No Ordinary Sign

“Listen,” Tara mouths and tap-taps her finger to her earlobe. I resist rolling my eyes because she’s my best friend, and she can get away with more than most. When anyone else tells me to listen, I punch them in the face (in my mind) because they should know better.

I’m deaf. I can’t hear you, idiots.

“Becca overheard Rick telling Alex that he likes you. Like, likes you likes you.” Tara says this aloud faster than she can misspell our classmates’ names with her fingers. She uses the word like so much her face resembles a robot that’s shorted out and is stuck on one phrase.

Bless her, she tries.

I roll my eyes this time and shake my head. I start to sign, “I don’t believe you,” but Tara sandwiches my hands between hers, interrupting me in a most intrusive way. Don’t clock her, she’s your best friend, best friend, the best. We’re sitting on my bed, facing each other, both of us with crisscrossed legs. I glare at her.

“Sorry Jess,” she says and sets my hands—my voice—free.

I flip her off.

Both our faces crack into smiles. She gestures for me to go on.

“OK,” I sign, “It’s not that I don’t believe you, it’s that I don’t believe a word Becca says. She lives for gossip and drama. She talks so much, even my ears are tired.”

Tara laughs, falling backwards onto a pillow. I imagine her laugh sounds as adorable as it looks.

“Forget Becca, then.” She signs L for Loser. “I’ve seen the way Rick looks at you, Jess.”

“He’s never even spoken to me!” I retort.

“Because he’s too busy staring at you. He’s shy!”

I’m all out of eye rolls, so instead I sigh. “Tara, no one wants to ask out a deaf girl. It’s too… awkward. Everyone tiptoes around me. They think I don’t notice, but I’m not blind.” I look out the window and study the clouds as dramatically as possible.

Tara turns my face back to hers and interrupts my pity party. “Let’s make a deal. If Rick doesn’t ask you to Prom, I will break it off with my date, and you and I will go together. I’ll do your makeup and hair, and every guy in that gym will be drooling with regret.”

I squint, thinking. I reach my hand out to hers. We shake.

*****

The next day at school I rip my tights. I turn too quickly to avoid Babbling Becca in the hallway and catch my thigh on the corner of a low, open locker door. I limp to the bathroom as blood trickles down the side of my leg.

After dabbing my leg with paper towels, I look up to the mirror and see Becca standing behind me. Surprise then irritation color my face.

“What is your problem, Jess?” Becca says with her arms crossed. I can read her lips clear as day, but I pretend that I don’t understand what she’s said.

I mouth, “What?”

“I know you’re—” she points to me—"avoiding me--” she points to herself.

I shake my head and gesture to my bleeding leg and shredded black tights.

Becca pretends not to notice. So compassionate, that one. “I thought we were friends. I see you and Tara rushing off together after school, leaving me high and dry…” she rambles on and on as I watch her mouth from the mirror, my eyes catching every other word. Then, she says something about Rick and her body language shifts. She stiffens and her face blushes.

Oh. Becca likes Rick. That’s what this is about. She’s mad because she thinks he likes me.

I turn to face her and cut her off with the palm of my hand. “Rick doesn’t even talk to me. Don’t be rude to me. I’ve done nothing wrong.” I storm out of the bathroom. Becca probably argues as I exit but I can’t hear her.

After school, I tell Tara all about it from the comfort of our favorite spots on the bed, where we’ve sat for so many hours so many times we’ve created indentions in the mattress.

“Oh, that makes sense,” Tara signs. “The minute a guy shows interest in a girl, Becca suddenly likes that guy. It’s classic high school jealousy.”

“Whatever,” I say and pull out my phone. “We might as well look at hairstyles since I’m still dateless, and you promised to be my date and do my hair—”

“Jess! Rick will ask you!”

“Tara, Prom is in a week. If he were going to ask me, he would have done it by now.”

“Well, maybe he’s waiting for you to ask him!”

“Are you insane? Have you been drinking?”

Tara falls over laughing.

*****

The weekend slinks by in total silence. I’m used to this, of course, the silence. I usually don’t mind being with my thoughts, or hanging out with my family who all sign to me so naturally, or re-watching Friends with the closed captions that I don’t even need anymore because I have every episode memorized.

But this weekend I am in limbo waiting for something that’s never going to happen, and I’m miserable. I’m mad at Tara for even putting the thought into my head that Rick might ask me to Prom. Life was easier when I assumed I would be alone. I can do alone. I just can’t do alone and hopeful.

Sunday night I text Tara to come over and put me out of my misery with Ben & Jerry’s. Ten minutes later a car pulls into the driveway. I text Tara, “Come on up. Bring spoons.”

She responds. “K. Almost to your house.”

Huh?

Then a bright light flashes on and off through my bedroom window. I open the window and shield my eyes. The light goes off and I can see down below, in the yard, a boy is standing there. He turns the light back on and sets it on the ground to shine it up onto himself. It’s Rick. He’s holding a poster to his chest.

“Hey Jess.” it reads. He drops it to the ground to reveal a second poster.

“This is an ordinary sign.” He drops that one.

“But this…” He drops the third and final poster to the ground.

Then, Rick says to me in perfect sign language, “This is no ordinary sign. And you are no ordinary person. You’re extraordinary.”

My jaw hits the floor. I cover my mouth with my hands.

Rick signs, “Will you go to P-R-O-M with me?”

Right then Tara pulls into the driveway and hops out with our bag of misery ice cream. She looks at Rick then up at my window, then drops the bag and covers her mouth with both hands, just like me.

She says something to Rick. He shrugs. She looks up at me and yells something. I shake my head to show her I don’t understand. She goes over to Rick and steps into the light and signs to me, “Answer him!”

I blush. Then I nod with both my head and my fist for good measure.

Tara throws her arms in the air and hugs Rick. I lean against the window and smile. Tara flips through the posters and inundates Rick with endless questions. I stand and watch, alone and happy. No, actually, I’m not alone. I never was.