Free Chance by N.M. Lombardi Page B

in-between.  I can say anything I need to with my hands, but there are nuances to the spoken word.  Subtleties that get lost."
    Mary spent the better part of her adolescence avoiding the rush and clamor of h er peers, and the idea of having silence imposed upon her seemed at once peaceful and desperately lonely.
    "You didn't have friends at school?"
    "Friends took work.  I hate to keep making the analogy about speaking another language, but at some point in your fluency you stop mentally translating everything you want to say.  That was my problem.  I never learned to think in terms of sign, it was always a conscious, laborious act."
    She looked down at his hands, privately in a we of their pianist grace, the unconscious way his fingers twitched when someone asked him a question, as if defaulting to their native tongue.
    "What happened in high school?"
    "The school got bigger, more successful. My parents hired teachers from outside, to help with the students, and one of them could hear.  She tried to engage me, and I suppose she realized something was wrong with me."
    Even in the early months of their friendship, the subtle ways he slighted himself bothered her.
    "You weren't broken, Kai."
    "It's not inaccurate.   There really was something wrong with me.  You see the way I am now."  He shook his head, "I couldn't relate to the hearing world.  My parents unintentionally did to me what they'd had done to them: they thrust me into a social and sensory world for which I had no frame of reference."
    The teacher eventually convinced Kai's parents that he'd outgrown home schooling, and desperately needed the interaction and s timulation of the hearing world.  Grudgingly they allowed it, releasing him to two years at a local public school.  What was intended as a kindness only further handicapped him, however; hearing people spoke quickly, used slang and inflections and verbal shorthand that confounded him.  Rather than accepting him into the fold they held him at the outskirts, an exile that hardened him and drove him deeper into himself.  He was isolated between two worlds.
                He got by, in his way.  Kai was intelligent – brilliant, when Mary was allowed to weigh in – and came to a fumbling familiarity with his own voice.  He still spoke softly, cautiously, and sometimes even asked her to repeat certain, unfamiliar words aloud, so he could understand and mimic their sound.  He was hyper-aware of people's perception of him, self-possessed to the point of social exclusion.  Mary alone was allowed within the sphere he'd built around himself, though even years later she could not wholly coax him out.
    She persisted in asking, "Why?"
    "Why what?"
    "Why did they do this to you?  Why keep you there, instead of letting you live a normal life before it was too late.  You could have had it both ways."
    Once or twice he came close to explai ning, hands twitching near his coffee cup like a half-spoken word, but it never did come out.  He had as much knack for lying as he did public speaking, and in the end it was easier to shrug, or excuse it as any child excuses the failed foresight of a parent.
    He usually said, "They had their reasons."
    When Mary took a new job at a bridal shop in town, the divergence of their daily paths narrowed, and Kai offered to share the train ride in and out.  He enjoyed these small journeys more than a little; they exchanged meaningful, humorous glances about the strangeness of their fellow commuters, shared the warmth of pressed bodies when the weather was cold, and best of all he didn't have to talk.
    Six months ago, something chang ed.
    "I have news," he said suddenly on the trip home.   Kai was rarely the first to start any conversation, immediately impressing Mary as to its importance. "I've met someone."
    "Tell me about her."
    "Her name is Crystal."
    "Pretty.   Where did you meet her?"
    "In town.   She works in town."
    "What does she look like?   What does