Page 28 of Give Me a Sign
Oliver taps my shoulder and says something I don’t catch.
“Sorry, what was that?” I ask. “Pardon?” I add, with a cheeky smile.
“That was quite the collision,” he repeats, grinning. “I take it you’re okay?”
“Yes, thank you.” I hold up my cupped hands in gratitude.
“All right, back to it.” He returns to climb up to his lifeguard post. Ben’s already taken his place, so the two sit closely side by side in the large chair.
I walk Blake over to the other campers. “Wait here, I promise I’ll be right back.”
She digs her feet into the sand and sighs. Part of me empathizes with Blake. But I like to think I was always much more open to the Camp Gray Wolf experience than Blake has been so far—hopefully after a few days of settling in she’ll tone it down.
I toss the cold ice cubes back and forth between my hands and walk back across the beach to Isaac. He is leaning up against the fence, shoving away Natasha, who is still giddy with her plastic wrap. He reaches up and rips the end of the strand from the container.
“You look like—”She sticks both arms out and walks like Frankenstein’s monster. Isaac rolls his eyes.
Natasha supposedly has a thing for Jaden, but it pains me to admit that she and Isaac would make a cute couple. They probably just have a comfortable sibling dynamic, but what if Natasha’s really in a love triangle with Isaac and Jaden? Just because she’s interested in Jaden doesn’t mean that Isaac couldn’t also have a crush on her. I mean, isn’t that who Isaac would want to be with? Someone who doesn’t have any communication barriers?
I’m intruding, but I need to apologize. Isaac was just trying to help my team, and now he’s got ice attached to his face. Natasha ignores the fact that I’m standing next to her and secures the loose end of the wrap.
Isaac peers out at me, shoving the bag up so it’s not falling in front of his eyes, and smirks. “Coming back for more?” He mimics throwing back his elbow.
I bite my lip and shrug, dropping the ice and drying my hands on my shorts before signing, “I’m sorry.”
I should have thought through my apology to come up with more signs to put together. I could sign the word “okay” and raise my eyebrows in question, but that doesn’t feel sincere enough. I don’t want to only speak and make him carry the burden of lipreading—that’s kind of the worst.
Don’t get me wrong, lipreading is helpful. In fact, I generally need to see someone’s mouth to “hear” them. But it’s far from reliable. Not the magical process you see on TV.
When I speech-read, I use the mouth shapes I see to supplement the slivers of words that I hear. Combining them, I getsomething resembling the sentence that was spoken, but there are often gaps, leaving me to do guesswork and make assumptions to fill in the missing pieces. Sometimes clarification on a single word is enough for me to solve the entire puzzle. But I’m basically playing the part of Sherlock Holmes... all day, every day. It’s exhausting. Andnothow I want to communicate with Isaac.
“Are you okay?” I sign.
Isaac immediately sticks a thumb to his chest. “It’s fine. I’m good.” But in his current wrapped state, he looks the opposite of fine. “Really,” he adds, then gestures to Natasha. “She’s just————.”
I recognize the sign but can’t place it. “Again, please.”
He signs the letters slowly. “J-o-k-i-n-g. Joking.”
I nod, getting it on the first spelling, but he looks skeptical, unsure if he can trust that I actually did.
Natasha stares at me. Isaac signs something fast with the word “worried,” but that can’t be right. He nudges her to interpret what he signed for me.
“How do you not understand? He’s signing so English,” Natasha mutters, maybe assuming I wouldn’t catch it, but it makes me feel even more intimidated around her. She sighs and translates for me. “He says it was an accident. And not to worry about all this, because I can be a little extra with stuff like this.” She heads back to her campers.
“Can you help me?” Isaac asks, undoing the plastic. “I don’t need this. It’s freezing.”
“Sure.” I reach up to unravel it, having to step closer to Isaac. I lean against the fence beside him.
Isaac is sitting on the middle rung, his eyes perfectly alignedwith mine. I reach forward to undo the wrap around his head; we are inches apart. I’m doing everything I can to look anywhere but directly at him. I blush as Isaac stares at me. He notices my hands and reaches out to inspect them, mouthing the word “ouch.”
“Are you sure you’re okay?” I ask.
“Perfect now.” He smiles, wiping the condensation from his skin. “You should have been my first aid partner.”
I laugh, my response coming to me in sign easily this time, with my confidence growing. “But Mackenzie knows everything.”
“True.” Isaac lets out a quiet chuckle, raising his eyes to the sky.
