Liora sat quietly at her desk, pencil dangling loosely from her hand, and her eyes held a dreamy expression. Her teacher, Ms. Roberts, was still talking but had turned her back to the class in order to write on the board. She was discussing the intricacies of the Spanish- American War but she might as well have been speaking Greek as far as Liora was concerned. Or better yet, some remote tribal language that no one outside of the tribe was able to master. Since Liora no longer had the ability to read her teacher's lips, her words sounded like the proverbial alphabet soup. Liora could make out certain letters but everything was garbled and incomprehensible.
"Coydhi an lodnf pani American War engkd slghug, " intoned Ms. Roberts. Liora couldn't make sense of anything she was saying. She took a quick peek at her other classmates. Some of them seemed bored while others were intently taking notes. All of them had a look of comprehension on their faces. Liora was sure her own face looked like the proverbial deer in the headlights. She wondered if there was some mysterious key, some code that all her classmates knew that she wasn't privy to. Was Ms. Roberts really that easy to understand? Liora tried adjusting her hearing aids. They picked up the murmurs of students behind her, the rustling of pages being turned, the irritating squeak of chalk on the blackboard. But did nothing to help the words pouring out of Ms. Robert's mouth seem more intelligible.
As she often did in these situations, Liora quickly slipped into daydreaming. She was a prisoner of a remote tribe who spoke in code. Each letter stood for something else. She was doomed to stay trapped on this distant island until she mastered their complicated language and broke the secret code. The Queen of the tribe jeered at her, speaking rapidly in her own language, followed by a series of high pitched clicks that Liora strained to hear.
"Smgbsigh meiyg Pani American ghglshe hfgbis?" she asked, a sneer on her face. One of the tribal warriors jabbed his spear at her.
Liora looked blankly at the Queen. She tried to piece the words together. The other tribal warriors began laughing.
Words poured out of the Warrior Queen's mouth. Liora tried desperately to follow along but she couldn't. Words crashed over her, surrounded her. Like a riptide, they dragged her down into a pit of confusion.
Liora felt herself at sea, swept out by a tide of incomprehensible words. She tried to swim back to shore but the water felt heavy. The words became chains, trapping her legs and dragging her down. Her head slipped under the surface.....
Ms. Roberts turned around. Just then, the bell rang. In her mind, Liora felt the chains burst. She bobbed to the surface, gasping for air. Swimming as hard as she could, she headed far away from the island and the cruel matriarch. She saw another island in the distance and paddled there quickly, arms flailing, lungs burning.
Liora shook off her daydream and gathered up her things. The hallway was a cacophony of noise coming at her from all directions. Students shouted and laughed in the hall but she could understand none of it. The high pitched jangling of the bell had triggered her tinnitus and she was now contending with the noise inside of her as well as around her. Her chest tightened and her breathing became shallow. The noise inside her head grew louder, drowning out everything around it. She looked for a place to escape but there was none. She swallowed the scream building in the back of her throat. She felt trapped.
"Breathe," she whispered to herself. "It will pass. It always does."
She lifted her head and practiced her breathing. Slow, deep breaths. She filled her belly and then her chest with air. Breathing out slowly, she let her chest relax and then watched her stomach deflate. She repeated the process a second time and then a third. Her heart rate slowed. The tinnitus lessened slightly, allowing her to focus on where she was. She slipped into her classroom and lowered her head, waiting for class to start while trying to avoid eye contact with anyone around her.
Her next class was algebra. Her least favorite subject. She tried to focus, watching her teacher's lips intently in order to understand what he was saying. Mr. Donley was a nice man, even if she hated the subject he taught. He made a point of looking at her when he was speaking and he didn't have a mustache, which made it easier for her to lipread. But the stress of having to listen so intently and trying to lipread what her teacher was saying, on top of the already confusing subject matter, quickly exhausted her. She felt her thoughts drifting and the temptation to slip into another daydream was enticing. She longed for the days of elementary school when she would slip a novel into the covers of her math textbook and read. Anne of Green Gables was always her favorite. She had read every novel in the Anne series at least a dozen times over. She longed to be like the imaginative and irrepressible Anne and have a 'bosom friend' like Diana Barry. She especially longed for a boy like Gilbert Blythe to enter her life and sweep her off her feet. But at sixteen, there were no boys in her life and very few friends. Her reserved attitude and difficulty communicating with others pushed most potential friends away. She spent most of her time in her imagination or buried in a novel.
Her teacher wrote several problems on the board. 'Find X.' Liora wondered what was so important about finding X. Would she ever actually use this information? She wrote the problems on her paper, then allowed herself to slip into another daydream.
Liora floundered in the rough surf as she approached the next island. Her arms felt like lead. She swam desperately towards the shore, struggling against the tide that threatened to suck her back out to sea. Kick. Paddle. Kick. Paddle. The waves snuck up behind her, gathering her up in their watery arms and sucking her down into their murky depths. She found herself bounced about underwater as if trapped in a giant washing machine. Her lungs burned. Sand, shells, and rocks tore at her skin. Finally, when she could take it no longer, the wave released her and she bobbed up to the surface momentarily. One gasped breath and she was under again, fighting against the ocean's vise-like grip. Finally, after she felt like she could take it no longer, a wave spat her out on the shore.
The sand was surprisingly rough with pulverized bits of shells and sea glass. Liora had expected it to be silky smooth but instead, it was jagged, cutting into her feet as she walked. She gazed upwards. In front of her was a smooth-faced cliff wall. Mountains with knife-edged peaks jutted into the clear blue sky. The jungle lay behind, the distorted cries of animals within floating out, sounding eerie and mysterious. If Liora was to find food and shelter, she would need to find a way to traverse the cliff wall and enter into the menacing jungle.
Liora studied the sheer cliff face. She stretched her hands up, searching for a handhold. Her fingers only met slick granite. Walking up and down the beach, she looked at the mountain. Finally, she found a narrow passageway, almost too tight for her curvy frame to slip through. She breathed in and out and squeezed into the entranceway. Walls of rock pressed against her. The sun was a narrow slit high above, letting in precious little light. Liora found herself sucking in her stomach as the rocks closed in on her. The passageway twisted and turned, leading to an exit that popped her out like the cork on a champagne bottle.
Leafy trees towered overhead. The air was thick with humidity and the cries of animals. Monkeys screeched. Parrots squawked. Jaguars snarled from hidden corners. The leafy canopy nearly blocked out the sky. Down on the forest floor, it was dim and gloomy and Liora found herself inching forward slowly, worried that she would trip over an unseen rock or root.
All the jungle noises assaulted Liora's ears. It all jumbled together into a confusing roar. In the dimly lit forest, the sounds seemed amplified. It overwhelmed her. With her vision dimmed, she stumbled over roots and rocks. She made her way blindly through the forest, driven only by the desire to escape the noise.
Finally, she stepped into a clearing. The sun broke through, shining on her face. She found comfort in its warmth and was relieved she could finally see clearly. In the corner of the clearing was a tiny stone house. She ran to the door, relieved at the possibility of finding shelter. She tried the door but it was locked. The windows were shut and no amount of effort on her part would open them. She went back to the door again. There was an inscription on the door.
3x+5=9x Solve for X.
She realized that underneath the handle was a keypad. She solved the equation and punched in the algebraic formula. The heavy stone door swung open silently. She stepped inside. No one was home. She looked in the pantry and found a supply of food. There were also steps leading down to a cellar. When she went down the steps, she found a cold cellar with a supply of water, milk and fruit juices. She had found food and shelter and was safe for the moment. The clearing was so peaceful. Then a loud shrill clanging broke the silence...
The next bell rang, signaling lunchtime. Since she didn't have to hurry to her next class, she waited until the hallway cleared and went to her locker. She grabbed her lunch and headed for the library. There were no friends waiting for her in the lunchroom, no one saving a spot for her at one of the lunch tables. Even if she had friends waiting there, the noisy cafeteria would have made it impossible for her to understand anything they were saying. She slipped into the library and headed for a back corner, hoping to eat her lunch undetected. She pulled out her novel from her purse and began to read. This was how she spent her lunch period every day at school, hidden in the library with her nose buried in a book. Today she was reading yet another Nancy Drew mystery. The book had been her grandmother's and she turned the old pages carefully. Nancy, along with her friends Bess and George, had always seemed so adventurous. Liora had always longed to be like Nancy, to be both sophisticated and adventurous, with close friends who joined in her escapades. Nancy seemed to have it all....a loving father, great friends, a handsome boyfriend and, most importantly, she was always the heroine in every adventure. Liora longed to be a heroine, to help people and change the world for good. But she doubted she could ever be like Nancy Drew. She couldn't even change herself. Most days, she felt like she merely muddled through life.
Liora couldn't remember a time when she wasn't dreaming of some fantasy future where she would magically be transported to a land of happiness and fulfillment. She had always wished to be older, as if being older somehow translated into being happier. All the teen characters in her favorite books had numerous friends, went on dates and had fun adventures. Liora had hoped that when she became a teenager, she would have those things too. But then she had turned 13, then 14, 15, 16......and it still hadn't happened. In many ways, her life was still the same as it was when she was younger. She still felt lonely. She still struggled to make friends. She still felt the pain of isolation, of being left out and never fitting in.
In her fantasy life, she had tons of friends, a guy who loved her, a family who completely understood her and some grand purpose that she would fulfill that would radically change people's lives for the better. She longed to escape her humdrum, lonely life and sail off to some faraway land where adventure and excitement awaited. She would take in homeless orphans, help provide medical care for the local people and meet a handsome missionary. Together they would fall madly in love and live happily ever after somewhere in the jungles of Southeast Asia with their twenty-six adopted children (and four of their own).
Liora shook herself out of her daydream. Her life was better now in some ways than it had been when she was younger. Liora's hearing loss had been discovered when she was only three. After spending her last year of preschool in a program for hard of hearing students (where she was one of only three students), she was mainstreamed in a public elementary school. That ended her interaction with other hard of hearing or Deaf peers. She was the only child in her elementary school with hearing aids, the only one in her class that needed to leave during the day to have sessions with the speech therapist (always during storytime, which was Liora's favorite period of the day). Liora had hated wearing the FM system, which attached to her hearing aids and made them even more noticeable. Using the FM system required the teacher to wear a microphone and Liora always felt like that made her a burden (though it had enabled her to eavesdrop whenever the teacher forgot to turn off the microphone after she left the room). The other kids had made fun of her hearing aids. The other girls, in particular, had been very persistent in isolating her and making her realize that she was not one of them and didn't fit in. Liora was shy to begin with and the constant rejection made her wary of trying to make new friends. She started retreating into her own dream world and finding her friendships in the characters of the books she read. Her imaginary life sustained her, especially when the day had been particularly lonely. Her family loved her but she longed for friendships with kids her own age.
When she reached high school, she rejected having an IEP. She no longer wanted to wear the FM system or go to a speech therapist. She didn't want to stand out in any way. She just wanted to blend in, to hide her hearing loss as much as possible. She would rather struggle in school than be bullied. Her quiet manner didn't make her many friends but at least she was rarely picked on. Instead of waiting for others to isolate her, she isolated herself, choosing to eat lunch in the library and burying herself in a book or her imagination whenever she had a free moment. Liora would rather live in loneliness than face more rejection.
The bell rang, startling Liora out of her reverie. She contemplated her options. Her main classes were almost complete. She had English class but she never had much problem with it. She could afford to skip it and still do okay. Then she had gym class (which she hated, especially when they did team sports, as she was always one of the last to be picked), and chorus (which she loved). One of the advantages of being a junior was that she could finally drive and was able to have a car on campus. Liora was feeling exhausted after several hours of listening to teachers and trying to make sense of the world around her. She decided to make her escape and headed quickly to her locker. She packed her things and ducked out the nearest exit. Freedom lay at the end of the parking lot.
Once Liora reached the parking lot, she lengthened her stride into a brisk walk. She was desperate to get away from everyone and was worried someone would see her and try to stop her. She kept her eyes straight ahead and made a beeline for her car. Once inside, she hurriedly put on her seatbelt and quickly started the engine. She resisted the urge to peel out of the parking lot, instead driving sedately until she reached the highway. She knew her mother would be home and didn't want any questions as to what she was doing home so early. Instead, she headed east, towards the beach.
Despite being late September, the temps were warm and summery, hovering in the upper 80s. Liora rolled down her windows and cranked up the music pouring from the mp3 player hooked up to her car radio. She played all of her favorite songs as she drove. Carefree songs. Songs about finding your inner strength and fulfilling your dreams. It didn't matter that she couldn't understand the lyrics when she listened. She knew all the words by heart. She sang along at the top of her lungs, free in the knowledge that no one could hear her. As the wind whipped by her face, she felt all her worries and cares being carried away on the breeze. As she neared the beach, she could taste the salt in the air. She lowered the volume on the radio so she could hear the roar of the crashing waves.
She parked right in front of the boardwalk and got out. Her ears were ringing from listening to the radio but the ocean's roar quickly subdued it, filling her ears with the sound of the rushing surf. The sun shone brightly, beating down upon Liora's bare shoulders when she took off her jacket. She hadn't thought to bring a bathing suit but was comfortable enough in her loose tank top and shorts. The sand was hot under her bare feet and she headed to the edge of the water, walking in the cool, wet sand. The ocean lapped at her feet. Despite the beautiful weather, it was still a workday and there were few people on the beach.
Liora looked out across the ocean, to the horizon where sky met sea. The water sparkled in the distance. It seemed to call to her, bringing echoes of exotic places and faraway lands. As always, she wondered what lay on the other side. She imagined setting off in a sailboat, heading beyond the horizon. Where would she land? Somewhere in Southern Europe? Would a current catch her and send her into Northern Africa? Liora imagined another person, perhaps a girl her own age, standing on a beach on the other side of the horizon, gazing out across the sea. Was she also wondering what lay on the other side? Would they meet and become instant best friends, drawn together by the longing to discover more for their lives, discover people and places they had never experienced before?
Somewhere out there lay the calling and purpose Liora was meant to fulfill. She could feel it in her bones. She was not meant to stay here, locked up in a dream world, in a lonely and purposeless existence. She was meant to travel, to explore, to meet strangers and discover a common bond with them, sharing their lives and culture with one another. Liora knew that leaving her home would change her life. It would give her something to live for, a passion to pursue. But how would she accomplish it?