Kaitlyn Starling's Arc

Chapter 5 of 5

The boy's hands had moved so fast Monday, and Kaitlyn had understood none of it. So she called Rosalie again. Her cousin came over and taught her signs at the kitchen table, over and over, until Kaitlyn's fingers ached. "Slow down," Rosalie said. "Hands, not mouth." Kaitlyn practiced every night. Hello. Friend. Funny. By the time the Halloween party came, she could sign a whole joke. She packed a werewolf-shaped cheesecake in her backpack and felt ready to show the boy she'd learned his language. The party filled the cafeteria with orange streamers and too much noise. Anaya danced beside Kaitlyn, still in her soccer socks under a bedsheet ghost. "You keep looking at the door," Anaya said. She stated it flat. "You're waiting for someone." Kaitlyn nodded and kept scanning the crowd. Then she saw him. Kevin Williams, the deaf fifth grader she'd been signing with for weeks, stood near the snack table in a bright yellow Pikachu onesie. But he wasn't alone. Bridget Hartley stood too close to him, a red cowboy hat tipped over her glasses. Bridget signed something at Kevin, slow and careful. Kaitlyn's stomach dropped. Someone else knew his language too. Kaitlyn pushed forward. She set the werewolf cheesecake on the table and tapped Kevin's shoulder. When he turned, she signed the joke Rosalie had drilled into her. Why did the skeleton stay home? She fumbled the last sign and did it again. No guts. Her hands shook. Kevin watched. He read every sign. Then he grinned, wide and real, and laughed out loud, a rough bark of sound. He signed back, quick but clear enough now. Good joke. Kaitlyn read it. She'd understood him. She laughed too, and this time she wasn't guessing. Bridget's face went tight. "I've been signing to him since September," she said, short and flat. "Fourteen weeks." She looked at Kaitlyn's hands, then at Kevin's grin, and said nothing else. Sophie Jazzson came up beside them in a fuzzy lamb hood. She watched Kevin laugh at Kaitlyn's joke. "He didn't laugh like that for hers," Sophie said, nodding at Bridget. "Just saying what I saw." Bridget turned and walked into the crowd. Kaitlyn should have felt only joy. She'd learned his language. She'd made him laugh in it. But Bridget's words stuck. Fourteen weeks. Bridget wanted Kevin, and Kaitlyn had just beaten her at the one thing Bridget had practiced longest. Kevin cut a slice of the werewolf cheesecake and held it out to Kaitlyn, still smiling, not knowing. Kaitlyn took the plate. She'd won Kevin's laugh and his language. But she'd made an enemy who kept charts and counted weeks, and that enemy had watched the whole thing happen.