Chapter 4: Echoes of Seventeen

At seventeen, I lived in Lila Evans’s shadow.

After my mom married her dad.

The man praised the song I wrote, but then Lila would rip up the sheet music.

"Deaf freak, if you write again, I’ll slap you silly!"

She hated me, brought friends to smash my hearing aids, mocked my voice, even spread nasty rumors about me.

But she was still the teacher’s favorite.

So, when I was accused of stealing a bracelet,

she cried and told the teacher, her mouth moving fast.

But I, after years of hearing loss, spoke slow and awkward.

Under the teacher’s disgusted stare, I shut my mouth.

The classroom smelled like dry-erase markers and cafeteria pizza. Lila’s posse watched, whispering behind their hands. The pain pressed from my chest to my eyes.

A boy reciting lines nearby suddenly scoffed.

He quickly signed:

[Idiot, no one can understand you. Don’t you know to write it down?]

He shoved a notebook and pen in front of me, then looked up and spoke slowly:

"Teacher, I believe Lila Evans. Let her write down what she wants to say."

Behind the boy, sunlight filtered through the ivy at the window, shining in his dark eyes under messy bangs.

After proving my innocence, he pulled me away.

Under Lila’s furious glare.

Chase Preston took off the earring from his left ear and put it on me.

He unclipped his left ear stud, the one shaped like a tiny lightning bolt, and pressed it into my palm. His voice close to my ear, loud enough for Lila to hear:

He said:

"My grandma’s deaf too. Don’t be scared. If she bullies you again, press the back if you need me. I’ll come running."

That heartbeat lasted ten years.

I touched that earring every night, the cool metal a reminder of someone who once saw me, really saw me, in a world that mostly looked away.