Low Volume

• Chapter Two •

     It has been a week since Jarod was told he needed a tutor. That week was spent with him doing his routine over and over with no disruptions. Until Wednesday that is.
     Jarod stepped out of his jeep after turning up to volume in his earbuds again. He knew better than to drive with music rattling his brain to mush, he felt as if it was similar to driving while intoxicated.
     Jarod held the keys to his jeep in his hand and walked towards the school in front of him. His hood stayed put on his head, not only masking the earbuds but also the cold. Fall was here already, but that isn't stopping the girls of the school to purposely dress skimpily. Jarod despised those types of people.
     He was now inside the school, but soon enough, as he passed the principal's office, he felt a hand on his shoulder. That was most people's ways of getting his attention without jumping and waving their hands around frantically.
     Jarod turned to see who it was, the principal herself. The woman gestures towards the door and Jarod walked inside. Ms. Damison, the principal, was disappointed in Jarod. She has been trying to help him since he walked into her school about two years ago, but not once has he ever obliged.
     He sat down at her desk and Ms. Damison sat on the other. Knowing that he was 'deaf', she had already preprinted out a sheet of paper.
Here is another things about Jarod, he absolutely refused to learn sign language. What was the point if the whole reason he stopped talking was to stop talking? He of course didn't tell anyone that, never in a million years would he ever admit to being able to talk the entire time. So he never did, and most of his teachers would print out everything they taught into a packet and send him home with it to study. He burns the packets when they pile up.
Jarod read over the page:

Parent/Guardian of Jarod Kim,
    It has come to my concern that several of our students grades are decreasingly low. In hopes of raising these grades, the school's teacher staff has decided to appoint several people a tutor.
     Jarod Kim is one of the students that are to start being tutored. His/Her tutor will be Violet Erinsol and they will be meeting in the library after school every Wednesday and Friday.
     If your student decides to skip out on a tutoring session, he/she will have a consequence. The first offense is equal to one day of detention. The second offense will be a weeks worth of  detention. The third offense is in-school suspension.
     Hopefully, with this process, your student will have his/her grades raised to a passing level.
    
     At the bottom of the page, Ms. Damison had signed her name as well as the vice principal.
     Jarod looked to the woman in front of him with a betrayed look. He thought that if he didn't try to get a tutor, they would leave him alone. Instead, the principal had hand picked a tutor for him and he was now being forced to go to sessions after school. He had trusted Ms. Damison to forget about it, and now that she has down this he wasn't sure whether or not he will be able to let his guard down with her ever again.
The woman looked at Jarod with an apologetic look. She opened her as if she was going to say some thing then closed it quickly. He's deaf, she thought thinking of herself as stupid. So instead, she searched for a sticky note and pen, 'I'm sorry, but it's for your wellbeing.'
Jarod o let read up to sorry and got up to leave, abandoning one of the few people who still held hope for him. He exited the office and into the hallway, almost leaving the school entirely. But, thinking of the consequences, he stayed.
He never even bothered took to his locker, knowing that he wouldn't need anything in it. So he ended up going to half of his classes with his bag.
Throughout the day, Jarod kept a straight face. He tried not to think about having to get a tutor, well going to the session after school really, but it was really the only thing he managed to think about. He would rather have those thoughts in his head than the usual ones, though, so he wasn't complaining. Not like he would anyways.
Eventually, the time had come where Jarod had togo to the library. He realized the painful truth, he didn't know who Violet Erinsol was. Or anyone in his own grade for that matter. So he just stood against the wall of the library when he got there.
There was a line of both boys and girls ahead of him, one held a clipboard. That probably has all the dumb kids names on it, Jarod thought to himself.
He waited and waited for his tutor to come meet him, but they didn't. In fact, everyone else was paired off with their tutors, all except Jarod and another girl. Said girl was in fact Violet, Jarod's tutor.
He will have to meet me, she thought, I don't think you're actually deaf, Sir Jarod.
Eventually, Jarod had enough of waiting and walked towards the girl. Violet smiled.
"Hi, I'm Violet. I will be tutoring you," she said happily.
     He looked at her with a blank expression, then moved his eyes over the large room. Jarod spotted a bunch of tables where other people were working as well, so he moved his body in that direction. After a few strides he turned to see if the girl was still standing there, only moving her head in the direction of Jarod.
He rolled his eyes and over exaggeratedly moved his arms in the direction of the tables, hopefully communicating to her that that was the place they were going.
     Violet annoyingly smiled back and walked eagerly towards the tables. Jarod shook his head, irritated, and followed her. He dropped his bag down onto the ground next to the chair he planned on sitting in. Violet sat next to him.
     "Okay," She started in a whisper, "before we start studying, what's your name."
     Jarod looked at her lips moving, then flicked his eyes back up to her's, all the while keeping a deadpan expression. He took out a notebook from his bag as well as a pen and wrote something down. Jarod then pushed the papers towards Violet.
     'I can't hear you, honey bunches.' She read off the paper. She snickered a little bit at the name he decided to call her before writing something back.
     'So you really are deaf?'
     'No'
     'Are you really mute?'
     'No'
     'Then why does everyone think you are?'
     'I don't know ask them'
     'Why do you act like you are?'
     'I don't act like anything. I act like Jarod fucking Kim and that's it. Yeah I choose not to talk and yeah I choose not to hear, but I don't act deaf and mute. It was you guys who put those labels on me because I decide not to do basic things. One of the many things I hate about the world and society.'
     Jarod stared at Violet, waiting to see a response come from her. The only thing he got was a blank stare at the paper and a slight frown. He took this time to observe what she looked like. Her hair was a dark dark brown, close to a black. Her skin tone clashed with his own, she was more pale and he was an olive color. Though, her eyes surprised him the most. Even though as they flittered across the page to read his writing, he managed to see their color. They were a mixture between silver, pale blue, and grey it looked like. The concoction made an inhuman color that was so enchanting he forgot why he was looking at her for a few moments.
     He stared at her as she wrote something else down, then looked back up to him. It was Violet's turn to stare.
She too watched his features. She noted his darker skin tone, but his hair, which was barely
Sticking out from the top of his hood, was a light chestnut brown. The girl also took note of the beauty marks and freckles that littered his face and couldn't help but to wonder if they trailed through the rest of his body. Then her eyes flicked to his and Violet became deeply entranced in his eyes. Even though they weren't moving at the current moment because Jarod was staring blankly at the piece of paper. His eyes were black, not entirely but you could barely see where the pupil ended and the iris started. She became obsessed.
     Jarod continued to read the sentence over and over again in his head. Trying to decided how he would asses the problem.
     'Why do you choose not to hear and not to speak then?'
     'I thought we were here to study math.
     'Yes, we are, but I want to figure out what's going on inside the brain of Jarod Kim.'
     'Good luck with that, Princessa, because I don't even know what goes on in there.'
     'Wait... Princessa? Am I your Princessa now?'
     'Could you just focus on the fucking math problems?'
     Violet laughed before she reached down to pick up her math textbook. She had rejected people who would call her those kinds of names, but when Jarod did it, she didn't mind. She didn't mind it one bit.