He and Gabriella had been in the pool, leaning against the wall in the shallow end, Austin enduring her gleeful tabulation of unsightly thigh dimples and feeling the back of his neck begin to sunburn when, finally, he blurted: Oh my god would you shut up!
Here was his regret: he should have requested that they go somewhere private to talk. Instead, they’d stayed out in the open and the number of eyes on them grew as Austin told her he didn’t think this was working anymore. Gabriella redirected all the energy she normally spent on berating their peers toward him—he was inattentive, withholding, had bad breath. He had taken her virginity and cast her aside like used goods. Austin stood stunned through most of the tirade, but the last accusation shamed him into action, and he tried to reach for her hands to stop her, or at least get her to sign smaller, and she slid from his grasp and let out a scream that scared the lifeguard. The guard, only a few years older than they were, and already on edge about a pool full of deaf kids, came running and threw the rescue can toward Gabriella, cracking Austin in the back of the head instead. Then it was Austin’s turn to shout, and another lifeguard appeared. As he and Gabriella were dragged up onto the concrete, he felt he should say something, but the only thing that came to mind was You were a virgin?
School had let out two days later; the pool incident was the last time they’d spoken. Part of Austin believed she was biding her time to execute an elaborate revenge plot, but when they’d seen one another at dinner the first night back, she’d only sat down at the far side of their table and stared.
Then Headmistress had asked him to show the new girl around. It was no big deal at first. He went over and introduced himself without much fanfare, but found that for the rest of the day he could not stop thinking about Charlie, her eyes, in particular—the furtive way she cast them about the cafeteria, the warm hickory color that enveloped him when she finally looked up at him.
When he saw her again the next day, he slipped her a note about where and when to meet for a tour, but stopped short of any further interaction—he couldn’t invite her over to their lunch table, not yet. He felt cowardly when she ended up at the far end of the room with the Pokémon nerds, but his table was packed and he just wasn’t ready to deal with the wrath of Gabriella. Anyway, the jury was still out on Charlie. Usually a high school student transferred only if their family was new to the area, or if they’d been expelled from somewhere else. Who knew what kinds of issues she might have?
Most of Austin’s peers had learned to sign here at school—for them, River Valley was synonymous with safety, a place where they could understand and be understood. But he knew the consequences of living without a safe harbor, had heard all the stories of completely out-of-control kids who’d come in from mainstream school: a few years ago, a fourth grader had slapped his teacher during a math test, and last year, a middle schooler set fire to the dorm carpet.
The tantrums he’d seen up close had always been more mournful than violent, though. The clearest memory was of a morning in second grade, when a boy had stood in the center of the classroom howling, inconsolable, for nearly an hour. The rest of them had been instructed to choose a game and take it to the circle time rug while the teacher and her aide tried to sort out what was wrong. Austin watched, churning Play-Doh through a press while his classmate wailed and pointed at his stomach. The teachers removed and checked the boy’s implant, then gave him an early snack of animal crackers and apple juice, which he promptly vomited in a pinkish puddle on the floor, splashback on the teacher’s pants. The aide took him to the nurse.
At the time, Austin was incredulous that parents could have forgotten to teach their child basic signs about feeling sick, ones he was sure he’d always known. It wasn’t until later he learned that ASL had likely been withheld intentionally, an attempt to motivate speech. Sign language had been so thoroughly stigmatized that in trying to avoid it parents had unknowingly opted for a modern version of institutionalization, locking their children away in their own minds. To Austin this sounded cruel enough to be against the law, but there were a lot of things about the hearing world that made no sense.
The notion of being friends with someone like Charlie both intrigued him and made him nervous. He had been at RVSD his whole life, knew everyone there and almost no one anywhere else. Besides his dad’s side of the family, whom they saw only once or twice a year, Charlie was the closest thing to a hearing person he might socialize with in any meaningful way. But if she didn’t know sign, how meaningful could it be?
It was true that deafness was rarely an all-or-nothing affair—they all felt vibrations, and most heard loud sounds. Some could hear speech, and hearing aids and implants made the range of what was possible even broader. But while most of the other kids used their voices at home, or when they went down into Colson, Austin had no hearing aids and was fully voice off. He knew that this was part of the reason Headmistress had assigned him to be Charlie’s guide. He wouldn’t be able to revert to speaking, and neither would she.
What’s up? he said when they met out front after school.
She shrugged, shifted her weight between her feet. They both stared at her shoes, a pair of red Converse high-tops. Besides the sneakers she wore all black, with a trio of spiked cuffs on one arm. From this angle, he couldn’t see her implant, though out of curiosity he had tried to look. Her hair was a glossy sheath so dark it nearly matched her shirt. He found her completely striking, but the starkness of her outfit made it difficult for him to come up with a compliment that didn’t sound creepy.
You ready? he said instead.
She nodded. He began to walk, and she followed close at his elbow. Too close. Man, she really was a beginner. He drifted toward the middle of the path so there was more space between them. Had she looked disappointed by this, or was that his imagination? Either way she seemed to realize it made it easier to see one another, and kept to her side as they walked.
The campus was divided in halves, with the athletic fields and the administrative building, Clerc Hall, serving as a massive spacer between the upper and lower schools. Lower school students weren’t allowed on the upper school side, but upper school students generally had freedom to roam the breadth of the campus, often going down to the lower school for after-school jobs or tutoring gigs. So Austin led them that way first, dipping down the gulley into the soccer fields. Initially unsure of what a tour should be, he just pointed to different buildings—dorm, classrooms, gym—but any map could’ve told her that. To what, exactly, was Headmistress hoping he’d guide her? He led them to the outermost path, a sidewalk that ringed campus just inside the fence, and headed back toward the upper school. The sun was warm and mild. He began to relax and settled into sharing whatever popped into his mind:
That dorm is named for first Deaf pro baseball player. Here students had solidarity demonstrations with Gallaudet protesters in the eighties. Here I broke my foot on a pogo stick when I was nine.
He stopped in front of his dorm.
This is mine.
Her face changed then, as if a film cleared from her eyes. She hadn’t understood anything he’d said, had she?
Yours?
Well just the last thing, then.
Lived on campus since I was six.
Charlie nodded solemnly, but the gleam of her eyes was receding again. He took out his phone.
we live in colson but it’s kind of tradition, he wrote. my mom boarded @ her school too.
Wait. Your parents—deaf?
My mom. And her parents. My dad’s an interpreter.
u understand? he typed. u look surprised.
Charlie started typing a few different messages, then deleted each of them, all the while her mouth coiling tighter. He slid his palm over the screen.
What? he said.
I—