She said it made her tired sometimes too, having to process all the extra noise she wasn’t used to, and it made her head hurt occasionally. And the required speech therapy after the surgery had apparently been a pain in the butt. That in itself would be enough to turn me off from getting a CI. They did a lot of good for people, I knew that, but it just didn’t seem like the right fit for me.

And I would never say—or sign—this to anyone, but I was deathly afraid of the necessary surgery to get a cochlear implant, even if the surgery was more common than it used to be. Being stuck in a hospital fighting meningitis while at the same time losing my hearing was more than enough to cause me to develop an irrational fear of hospitals. Those days had been some of the worst of my life.

Now that I was looking more closely at the handful of other teens here, I could see they all seemed to be a few years younger than me. There was only one other boy, and he too had a cochlear implant, visible as he chatted up the girl sitting next to him. Neither of them were signing.

I couldn’t tell if the three other girls had cochlear implants because of their longer hair, but I was willing to bet they did. The fact that nobody was signing was a huge indicator.

Mom nudged me and pointed to the woman who got up to greet us. HER NAME J-O-A-N, she signed. SHE HERE WITH HER DAUGHTER C-A-S-E-Y.

Joan, the woman in the turkey sweater, was talking animatedly, and her daughter Casey was apparently the one with the coffee blabbing away with one of the boys.

WHO THEY? I signed, gesturing to everyone else.

It took a few minutes for Mom to introduce everyone. By the time she finished, I’d come up with a pretty good idea of what was going on. This wasn’t a group of Deaf kids—it was a group of kids who could technically hear . . . just in a very different way. When it came to my turn to introduce myself, I refused to use my voice. I wanted to see for myself if anyone else in this group besides Mom and myself knew sign language.

MY NAME M-A-Y-A, I signed. HIGH SCHOOL SENIOR. NICE T-O MEET YOU ALL.

My suspicions were proven correct. All I got after Mom interpreted for me were a couple of confused looks and polite nods.

Joan jumped into conversation after that, and Mom started interpreting for me again. WE START GROUP, WHY? I WANT C-A-S-E-Y T-O MEET MORE KIDS WITH CI. HIGH SCHOOL SCARY, AND—

I held up a hand to stop Mom and Joan mid-sentence.

NOT HAVE CI, I signed, pointing to myself. HEARING AIDS.