"Do you know sign language?" He asked, not meeting his friend's eyes.
---
She sat quietly, as always, trying to pay attention to the teacher. She gripped her pencil too tightly in her fist, her unfinished drawing clutched to her chest.
The teacher pointed to her. "What is your opinion on this passage, Rie?"
She opened her mouth to reply, but could not find the right words. Her throat made a diminutive squeak and her hands burst into a flurry of movement on instinct, shaping words and then sentences that no one else in the class could decipher. "In English, please." When she tried again to speak, she croaked out a few incoherent syllables and then adverted her gaze to the floor in shame.
Though she had never been deaf, her father and sister were. Her family never spoke aloud to each other; they just used the fast-paced motions, their hands dancing ferociously. The words traveled straight into the air with each sign.
She didn't have any trouble at all speaking English. In fact, she was also fluent in Spanish and French. She simply was not capable of thinking out how exactly to say what she thought. So she kept to herself.
Most of the time.
---
He saw her again today. She had stuttered and then gone silent. She had used her hands to speak.
Each movement fascinated him. He and his friends had once made up a language to speak to each other, but this was nothing like that. It was so much more complex, so much more beautiful, especially coming from her hands.
They never spoke, but he wished they did. Sometimes he could watch her for a whole class period, trying to understand her actions and marveling at her silky brown hair or her delicate fingers as she braided it. He admired her drawings, even though he only saw them from a distance. He wished that she would enroll in his art class.
Sometimes, if he was unlucky, she would glance his way and their eyes would meet. He always looked away, panic stricken. His heart thumped out of control and he felt his face burning.
He needed to just tell her how he felt, without being awkward, of course.
And now, finally, he had his chance. He would tell her. Today.
"-and that's how it's done." His friend looked at him quizzically, still trying to hold his hand in the shape that he had formed.
"Thanks." He muttered, trying to burn the gesture into his memory.
Today.
---
She sat at her desk again today, not even trying to pay attention to the lesson this time. She carefully shaped the flower petals on her paper with her pencil, stopping every now and then to erase a mistake.
Someone behind her sneezed, and she jumped in surprise, knocking her water bottle onto the floor.
She reached for it, and as she sat back up, she met eyes with Evan again. Three days in a row now, and it still made her nervous.
She fully expected him to look away, as he had every other time, but today, he held her gaze. She raised an eyebrow quizzically, but he didn't react at all. Instead, he lifted one of his hands from his lap.
She watched intently as his fingers moved, slowly and deliberately, to form a shape that she knew very well.
He touched his ring and middle fingers to his palm and extended the rest of them outward.
'I love you.'
