A Language All Our Own

Early Morning Meeting

Liebe. Liebe is the word on Alexandra's mind as she wakes up in tangled, unfamiliarly white sheets. Love. Ali feels a strand of hair tugging at her scalp as she adjusts the bun sitting on top of her head. She pulls her legs out of the sheets and swings them to the cold carpet floor before releasing her hair from the painful bun. She rubs her tired face in an effort to awaken herself. Ali stands up in the sports bra and practice shorts she threw on the previous night before letting herself relax into a rejuvenating sleep. Seeing the light brown mop of Kelleys hair peeking out from the sheets of the bed opposite her own, Ali carefully tiptoes across the room in an effort not to wake her roommate.

Ali quickly brushes her teeth, washes her face, and applies a satisfactory amount of mascara before exchanging her sports bra for a new one, throwing on a tank top, and finding a pair of spandex to lift in. Once ready, she grabs her room key and quietly enters the hall. She looks down at her phone to catch the time. 5:17 am. Perfect. Just the right amount of time to get in a lifting session before 6:30 practice. As Ali turns the corner, she is startled by the presence of Megan and Sydney in the hall. "Holy shit," she is certain she can see Megan saying to Syd. As a kid, she learned to read lips quickly, not realizing that everyone else didn't do the same. "What do we do?"

"Hello?" Ali mumbles, cautious of being too loud without her hearing aids in.

"Al," Megan signs to Ali. "New girl is a mess. Something happened with her family. I think it's her brother."

"What happened?" Ali quizzically signs back, her eyebrows furrowed downwards.

"I don't know, but she just kicked both of us out," Megan explains. "Here-" Megan stops signing to rummage through her bag. She hands Ali the key to their room, and gives her a knowing look. "See what you can do, don't push her too hard though."

"What!?" Ali begins to say out loud. But before she could conjure an explanation out of Megan, she is gone, and Ali is left alone with nothing but the picture of the innocent looking new goal keeper in her head.

Well there goes lifting, she thinks to herself as she inserts the room key into the door directly in front of her.

Ali walks into room 534, a bit hesitant- here she is, about to bear all to a girl that just joined the team three days ago. Shit, she wasn't even sure if here name was Ashton
or Ashlyn. She knocks lightly on the wooden door. "Ash?" She notices that the door is ever so slightly cracked open and she pushes it to reveal a room that is completely torn apart. She ignores it, and turns directly into the bathroom. "Oh Ash..."

Ashlyn is sat in the tub in a sports bra and leggings, her hair haphazardly tossed into a bun on top of her head. She looks up, and Ali learns that there is a shade of hazel that almost appears to burn. Her heart drops looking at the pathetic state of the new goal keeper. Ashlyn looks up, remembering that her new teammate is deaf. "Get the fuck out of here," Ashlyn says with an intensity that doesn't match the personality Ali had imagined she possessed.

Ali sits on the closed toilet, and calmly denies Ashlyn's request. "I'm not leaving until you're okay."

And with that, Ashlyn breaks down into tears. Not the quiet kind, that gently fall onto cheeks then roll down your neck, but the ones that make improvised streams down your face. The ones that make your entire being hurt. The tears that have no plans of ever stopping, even if they cease to exist on the outside. Ali notices that the skin peeking out beyond the tattoos on her arm is flushed completely red, burdened with the frustration of not being able to save the world.

Ali sits quietly, consumed in her own thoughts. All she wanted out of the morning was a nice peaceful lifting session, but instead, she was now sitting with the high cheeked girl that she hardly knew, wondering if the blonde even knew she was deaf.