As we ate, every so often I would look up and see Connor in conversation with Mom, and then I would feel that little twinge of sadness I always did when my family was speaking around me and I didn’t have any idea what they were saying.

I didn’t blame Connor or Mom for not always signing when they spoke because that wasn’t an easy thing to do when your first language was English. I never felt sorry for myself because of it, but sometimes it was impossible to put a cork in it. I didn’t hate being Deaf—it was part of who I was—but sometimes my lack of hearing made me feel painfully alone.

Once dinner and cleanup were finished, I grabbed my things from the living room and went upstairs to my new bedroom, which was all the way at the end of the hallway beside the bathroom I shared with Connor.

Rather than dive back into my homework, I hung up a few posters, mostly reprints of Van Gogh and Picasso masterpieces that always made me marvel. I got sheets properly fitted on my bed, put more clothes away in the dresser beside the window, and then decided to give up and FaceTime my best friend Melissa.

Melissa picked up after a few rings, waving her hands excitedly as she came into view on my iPad. Melissa and I met at Pratt shortly after I transferred there, and we’d been close friends ever since. Unlike me, Melissa was born deaf, which meant ASL was her first language. It had taken a while for me to stop thinking so much in English since it was my first language—and sometimes I still thought I wasn’t fluent in ASL—but this had never been a problem for Melissa.

Melissa was spunky and bubbly and never failed to see the positive side of the equation—something I could definitely use at the moment. And after this mess of a first day at Engelmann, I was hoping Melissa’s self-confidence in her identity as a Deaf person might rub off on me.

MISS YOU, was the first thing Melissa signed to me. COLORADO, YOU LIKE?

FINE, I signed back. BEAUTIFUL MOUNTAINS.

HEARING SCHOOL? Melissa signed next, raising her eyebrows in question.

AWFUL, I told her honestly.

I wasted no time giving Melissa a play-by-play account of everything that happened my first day of hearing school. She watched me intently as I signed, twirling a strand of her dyed black hair around her finger. When I got to the part about lunch, the creepy hearing guy, and Beau, the expression on Melissa’s face went from interested to annoyed.

HEARING PEOPLE, she signed, and gave a disgusted shake of her head as if that said it all.

I KNOW, I signed in agreement. AND I STUCK HERE NOW. EIGHT MONTHS BEFORE GRADUATE.

STRONG, Melissa signed, pointing at me. BELIEVE IN YOU.