Hearing his Heart Beat

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Remember that you were art long before he came to admire you and you'll continue to be art even when he's gone. A masterpiece is still a masterpiece when the lights are off and the room is empty. - Charlotte Geier
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I'm currently in my basement dancing. Even though I can't dance for my drill team or for my scholarship anymore, I can still hear the music in my head. It's the one thing no one can actually strip from me. Right now I have the music playing so loud on my surround sound system that I can feel the vibrations and it makes me happy to feel something again. It's like losing one of your senses makes you lose them all.

My mom comes down the stairs and waves her hands frantically.  I turn to her and give her a sad smile.

"Door, David, Crying." She spells out in sign really badly and I smile at her efforts before running up the  stairs and to my front door.

I see David standing there with tears in his eyes.

"What's up?" I ask him and he hands me a price of paper.

Dear Shanna,
I've been burdened for a while on how to earn your forgiveness and trust. I was lost for a long time and I had no way of expressing how I was feeling. I treated you so horribly and I made your life so much harder and I'm so sorry for that. I just wanted you to know that at the end of the day aside from the scholarships and the reputation, I want your forgiveness because I love you and I'm sorry and knowing what I did to you keeps me up at night.

I sigh and look at him, fresh tears stain his flushed cheeks and he won't meet my eye. He's still so stunning to me.

"What do you want me to say, David?" I ask and he shrugs

"What was the point of this?" I ask

"To get that off of my chest, I guess." He mouths

"Well then you have a nice day." I say about to close my door when he stops me

"Is there anyway, you would ever give me a second chance?" He mouths and I can tell he practiced hard to able to mouth clearly

"Not a chance." I say closing my door and walking back down to my basement. I can't lie, David used to be a beautiful person that I was so deeply in love with, but I don't know David anymore.
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My phone's flashlight flashes and I stop dancing and look to see that it's a text from Brendan. He's my next door neighbor, we were the best of friends growing up, but just kinda drifted apart as some childhood friends do. As you grow up and find what your passionate about and become who you are sometimes you're just not compatible with people anymore and I've learned that that's okay. I open the text curious as what he might want.
Brendan: Drunk balcony talk?

I let out a light laugh. Back in middle school Brendan and I used to steal alcohol from his mothers quite impressive pantry full and talk about all the pressures of being a 14 year old on his balcony and we called them drunk balcony talks.

'Be over in fifteen' I text back and then hurriedly taking a shower and changing into leggings and a oversized long sleeved t shirt before running across our lawns to his front door which by habit I just walked through.

His older sister is making out with her boyfriend on the couch and despite my interrupting, her face lights up when she sees me walk through the door.  Brendan obviously never told her that I'm now deaf, because she rambles on about something and I can't read her lips since she's speaking so quickly.

Thankfully Brendan comes down the stairs and says somethings to his sister quite angrily before dragging me to their kitchen.

"I'm sorry about her, I told her, she just never thinks about anything other than her boyfriend these days." He signs and I smile. He's been taking sign language since we were in middle school. He's always wanted to adopt deaf kids and work as an interpreter for some big company.

"It's fine, my own mother even does that sometimes. Your sign has gotten really good by the way." I sign back and he smiles at me

"Thanks." He signs back

We pick a bottle of peach vodka out of the pantry before heading back upstairs to his room and out the glass doors to his balcony.

"So how's life?" He signs

"Besides my boyfriend cheating on me and successfully getting me hit by a car and then finding out that I could possibly be deaf my entire life? I'm living every teenagers dream." I joke and he shrugs

"If anybody is tough enough to go through something like this and come out swinging it's you." He signs as he takes a sip and passes the bottle

"So what's wrong?" I ask as I take a sip and he furrows his eyebrows at me

"Don't bs me Brendan, you've never wanted to have one of these talks unless your world was falling apart, what's up?" I say verbally

"Maybe I just wanted to catch up." He defends and I rolls my eyes, showing that I wasn't buying it

"He's got a girlfriend now." He signs as a few tears slip down his cheeks and my body tenses with anger as my mind latches around who he's talking about. Jorden Michaels. Star football player. Smart as a calculator. Coaches kid. They boy was damn near perfect, except for the fact that he was hiding his sexuality from everyone.

Brendan and him have had a secret relationship going on since we started high school and even though he always claims that he doesn't care what people think of them, he's always made Brendan keep them a secret. He wouldn't even talk to Brendan in public, and I've always hated the way he treated him.

"I feel like he just used me," Brendan signs "I loved him."

"Well." I say taking another sip from the bottle and passing it back to him

"I've just recently gotten over a broken heart and I can honestly say that the whole keep your head up and forget about them pep talk is bs. You wanna know the cure to a broken heart is? Getting even." I say and he gives me a questioning look

"Look it's a Saturday night, the football team is at an away game which means his pretty new sports car that daddy bought him is parked in the schools parking lot. The schools security cameras turn off at nine, it's 10:45, which means we have roughly forty five minutes before they get back to school, you still have that bat from when you played baseball?" I ask and he instantly shakes his head

"I'm not gonna destroy his car, Shanna! It's not gonna do anything, but get us in trouble." He signs back

"Negative my friend, it'll make you feel better." I say with a small laugh and he rolls his eyes at me but gives me a small smile back

"Okay so you don't destroy the car, but you can destroy his pride." I say as he takes another sip

"What do you mean?" He signs

"Tell the world what he would never let you tell. He's always claiming that he doesn't care what people think? Well call him out on that!" I say

"I can't do that to him. It'll hurt him so bad, it'll ruin him..." Brendan signs

"You mean like he did to you?" I ask as I take another sip

"Fine, Monday morning during lunch. It's going down." He signs and I smirk. I'm gonna help my childhood best friend get even.