Tell Me What You Hate About Me

3: Reading the Signs

After a few hours of scanning all around campus, there wasn't a single beep from the metal detector. I didn't believe that for a second. It was a college campus with countless old bottle caps and other lost trinkets, yet I didn't find anything? Not possible.

I probably forgot to turn it on. That had to be the problem.

But was I really that stupid? Stupid enough to forget to check and make sure that I wasn't stupid, yes.

Whether I was a complete idiot or not, it still didn't fix the fact that I had wasted hours on a pre-survey with no results, and when Jack and I finally got the chance to search on Friday, I had no leads on where to go.

Maybe that was for the best, though. It would probably feel more satisfying when we came across an unexpected beep, Jack got really excited, and we dug up something that altered history as we knew it together.

Although I had found a little bit of optimism, the next day, the disappointment was still fresh in my mind, and instead of getting my hopes up again for the same reason, dampening my spirits in an old new way seemed like a better use of my time: American Sign Language class.

It sounded easy, but apparently, there were more signs than just the alphabet, and all I knew from that were the letters in my name. Either by a miracle from cramming signs right before the final or from God himself, I had made it to the intermediate level despite not knowing a thing.

There were plenty of people who had a clue, and the guy who sat in the back of the class was one of them. His dark hair was just long enough to cover his ears all the way, and with the way his clothes hugged his slim but not particularly muscular frame, it was clear he thought he really was something special.

Before I even had the chance to sit down a couple of rows away, he put his feet up on the chair in front of him (not that I wanted to sit there anyway) and looked over at me. "Welcome back."

"Thank you." I set my backpack on the floor and took my seat.

The best part was that I seemed to irritate him a lot more than he irritated me. At least I got to live in his mind for free.

In the front of the room, there was a whiteboard with homework assignments and other messages written on it, as well as a tiny little doodle of a penis, like this was high school or something. One of the messages read, Signing only! and I let out a sigh. I picked the wrong day to make my triumphant return.

"I didn't mean it literally. Where have you been the past couple weeks?" he asked.

"I got sick, didn't feel like coming, got abducted by aliens, or had other more important things to do. You can pick whichever one you want," I said.

The professor walked into the room, and I also didn't remember his name. I grimaced. Not my finest moment as a student, but was it really that important? He made a couple signs and pointed to the board. So he was serious about no verbal talking. I probably should have known that he meant business, especially since the man had a Ph.D. in Sign Language or something along the lines.

He finally looked at me and smiled. He signed something and ended it with Lindsey, but I didn't correct him that I spelled it with an A. That felt inappropriate given that I had skipped his class four times in a row and he still remembered my name.

The guy from the back of the class signed something back at him, and the professor laughed.

"Aliens?" he asked out loud. "At least she was missing my class with good reason, right Dominic?"

Indeed I was.

Dominic nodded and signed something else that I couldn't understand, and the professor laughed again.