Unspoken (Kellic and Cashby)

Chapter 1

Kellin's POV

I sighed and continued doodling on my paper, not even bothering to look up at my mom who had been trying to talk to me. It was one of the few perks of being deaf, if I wasn't looking at you, I didn't have to "listen" to you. It definitely made it easier to block people out. Especially my mother who for some reason, enjoyed nagging at me for practically every single thing. She tapped my arm lightly, I ignored her and continued doodling on my homework. She tapped me again. I sighed. I wasn't going to continue arguing with her when she refused to listen to my side of things. Without another tap, she took my chin in her hand and forced me to look at her. I arched a single eyebrow and glared.

"Look at me," she ordered. "I'm trying to talk to you."

I bit my lip, trying to decide if I was trying my luck if I closed my eyes to ignore her. I decided in the end that she'd probably murder me.

"I know you want to go to regular school, Kellin," she said and I could see the defeat in her stance.

I immediately scribbled my response on my homework and turned it to her. Yes, my entire family knew sign language, yes, I knew sign language. I hated using it, though, and much rathered reading lips and writing or texting my responses. It was easier and it, in a way, made me feel much more normal.

She read it for a second. "And I think, after talking to your therapist and your father, it can happen," she told me. I grinned and looked at her wide-eyed.

No shit? I wrote on the paper.

"Language, Kellin, and yes, you can experience senior year in high school, but only on a few conditions."

I rolled my eyes and slammed my face against the table. Of course there were going to be conditions, my mom just loved to torment me like that. What? I signed in the air at her, just opting to spell out the world. I felt a thump on the table and glanced up. She held up a paper and handed it to me, I looked at it briefly before back at her to give her a questioning glance.

"It's a contract."

I glared at her. A contract? What the hell? I grabbed it and read over it quickly. Keep up good grades, introduce my mom to any friends I made—cringey but I guess I could deal with it—tell her as soon as someone messed with me about being deaf, I definitely was not going to tell her if someone was giving me shit for anything. I'm a big boy and I could take care of myself. The rest of the contract were little rules that I knew were probably meant to keep her from having an aneurysm of some sort during the day. I rolled my eyes and grabbed my pen and signed my name on it and wrote her a little note to thank her for simply letting me, even if I had to follow her stupid rules.

"Thank you," she said simply. "Your first day is in a week. You're going to have your sister there but since you're a grade ahead of her, you're going to have someone else with you all day to translate."

I glared at her. I don't need a translator. I can read lips and I can write down what I have to say. Let me be independent, I signed, irritated that she wouldn't even let me have this.

"I want you to be independent, Kellin but that's not the issue here and you know it. It's not the most practical way to do it considering you would need to take notes in class, you can't read their lips and write at the same time. And what would you do if they turned around at all, so you couldn't see their lips?" She asked, and I sighed. She had a point, as stupid as it was, she had a point.

There's no way I can do this and be a normal kid?

"Kellin, you're not exactly a normal kid," she told me, her brows furrowed and she sat next to me. "I love you, son, but right now, your life is not going to be normal. She was right again, but it didn't mean I wanted it to be true, all I really wanted was to function and act like a normal kid and being deaf kept me from ever getting that. I nodded my head and stood up and just went to my room, I didn't really want to talk about any of it anymore. I was excited about going to actual high school but I didn't want to be treated any differently for being deaf. I wasn't ashamed of being deaf and it never really bothered me. What bothered me was that everyone else—my mom including—felt that I needed to be treated differently because of it.