Song of Summer (16 page)

“He's from New York City,” Robin says, signing and spelling the city out. “Yeah, he's deaf. No, I don't mind.”

The girls pretend to look curious and I see the word “music” on their lips.

Robin blushes and her smile becomes forced. She stops signing. “Yeah,” her lips say. “I know. I guess I like him more.”

I look away for a second, pretending to study the old movie posters. When I look back, Robin is teaching them how to spell their names, “Ana,” and “Callie.”

“Hi,” Callie signs slowly, still smiling too big. “I'm C-a-l-l-i-e.” A flicker of recognition flashes through my head. This is the girl that wanted my number—the number of a guy she doesn't even know. And I thought Lexington was a small community, ready to pounce on fresh meat.

“Hi,” I sign. I'd really just like to get back and watch the movie. “Nice to meet you.”

“Hi,” Ana signs. “I'm A-n-a.”

“Nice to meet you,” I sign again. I turn to Robin. “Want to go?”

She turns to them and talks. I catch the word, “Gotta go.” She holds up the movie and says something about the dark. Oh right— I've got to get back to Chautauqua before dark.

The girls giggle and wave and Robin and I walk over to the counter. Another teen girl is sitting behind the counter, watching TV on the little screen above her. She turns to us, bored, until she sees me and her face lights up. I don't know how much longer I can take this small-town thing. Turning to Robin, she says something. She points at me and I catch the word “boyfriend.”

Robin nods and looks up at me. “Yeah, he's my boyfriend,” she says, and signs, smiling again.

The girl turns back to Robin. “He is
sooooo
hot,” comes clearly from her mouth. I grin and look down at Robin. Does every new guy get this special treatment?

Robin glances up at me and laughs when she sees me waggling my eyebrows. My teasing look gets me a nudge in the ribs and I grab them in mock pain. “Thanks,” she says to the cashier.

I look back and the expression on the cashier girl's face has changed. It's now sad. She shakes her head. “It's too bad he's deaf,” her mouth says, clear as day.

Robin looks like she's been hit in the gut. I pretend I didn't see anything as I pull out my wallet to pay for the DVD. I hand the girl a five and turn to Robin.

“You okay?” I sign.

“Yes,” she replies, but she swallows a couple of times, hard. And her eyes are starting to pool a little.

The register girl gives me the DVD. I nod thanks and escort Robin out. She shudders when we reach the door. She starts for the car but I can't bear just sitting there, facing front, not even looking at each other for the next few minutes. Not to mention I can't return an almost-crying girl to her parents.

So I put my arm around her and guide her down toward the park. The shadows are long but the sky hasn't started turning colors yet. I have plenty of time before sunset. The grass still bears the scars from craft fair booths and thousands of footsteps, but there are a few benches scattered among the huge trees. I find one near a light post.

We sit down and she sobs.

I wrap my arms around her and she holds my shirt bunched in her fists, tears and mascara staining my shoulder.

I stroke her back and stroke her hair. She shakes and clutches at breath.

I kiss the top of her head.

It's the first time I've really wished I could talk to her. In her language. Because in books and in movies and in life, people are always murmuring something reassuring. I remember crying to my mom when I was little and feeling her voice speak to me, even though I couldn't hear what she was saying.

I know sounds. I know vowels and consonants. I've taken years of expensive speech therapy. But I also know my words don't sound right. That, for my whole life, hearing people have laughed when I spoke.

So I stay silent and I stroke her hair and run my hand up and down her back, like my mom would do with me when I was crying.

Her breath begins to steady itself. Her sobs become more infrequent. She looks up at me with red eyes and tear-stained cheeks.

“I'm sorry,” she signs and says.

I kiss her on the forehead. “It's okay,” I sign back.

She reaches out and I hand her the notepad.

“I'm so sorry for the way those girls treated you,” she writes.

“It's okay,” I sign. “I'm used to it,” I write.

“But it hurts,” she writes.

I circle the words, “I'm used to it,” then write, “Life is pain, Highness. Anybody who says differently is selling something.”

She laughs through her tears and a hiccup interrupts the laughter. “Did you just quote
The Princess Bride
?” she writes.

“Of course,” I write.

She smiles again. “Do you just want to watch that instead?”

I nod and kiss the top of her head. She smells like flowers again. We cuddle for a minute, her leaning against my chest. Her head fits perfectly in the space between my shoulder and my chin. It rises and falls as I breathe.

“You ready?” I sign after a few more minutes.

She nods and we stand up. She crosses her arms like she's cold and we walk back to the video store to return the DVD I'm holding.

When we get to the door, I motion that I'll return it. She doesn't have to bring her tear-stained face into the store with those girls. She nods, but as I turn away, she reaches out and grabs my sleeve.

I flash her a confused look. “You okay?” I sign.

“Your shirt!” she writes in huge letters. I crinkle my eyebrows and look down. There is a huge wet spot covered in eyeliner and mascara. I smile and start laughing a little. I really can't help it.

She starts laughing, too.

“I'll just return the DVD later,” she writes.

“And waste another five bucks?!” I write, grinning. “I'll return it now. Here.”

I hand her the DVD and take off my button-down so I'm standing in just my ribbed undershirt and jeans. She raises her eyebrows and I shake my head, embarrassed. I know people say that I look good or whatever, but I really don't see it. I hand my shirt to her and she accepts it, wordlessly.

“DVD,” I sign.

She hands it over.

I open the door to the video store just in time for Ana and Callie walk out. They rubberneck as I walk in the store, and I catch Robin's eye as I hold the door for them. A smile starts to peek through her red eyes. I let the glass door swing shut behind me.

The cashier girl is paging through a magazine. I cough and lay the DVD on the counter. Her eyes travel from the DVD up my arm, across my body, and finally to my face. She looks like she can't quite believe what she's seeing.

“Thanks,” I sign, not knowing what else to do. I've never returned a DVD a half hour after renting it. She must be wondering what the heck is wrong with me.

I turn and push back through the glass door.

My Robin girl is leaning against the hood of her beat-up old car, waiting for me. Callie and Ana are nowhere to be seen.

“Come here,” she beckons, mischief in her barely dry eyes. I approach her, not quite sure what's about to happen. To my surprise, her fingers reach up to the back of my neck, and all of a sudden, she's kissing me like I'm some kind of superhero. All I did was return a DVD. This is definitely worth the weird look from the cashier girl.

I wrap my arms around her waist and she wraps hers around my neck. I lift her easily so she's sitting on the hood of her car. Without thinking, I lean over her, my left hand braced against the cold metal of the hood and my right hand wrapped around the back of her warm neck. She is astounding. Her fingers slide up into my hair and down my neck to my shoulders. They twine around my bare arms. Blood pounds through my veins.

Dear God, I could take her right here.

One single remaining thread of rational thought tells me that I can't: we're in public, and we're outside.

It takes everything I have to pull away and take a deep breath. The world looks distorted: too fuzzy or super clear or something, and my brain is running away with itself. I shake my head and swallow and look away from her, even though all I want to do is take in every inch.

If I look at her, all I can see is the way her breasts lift her T-shirt off her belly or how the curve of her lower back gives way to a delicious gap in the waistband. I take another deep breath and blow it out slowly, trying to get my thoughts back under control.

She tilts her head, concerned. “You okay?” she signs.

I nod and take a few steps down the sidewalk, trying to get myself back to normal. Shaking my head, I take another deep breath. When I look back, her eyebrows are knit together. She's standing up and has followed me a few feet.

“You,” I sign. “You… are too much.”

She smiles slowly and winds a few steps toward me. The curves of her waist are too much for my barely-under-control impulses. I turn away.

“Too much,” I sign over my shoulder.

She continues her slow approach and stands in front of me. The fog has cleared and I can see straight again, finally thinking thoughts that don't involve a citation for indecent exposure. She carefully hugs me around my waist. I take another deep breath and look down at her, half hoping, half fearing that my self-control will yield. She inches up on her tiptoes and kisses me on the cheek. “I love you,” she signs, her hand pressed against my heart.

I'm surprised that it came so soon. I'm surprised it took so long.

“I love you,” I sign. I mimic her movement, pressing my hand into the soft warmth of her chest, over her heart. It beats a rhythm that shouldn't be familiar but somehow is. It beats a rhythm that feels like mine.

Four Weeks of Summer Left

Robin

I can't get it right.

My fingers stumble over the strings. That lady from
The Ellen Show
won't get out of my head. That woman had never heard before. And then she heard for the first time and she started crying. And now she can hear birds and traffic and music. She can hear music.

My fingers trip again. Stupid new pattern.

“What's wrong, Robin egg?” a familiar voice says over my shoulder.

It's a half hour before rehearsal's supposed to start. I haven't touched my guitar in days, and she's rebelling against me. That's what's wrong.

“Nothing,” I say. “Just can't get this sequence down. No big deal.”

“Well let me see,” says Trent, squatting in front of where I'm sitting on the church steps. His curly head concentrates on my fingers and his wrestler-cut T-shirt hangs off his shoulders, the armholes gaping so I can see to his ribs.

I play through the sequence, my fingers tumbling over themselves like puppies learning how to walk.

“Do it again,” he says, so I do.

“There,” he says, at the point where my fingers start to mess up. “There's your problem. You're reaching too far down with your first finger, which crowds the rest of them.”

“But that's my strongest finger,” I say. “That's melody. I need it to be loud. I almost always pick melody with my index.”

“Try with your middle finger,” he counters. “Don't get stuck in a rut. Flexibility, Peters. Ever hear of it?”

“Fine,” I say, and I go through it once, slowly. He's right. It frees up the rest of my hand so it can continue with the pattern.

It takes a while to retrain my fingers and get the inflection right, but when I do it's perfect. Trent's been watching the whole time. “There you go,” he says, a grin spreading across his face.

“Thanks,” I say. I continue once, twice, over and over until my muscles remember. One tricky part down. Four to go.

He sits next to me on the church steps and looks away, down the sidewalk. “Sorry,” he says. “About the jam session.”

I nod tersely, remembering Ana draped across the back of his beanbag chair and my angry storm out of his house. I was kind of hoping it would never be brought up again.

“Hey I went to the craft fair!” he brightens up. “Didn't see you. When'd you go?”

“Friday afternoon.” My face finds a smile as I remember the evening.

“Looks like you had a good time,” he says.

“I did.” I play through the sequence again and again. Perfectly.

He waits but I don't elaborate. It really isn't any of his business.

“Cool,” he says finally. The front door swings open.

“Pastor Mark's ready, guys. It's almost seven,” somebody calls out. “Quit making out already.”

“Ha-ha,” I say. I pick up Bender and swing my backpack onto my back. Trent reaches down to get the guitar case. He came to rehearsal empty-handed because he uses the church's stand-up bass. It is seriously hard to transport those things.

“I'll get this,” he says.

“Thanks,” I say. Why is he being so nice? I make a grab at the door but he catches it and holds it for me. I start to walk through.

“Hey, Robin,” he says. I turn around. “I really am sorry,” he says. “It's just… hard. To learn to live without you, you know?”

I smile. If this music thing doesn't work out, he could always work for Hallmark, the sappy dork. My guard lowers. “Yeah, I know.”

His face brightens. “So what do you say… ?” He takes one almost-imperceptible step forward, more of a shift in energy than weight. “You wanna try again tonight? Jam session? Just me and you?”

My smile turns a little sad and I shake my head. “No, sorry Trent.”

He nods. “Okay. Okay, yeah. No problem. I get it.”

I walk into the church, turn off the ringer of my phone (don't want a repeat of last practice), and go to my spot on the stool at the front of the church.

Whenever I look at my music, I see a woman hearing for the first time. Whenever I hear the stand-up bass, I see Trent's eager smile. When I pluck at the strings, I feel Carter's heart beating against my hand as I signed “I love you” into his chest. My fingers trip. The sequence is wrong again. Zero tricky parts down, five to go.