Kathleen was waiting for me by the main entrance and signed, HELLO, a coffee cup in her free hand. I was one of the first to arrive in AP Statistics, happy to take my seat at the same desk as yesterday without any hassle this time. As I waited for class to start, I did a quick scan of last night’s homework, wanting to make sure I’d completed each problem correctly.

I was checking the second to last problem when someone tapped my shoulder. I twisted around in my seat and made a face when I saw it was Beau sitting behind me again.

“What do you want?” I said aloud.

I had this strange desire to keep using my voice around this guy, if only to prove I was perfectly capable of talking.

My eyes widened when Beau very carefully made the sign for sorry—a closed fist moving in a circular motion against the chest.

There had to be some kind of ASL website open on Beau’s laptop, because in the next minute he went through a handful of signs, clearly struggling to remember the ones he wanted. I was both in awe and baffled as to why Beau would be attempting to use sign language with me. And when he accidentally used the wrong sign, I couldn’t help but bust up laughing.

“What did . . . wrong?” Beau demanded, looking nervous.

I made the letter “W” and tapped the three fingers to my lips. “This means water,” I said, then put my pinky up and tapped four fingers against my lips. “This means talk. You said I don’t need to water around you.”

Beau clapped a hand over his eyes, sinking down a few inches in his chair. His embarrassment was oddly adorable. “Okay . . . credit for trying . . .”

Maybe a little credit was due. Compared to the random strangers who liked to stop me and finger spell the whole alphabet just to show me they could, Beau had done a fairly decent job conveying his message to me.

“If you’re trying to say you’re sorry for yesterday, I get it,” I said, hoping my voice was somewhat quiet. I could never be sure of how loud I was being. “But just . . . maybe when you’re practicing ASL online again, you can google things you’re not supposed to say to a Deaf person.”

Beau’s cheeks had gone all kinds of pink, but he nodded, saying, “Right. Maybe I . . . look that . . . too.”

I think I might have smiled at him before I turned back around in my seat.

Like yesterday morning, Nina was waiting for me outside once the bell rang.

“How are . . . this morning?” she said, all smiles.

It was beyond me how cheery she was so early in the morning, but then again, I’d only finished half my cup of coffee at breakfast and it was hard for me to be cheery without copious amounts of caffeine.