"My life is like a movie being watched on someone else's computer... and they're wearing the headphones. Everything is silent. It's been silent for my entire life. I have never heard anything since I was born. I was thrown into my life against my will, a girl with no family and no hearing. I feel like I live in a horror movie. My name is Maria Valasquez, and it drives me crazy that I can't make a difference. I long to make a difference, to myself, to deaf people, to the world. There are millions of things that happen to me and the world, and it's like a horror movie (a silent horror movie)-- I see everything happening around me, but I can't do anything about it. I just watch it happen, as much as I would like to scream and stop the movie so I don't have to watch something so awful, but it's life, not a movie. I just have to cope with it..." Maria Valasquez has had a hard life. Born deaf and losing her family at the age of seven, she is taken in six years later by a kind family with financial difficulties. Her best friend, Tanisha, introduces her to a new activity that allows her to make connections without verbal speech. But an accident leaves her unable to use sign language and participate in the sport she loves. Every obstacle Maria faces seems to isolate her more and more from the rest of her silent world. Then Maria comes across an impossible choice that could change her life, and make her what she's always wanted to be: normal. Written in 2015-2016 (age 11-12)