In a surprising twist, it was her mother’s preoccupation with appearances that eventually saved her. People talked in Colson, and a neighbor had seen Charlie at the bus stop in her special ed–issued orange safety vest. The looks, the gossip, the prying questions about the state of Charlie’s mind—it was too much for her mother, and eventually she stormed the school to have it all reversed. She was met with little resistance—the special ed teachers themselves had been against the placement from the start—and soon Charlie was returned to the mainstream classroom. But her record bore the mark of her time away, and both students and teachers took note. Her classmates focused their attention on her in ways she would rather they didn’t, and the teachers did the opposite. In a public school strapped for resources, extra tutoring and empathy had to be rationed, and they could not risk wasting it on her. They resigned themselves to passing her on to the next grade until she was gone.
How might her life have been different if she had always gone to River Valley? Charlie thought as she and her father joined the move-in queue. Alight with activity, the campus looked different than it had when they’d come at night. The main drive was crowded, the surrounding lawns busy with smaller children and nervous parents sitting close together in the grass, older kids playing soccer or passing cellphones back and forth. And everywhere there was the flurry of hands and arms in flight, telling tales of the summer, no doubt, though Charlie wouldn’t have been able to understand them at that speed even if she was close enough. The enchantment cast by those large stone buildings the night of their first sign class was diluted somewhat by the activities around them, but in the multitude of signs, Charlie saw a different kind of magic.
She and her father collected her ID card and a folder containing her room assignment, class schedule, and another campus map, then made it to the loading zone in front of the girls’ dorm, where a dormkeeper pushed a canvas laundry cart their way. Charlie stood beside the trunk of the car trying to look useful as her father unloaded her two suitcases, backpack stuffed with school supplies, the trio of clear plastic bags containing her new sheets, duvet, and pillows, a shower caddy, laundry bag containing towels, hair dryer, and new galoshes, and the unopened box that held the laptop her parents had bought her as a “going away present.”
Inside, the dorm was darker than she’d imagined, sallow with the green cast of fluorescent lights, and she tried not to let this disappoint her. There was a small foyer with a security desk—the gate was propped open for move-in, but Charlie could see the machine at which she would be expected to swipe her ID in the future. For some reason, this made her nervous. She’d never carried a house key before; her mother had always left the side door unlocked for her. Charlie gave the paper with her room assignment to the guard, and he pointed down the long center hallway. With her father behind her pushing the cart, she followed the wall plaques down to room 116. KAYLA AND CHARLOTTE were taped in construction paper letters to the door.
Gross, she said aloud.
She hated the long form of her name. She swiped her ID in the lock. Nothing. It took three more tries.
Charlie considered herself a pretty light packer; even though she would be home on weekends it wasn’t that much stuff if you thought about it in the context of an entire year. But when she finally got the door open and pulled her cart inside, she found her roommate already there, sitting cross-legged on a bare mattress, with no other belongings in sight. The girl was wiry with dark skin and jet-black hair gathered in twists across her head. Charlie could tell her roommate was much taller than she was, even though she was sitting down.
Hi, the roommate said. Me name K-a-y-l-a.
Thank god her name had been pasted on the door—the girl spelled so fast she never would have caught it.
C-h-a-r-l-i-e.
Sign name?
They’d discussed sign names in ASL class—only another Deaf person could give you one. Charlie shook her head.
K-on-cheek, Kayla said, twisting the letter in the space on her cheek where a dimple would be.
Nice meeting you, said Charlie.
Same, said Kayla, though she didn’t look that enthused.
Do you want help with this? said her dad, gesturing to the cart.
No thanks, said Charlie.
O-k, said her father.
He looked down at his shoes.
So I guess I’ll just—
Yeah, okay. Thanks, Dad.
They hugged, and Charlie could feel his heart beating too fast.
Text if you need anything.
O-k.
Love you.
Love you too, she said.
For a moment she stood frozen, resisting the urge to go after him. She’d spent the night away from home only a handful of times—she didn’t have good enough friends for many sleepovers. Maybe she should have stuck it out at Jefferson.
You o-k?
Charlie nodded.
The door?
She closed it, looked around. The room had a wardrobe and bed on each side, one desk by the door and the other by the window, the setup symmetrical except for a small television screen on the left wall. No wonder her roommate had chosen that side. But where was all of Kayla’s stuff? Maybe her belongings were coming along later, Charlie thought, though she could see a pant leg sticking out from one of the drawers, and Kayla’s backpack hung from its straps on the back of the desk chair she’d claimed.
You _______?
What?
_______?
What?
Charlie could feel herself starting to panic.
I don’t understand, she said aloud. Do you read lips?
Kayla sighed.
R-i-c-h, she spelled. Rich.
She pointed to Charlie’s cart and drew a heaping pile in the air between them.
Rich, Charlie copied. Me? No.
Kayla didn’t say anything else and Charlie didn’t know how to, so she heaved her suitcases from the cart and laid them on her bed.
Overhead, a light flashed. Charlie jumped, thinking it was the fire alarm, but Kayla got up and opened the door, revealing a dormkeeper with an armful of linens. The woman was fresh-faced and bubbly, her look and demeanor not unlike those of the pageant girls Charlie’s mother usually worked with, though her mother’s beauty queen world felt light-years away. Kayla flung herself at the woman, who returned the hug with her free arm, and the two had a quick and frenetic exchange of which Charlie could not understand a word. Then the dormkeeper handed Kayla a set of sheets stamped with PROPERTY RVSD in faded blue.
The dormkeeper looked to Charlie and said something. A smile and a wave seemed to be a fine enough answer, because she turned to go.
Wait, said Kayla, then another thing Charlie couldn’t catch.
The woman nodded and pulled a length of masking tape from a roll she was wearing around her arm like a bangle, handed it to Kayla.
Thanks.
She gave them a thumbs-up and left. Charlie watched as Kayla pulled something from her pocket and unfolded it gingerly—it was a pair of photos of a woman in a bright yellow basketball jersey, torn from a magazine. Kayla ripped the masking tape into eight pieces and taped the pages to the wall. She began to make her bed, then stopped.
What?
Nothing, Charlie said, realizing she’d been staring. Sorry.
Kayla shrugged and Charlie began to make her bed. She was still hanging clothes in her wardrobe when Kayla flicked the light switch to get her attention.
Food-night?
Right, dinner! Charlie wasn’t hungry, but she knew the cafeteria served food for a limited amount of time, and also she had no idea where it was, so she dug her ID from beneath the pile of clothes and followed her roommate down the hall and out onto the quad.