Kaitlyn Starling's Arc

Chapter 4 of 5

The caramel apple still sat untouched in Kaitlyn's backpack the next morning. Casey had beaten her by making the crowd stare. But one classmate never stared, never laughed, never even looked up. The boy by the window sat where he always sat, drawing in the margin of his worksheet. Kaitlyn knew he was deaf. Axel had told her weeks ago. Her jokes had never reached him. She wanted his grin more than the whole crowd's now, because she couldn't earn it with her voice. So she called her cousin. Rosalie Morrison was older and knew sign language. She showed up at Kaitlyn's kitchen, sat at the little rocking chair by the potted-plant table, and listened. "You keep trying to be loud," Rosalie said. "He can't hear loud. Draw him something. Make it dumb." She pushed a folded sheet of paper across the table. "A comic. No words he has to hear." Kaitlyn practiced all weekend. She drew stick figures tripping over their own feet. She drew a cat wearing pants. Anaya came over and flipped through the pages. "That one's actually funny," Anaya said, pointing at a hamster riding a trumpet. Kaitlyn folded her best comic small and tucked it into her pocket. Monday, she slid a plate onto the boy's desk first. A slice of strawberry cheesecake with chocolate dripping down the side. She'd drawn a silly note beside it, a smiling blob saying nothing at all. The boy looked at the cake. He looked at Kaitlyn. He pushed it back without a smile. Her chest went tight. Casey passed in the hall and caught her watching the failure. Casey said nothing. She didn't have to. At recess Kaitlyn didn't give up. She grabbed the comic from her pocket and set it on the boy's desk, flat, so he could see every panel. Then she sat down across from him. She made the same face as her stick figure. She crossed her eyes. She tripped over an invisible rock and caught herself on the desk. The boy's hand stopped moving. He looked at panel one. Panel two. The hamster on the trumpet. His shoulders shook. Then he grinned. Wide, real, all teeth. He grabbed his own pencil and drew a stick figure falling off a cliff, arms flailing, and pushed it back to her. Kaitlyn laughed out loud. She'd done it. The one classmate who never laughed had grinned at her drawing, not her voice. She'd found something Casey couldn't take with a single throw. But the boy signed something with his hands. Fast. Kaitlyn didn't understand one bit of it. He signed again, waiting, his grin fading when she just stared. He wanted to talk back, and she had no way to answer him. Making him laugh once wasn't enough. Now he expected a friend who could speak his language, and Kaitlyn couldn't say a single word.