So, for the last few months, I've been working on editing Silent Music while thinking about what I want to do for the sequel (which will definitely happen in the near future). If anyone has anything specific (or vague) that they'd like to see in the sequel, please PM me! (Oh, and I still don't own Victorious)

I hope you all enjoy the new and improved version of Silent Music, and the almost completely new chapter twelve! Enjoy!

Hollywood Arts High School. The most elite performing arts high school in Los Angeles, where only the most talented teenagers in the city went to school. As I stood outside the front doors, staring blankly at the large brick building, I couldn't help but wonder how I, of all people, had been accepted to go to school among them.

My older sister Trina dragged me out of my rather self-loathing thoughts by tapping my shoulder. I immediately turned my head so I could read her pink-tinted lips.

"You nervous?" she said and signed to me.

"I've never been more nervous in my life," I told her, speaking and signing my words as well, as I always did with my family. When I was around people who didn't know how to sign, I usually just spoke, but every once in awhile, sign language crept in, like a reflex.

"Everyone's nervous on their first day," Trina assured me. "Trust me, Tori. You've got nothing to worry about. I know Hollywood Arts is a lot different than Davila, but it's still just a high school. Not to mention that I'll be here to help you if you need me, okay?"

I finally released the breath I had been holding from the moment I woke up. "Okay. Thanks, Trina."

"Sure. You ready to go in?" she asked me. After a moment of hesitation, I nodded. Trina opened the front door and walked into the building, with me trailing at her heels.

Trina walked through the lobby so quickly, I didn't have the opportunity to really observe anything until she stopped in front of the office door located in the hallway just off of the main lobby of Hollywood Arts. I was too busy examining a gray cinderblock wall with hundreds of names written on every inch to notice that Trina was talking to me until she tapped my shoulder to get my attention.

"Tori? Are you watching me?" she asked.

"Yes, I'm watching," I assured her with my hands and my voice.

"Good. This is the guidance counselor's office. His name is L-a-n-e," Trina said, fingerspelling the counselor's name. "He's going to get you settled in."

"I know what's going to happen, Trina. You and Mom both went over the whole thing with me five times last night and this morning," I reminded her.

"I know. I'm sorry. We're nervous, just like you," Trina said. "Are you ready?" I nodded. Trina knocked on the door to the office. A few moments later, a familiar man met us in the hallway. He looked younger than the average guidance counselor, but the kindness in his rich brown eyes had a way of instantly earning my trust.

"Good morning, girls," he said. "Do you remember me, Tori? I'm Lane, we met at your audition. It was a few weeks ago, so you might not—"

"I remember you. It's nice to see you again," I told him, never bringing my eyes away from his lips just in case he said something that I couldn't risk missing.

"I'm glad you remember me," he said. "I'd just like to say again how impressed I am with your abilities. The fact that you're so skilled, especially with your…What do you refer to it as? Your condition? Your disability?"

"I just refer to it as being deaf," I told him. "It's okay to say it. It's not a bad word."

"I'm sorry. We've never had a deaf student at Hollywood Arts before. It's all very new to us," Lane said.

"Well, I've never been to a hearing school before, so this is all new to me, too." That wasn't entirely true. I had gone to a hearing school for two years, but I just liked to pretend that those two years never happened.

"Well, I'll make sure to do everything I can to make the transition as seamless as possible for you," Lane assured me. He turned to Trina and started to speak again, but since I couldn't see his lips, I had no idea what he was saying. I was grateful when Trina started to sign his words for me. It didn't have anything to do with me; he was just asking Trina if she was going to go to class. Still, I like to know what's going on as much as any other person does.

"I'm going to go to class now, Tori," Trina signed to me without using her voice. "You'll be okay with L-a-n-e, right?"

"I'll be okay, Trina. Don't worry about me," I assured her with my hands.

"Okay. Good luck." She ruffled my hair slightly as she walked away. I brought my attention back to Lane, who looked incredibly confused.

"Beautiful language," he said with an awkward expression. I offered him a small, equally awkward smile. "Now, we've offered to bring in an interpreter for you. Your mother informed me that you are rejecting our offer. Is this true?"

"Yes, it's true," I confirmed. "As long as my teachers are facing me when they talk, I should be able to read their lips."

"Are you absolutely sure you don't want an interpreter? I imagine it would make things much easier for you," Lane said.

"I appreciate your concern, but I would really like to try to make this transition on my own," I said.

"Alright. If you change your mind, please let me know," Lane said.

"I will," I promised him.

"Well, I have your schedule right here. I was thinking that I could have one of the students walk you through it."

"Sounds good. Did you have anyone in mind?" I asked.

"I did. If you would follow me, please?" Lane walked ahead of me around the corridor back to the lobby. Lane walked at a much slower, calmer pace than Trina, allowing me to really observe my new surroundings.

This school was like nothing I had ever seen before. The amount of people was the first thing that caught my eye; the lobby was packed with students. The vivid colors were another thing that made Hollywood Arts different from my old school. The walls were painted as if the work had been done by the students themselves, with every wall a separate color and decorated with street art, sheet music, and paintings of dancers.

My favorite feature was the lockers. Every single locker was decorated differently to fit each student's personality. Most of them were covered with graffiti, but there was one that resembled a refrigerator, one with a painting of Shakespeare, one with baby bottle tops glued to the surface, and one that was completely covered in spoons. Lane brought me to a locker that was decorated with a piano keyboard and had five kids huddled together before it.

"Hey, guys!" Lane said to the group. They all turned to face him.

"What's up, Lane?" a tall boy with dreadlocks that went down to his chin asked.

"Everyone, this is Tori Vega," Lane said, indicating to me with his hands. "She's new here, and I was hoping you could make her feel welcome."

"Yay! I love new people!" a girl with red hair that was obviously artificial said while she bounced up and down excitedly, making it twice as difficult to read her lips.

"We'd love to," the kid with the dreads said with a smile before extending his arm to me. "Hey, Tori. I'm André."

"It's nice to meet you," I said, hoping my voice wasn't too soft or too loud.

"That's an interesting accent," a boy with long, dark hair commented.

"It is," said a boy with thick glasses, bushy hair, and, for reasons passing understanding, a puppet. "What is it, British?" I shook my head. "Swedish?" I shook my head again. "German? Something European."

"No. Nothing European," I told him. "I'm actually deaf."

And there it was. The dreaded "deer in headlights" expression that ninety-nine percent of the hearing people I meet give me when they first find out I'm deaf.

"What the hell are you doing here?" a sinister-looking girl with pitch black hair with blue streaks and an eyebrow piercing asked me.

"Jade," Lane said with a strict expression on his face. The raven-haired girl ignored him.

"I don't know if you couldn't tell by the words above the door outside, but this is a performing arts high school. That means singing and acting," she said to me.

"Actually, Jade,there are a lot of deaf actors," the kid with the dreadlocks whose name I was pretty sure was André said with the same stern face Lane had.

"And while she might not be able to sing, she can play the piano," Lane told them. "Seriously, Tori is ten times better than a lot of professionals that I've heard. She's incredibly talented, and she definitely belongs at this school."

"Well, if she's got the talent, I say she's more than welcome," the boy with the long hair said. "Nice to meet you, Tori. I'm B-e-c-k."

I grinned when he fingerspelled his name for me. "You can sign?"

"Just the alphabet, and not very well. I'm actually surprised you were able to understand me," Beck said.

"Did you catch my name?" André asked me. "I know the alphabet, too. They taught us all in elementary school. I thought it was really cool, so I made sure I didn't forget it. My name is A-n-d-r-é."

"André," I repeated. His fingerspelling was much better than Beck's.

"That's it!" André said with a smile. He pointed at the kid with the puppet and bushy hair. "This is R-o-b-b-i-e." After he introduced Robbie, there was a moment when it looked liked no one was speaking, but by the way they were all looking at Robbie's puppet, I knew that there had to be something going on that I wasn't aware of.

"Sorry," André said. To whom, I wasn't sure. "And this is R-e-x, Robbie's puppet."

"What just happened?" I asked.

"Oh," André said, shaking his head. "Robbie's a ventriloquist. He makes Rex talk without moving his lips."

"I know what a ventriloquist is," I said, already feeling left out. There was an entire character in this group that I wouldn't be able to understand.

"We'll figure something out," André promised me before he moved his finger to the girl with the eyebrow piercing. "That's J-a-d-e." Jade made no acknowledgement. Not a smile, not a wave, nothing. André didn't look surprised as he moved on to the redhead. "And this happy little character is C-a-t."

"HI, TORI! IT'S SO COOL TO MEET YOU!" While I couldn't hear what Cat was saying, I knew she was screaming at me and speaking much more slowly than she would have.

"You don't need to scream at me. It doesn't matter how loud you talk; I still can't hear you," I told her.

"How'd you know she was screaming?" Beck asked.

"It's what everyone does when they find out I'm deaf," I explained. "You don't need to talk any louder than you normally would in order for me to understand you. And as long as you don't talk really fast naturally, you don't even need to adjust your speed for me. Over the years, I've gotten really good at reading people's lips. But I can only do it if you're speaking normally."

"Hear that, Cat?" Beck said. "You don't need to yell at her, but you might have to talk a little slower than you normally would."

"Oh. Okay! Sorry, Tori!" Cat said with a smile. I smiled back.

"So if you're deaf, what are those for?" Jade asked.

"What are what for?" I asked.

"Those." She walked closer to me and pointed at one of the silver hearing aids that went behind the outer part of my ear into the canal. They were old and dorky and I had been begging my mom for the kind that went completely inside the ear for years. "If you're deaf, why do you have these? Can you hear stuff with the hearing aids?"

"Oh. Those," I said, suddenly feeling self-conscious about my hearing aids. "They amplify sound, like a microphone. They helped me more when I was younger, before my hearing loss progressed. Now they help me with lip reading and give me sound awareness."

"Sound awareness?" Beck asked.

"When I'm wearing my hearing aids, I can faintly hear very loud noises," I began. "If an ambulance drove by, I would probably be able to hear it. Sound awareness helps me know what's going on around me."

"Weird," Jade said as she stepped away from me again. There was a pause for a brief second before everyone else in the hallway began to scramble towards classroom doors.

"What's going on?" I asked.

"The bell rang," André explained. "That means class is starting."

"Perfect," Lane said. "André, you and Tori have almost identical schedules. I was hoping that you could show her around the school, eat lunch with her, make her feel welcome."

"I'd be honored," André said. "Come with me, Tori. I'll tell you everything you need to know about Hollywood Arts."

I smiled, linking arms with André. "That sounds great."

"Not literally," I saw Jade say. I shook off her snide remark and turned my attention back to André.

I had a feeling this was just the beginning to a wonderful friendship.