figured it out.”
“I wish I’d been able to learn sign language.” To make myself clear, I add, “That our whole family had learned.”
“It wasn’t something you needed.”
“There are varying levels of need,” I say. My family has always treated hearing aids like glasses—the difference is, glasses are a corrective device, while hearing aids are only assistive. “I’m picking up sign pretty well now. It helps a lot. It’ll help Max, too.”
My mom nods. I understand it must have been scary to have not one but two deaf kids, especially since they’d never met anyone with hearing loss before us. I don’t fault her for wanting what she thought was best for us, raising us as hearing-passing. That’s what ableism has shown as the “best move.” But I want to use sign language.
It seems like my mom is about to say something else when Max comes running to us. “Can we stop and get Portillo’s for lunch?” he asks my parents. “Oh, Lilah’s gonna be a senior counselor next summer,” he says, breaking my news to them before climbing into the van.