I woke the next morning to my phone vibrating. I'm glad I can feel or I have no idea how I would wake up in the morning. I opened my crusty eyes and groaned. 7:00 a.m. Why can't there be a night school? I would stay up all night for that. I rolled off the bed and half-crawled to the bathroom. Woah. I studied my afro in the mirror and laughed. Mornings are always so fun. My curly auburn hair is pretty long and thick, and I usually don't do much with it in the morning. I'm thankful that my hair is curly so it looks like I actually try to do my hair in the morning. I walked back to my closet and picked out my outfit for today. I put on a t-shirt with a tiger throwing up a rainbow, ripped skinny jeans, white high-topped converse, and a hot pink beanie. Very classy. I usually just wear whatever I want and I don't really care if other people like my outfit or not. I skipped back to my bathroom and put on some makeup. I don't wear much- just some BB cream and mascara. It's funny how I have the lightest shade of BB cream and I could still go lighter. I'm pale and proud. I sniffed the air and smiled. My mom always makes good breakfast. I trampled down the stairs and plopped on the kitchen stool. My mom signed, Morning sweetie..your outfit is very.. I cut in signing, Unique and Ari? She smiled and set down a plate with chocolate chip pancakes. Gosh. I want to know who invented pancakes so I can personally thank them..then again they are probably dead. I shoved pancake in my mouth while I watched the captions on the T.V. I don't mind watching captions, but I've always been curious of what the people sound like. Or what anything sounds like. But what deaf person isn't? I ran back upstairs, quickly brushed my teeth, grabbed my bag, kissed my mom on the cheek, and went out the door. I walked a couple blocks to the school and sat on the steps. I checked the time on my phone. It's only 7:40! I smiled and took out the homework I didn't bother to do last night. As I was quickly and sloppily doing my homework, I saw someone from the corner of my eye. I looked up and saw the familiar face of the attractive stranger I bumped into yesterday. He smiled and I saw him mouth Hi. I smiled and waved at him. He came over and sat next to me on the step. I looked over at him but couldn't read what he was saying. Great. He probably thinks I'm some snob that doesn't feel like talking. Wait. I flipped to a clean page on my notebook and wrote, Sorry, I cant hear you. I'm not ignoring you. I tapped on the notebook and he looked at it and smiled. He took out a pen and wrote, Oh good! I mean not good that you are deaf but good that you aren't ignoring me. I'm Zach by the way. I smiled and replied, Haha, It's fine I've been like this forever. It's just hard to communicate with people. Nice to meet you I'm Ari. :) He answered, Do you communicate with sign language? I wrote, Yes. Why? He replied, My cousin knows how to do that, but I never learned because I didn't have a reason..now I have one. :) I smiled and looked into his beautiful green eyes. He smiled back and wrote, The bell just rang. Ugh. Here we go again. I smiled and put everything back into my bag. We walked up the stairs and into the school together. It turns out that Zach is in most of my classes with me. I just didn't know because he usually sits in the front and yesterday I was way in the back. We are in all of the same core classes together so we got to be together a lot. He sat next to me and Karen in the back of every class and kept looking at me in a fascinated way. At the end of the day when we were walking down the steps, I took out my notebook and wrote, I didn't think that sign-language was that interesting. He read it and wrote, I wasn't watching the sign language. ;) I looked up, but he was already walking down the sidewalk in the other direction. I smiled to myself and read what he wrote over and over again until I got home.
