III

Risking Your Life in Words and Glances

Chris swallowed, then swallowed again, as if trying to filter some courage from the air around him.

“Okay, calm down, man...” he told himself. “She’s a girl, yeah, she’s just a girl...just a really amazing girl who has no idea who you are...don’t screw up, don’t make her think you’re a total moron...oh, shit...”

As the moments dragged on, Tyler dragged him closer to the corner where the girl and her dark-haired friend were sitting. Realizing he was still being pulled, Chris shook his arm from Tyler’s grip, not wanting to look like he was going unwillingly. He managed to make his feet plod on in spite of himself as his heart pounded in his ears. At last he was right in front of her, and on the verge of panicking.

“Umm,” he said.

The brunette in glasses turned toward him, and so did the girl. As her eyes (“Those incredible eyes,” Chris thought) settled on him, her face lit up with that odd little smile again, and Chris couldn’t help but smile back.

“Hi,” he said, and raised his hand in a bit of a wave.

She waved back, beaming. Chris figured this was a good sign.

The dark-haired girl had been looking back and forth between her friend and Chris. She tapped her friend on the shoulder and signed to her as she said, “You know him?”

Chris glanced at Tyler, who was gaping at the mysterious girl’s bespectacled friend, then watched as the girl signed back for a few moments. The only sign Chris thought he could understand was “skiing,” a motion like using ski poles. Then the dark-haired girl turned back to Chris and said, while signing, “Well, thank you from me and Liza, both, then. What’s your name?”

Liza. Her name was Liza. It was like a gift to hear. Chris rolled it around in his mind, and almost forgot to give his own name. “Chris.”

The girl finger-spelled this for Liza, then said, “I’m Faith.”

In response, Tyler virtually sprang forward to take her hand, gushing, “Pleased to meet you, m’lady...” Then he covered up and tried to be cool. Which he was. Just not right now.

“...Oh, uh, Chris here is my main man, and he’d like t--oofh.”

Chris, quickly pulling his elbow out of Tyler’s ribcage, muttered, “I just wanted to say...uh...it was great meeting you...Liza.” He cherished her name in his mouth...all right, there, he’d said it...he braced himself for the impending humiliation...

And, surprisingly, it didn’t come. Faith’s startling green eyes widened and narrowed at the same time--an impressive facial feat, Chris thought--and she quickly signed this for Liza, who blushed crimson and signed something in return. “The same to you,” said Faith.

Meanwhile, Tyler continued to gaze at Faith, looking as if he would swoon. Chris poked him in the back, hard, so that he jumped to alertness and blurted, “I’m Tyler.”

Faith looked at him, smiled warmly and nodded. “Hey there,” she said. Tyler grinned the broad, grateful smile of someone whose life has just been spared by a masked executioner.

Chris was watching this exchange in amusement when he felt a tug on his sleeve. It was Liza, smiling at him--his stomach did somersaults again--and motioning for him to sit down next to her. She had a notebook out on the table. A single sentence was written at the top of the page in a small, neat hand: Thank you again for helping me.

Feeling his ears and cheeks burn bright red, Chris took her pen and wrote, No problem.

I’m sorry this is so awkward, Liza wrote.

Chris looked at her strangely. What do you mean?

What I mean is: this girl falls down while skiing, you help her up, she says nothing to you and you figure out she’s deaf...doesn’t it seem strange at all?

No, wrote Chris. Why would it?

Most people treat me differently. Because I’m deaf. They act like I must be mentally retarded.

That’s just stupid.

I know. Liza paused, looking torn. Then her expression resolved, and she smiled in a far-off sort of way. She looked intently at Chris, and he thought his heart would stop. Skipping a line, she wrote, Why haven’t I seen you before?

I could ask you the same question, wrote Chris, and grinned at her.

Smiling her small crooked smile again, Liza wrote back: My family just moved here. Dad got a new job at the institute, and Mom decided it would be great to live so close to Faith and her mom. Faith is my best friend, and her mom and my mom are best friends. They’re almost sisters, so that makes us almost cousins, I guess.

Here both of them paused, looking over to see Faith and Tyler deep in conversation. Or rather, Faith was talking animatedly, and Tyler was hanging on her every word. Liza and Chris exchanged bemused glances.

I wonder what’s gotten into him? Chris wrote, smirking.

Faith often has that effect on guys, wrote Liza.

So do you.

“Shit!” thought Chris, and grabbed the pen to scratch out the incriminating words. “Great,” he cursed himself mentally, “you even blurt stuff out in WRITING, you moron...”

He looked over at Liza, who was suddenly crimson, then at the furious blue scribble on the paper. Sorry about that, he wrote on the next line, his face burning. I’m an idiot.

Liza, still blushing, slowly reached for the pen. You’re wrong.

About being an idiot, or about you?

Both.

Chris couldn’t think of anything to say. I meant that you’re just--he paused again--really cool. You’r--Before he could write another letter, Liza had grabbed the pen from his hand.

Stop it, you’re making me blush, she wrote hurriedly.

I can see that, he wrote, smiling in embarrassment. You want to let me finish my sentence?

Not really.

His face fell, and he felt his breathing stop. OK, I see, he wrote, feeling desolate. I’ll leave now, if you want. I’ll just go get my stuff and hit the slopes agai--

Liza grasped Chris’s hand in mid-sentence and didn’t let go. She looked at him with a strange expression on her face; confusion, it seemed, mixed with alarm and a kind of forlornness. Her face said, “Don’t go.”

Without warning, she leaned in and kissed him. He felt himself melt completely, and as she pulled away and snuggled into him, holding his hand, her head on his shoulder, he wondered faintly whether it was possible for a seventeen-year-old boy in good physical condition to die of a heart attack.