Matt Braddock does not know what it is to be normal.
Correction: Matt Braddock knows what normal is supposed to be, and he's not it. Normal is someone like Haley, like David Michael, like Nicky or Becca or Jackie Rodowsky. Except that Jackie is so accident prone that it can't possibly be normal and David Michael lives in a mansion and Becca has to use special makeup when she and Haley and their friends make each other at slumber parties and Nicky has the largest family of anyone that Matt knows of; and Haley has a brother who can't hear a word anyone says to him.
Matt thinks he's just as normal as all of them, with their quirks and ticks, but normal does not mean being the same as everyone else. Normal means being the same as everyone else only in certain ways. Normal means being able to think, to see, to walk, to run, to touch, to speak, to hear.
Matt has never known what it is to hear, and so Matt does not know what it is to be normal.
It's not that he is bitter or sad. Sometimes he feels jealous of others, of course; of how easily they communicate with anyone, how they can dance and sing to music (and what is music, anyway?), how they can know when someone is talking to them without being face to face, how the little babies and children can understand their parents and their parents can understand them without time lost learning a new language to talk about the simplest of things. But usually he doesn't think about it. It's not that he doesn't notice. He just doesn't think about it unless something reminds him again. It's like Nicky and his family. They're always there and part of his life, but because he has never known what it is like to have only one brother or sister or even less than five, he thinks nothing of it. It is normal for him, until someone asks him, You have how many brothers and sisters? that he remembers how unusual he is. Matt's deafness is the same way. It is always there and always part of him, but usually he just...forgets.
Until some new bully takes advantage of the fact that Matt can't hear him coming and shoves him into the mud. Until he has to talk to a stranger who can't understand sign language. Until, until, until...until Haley comes home crying and doesn't scream or yell but lets her fingers and hands fly, her anger and hurt clear even without sound. Why can't you be normal? Matt doesn't even try to answer anymore. His answers all mean nothing.
Once, when he was very sick and had to stay home from school, he saw a show on television where there were people who had been in horrible accidents or wars or been very ill, people who had lost their hearing or vision or hands or legs or the ability to speak. They all talked about how they missed what they had lost and being like everyone else. Matt can understand that. If he suddenly couldn't see or walk, he would feel the same way. But because he has never heard a sound in his life, he cannot miss sound. He does not even know what sound is, the same way that he does not know what it is to be a normal boy. What Matt does know is who he is; Matt Braddock, ten years old, Haley Braddock's younger brother and his parents' only son. He knows what it is to be Matt. He only wishes that he could explain that to Haley sometimes, but how could he explain that he is normal for himself? He cannot. Not when the very act of signing his answer reminds her how not normal he is compared to what she knows.
When Matt was younger, he used to hide in his room and cry when Haley said these things to him. She said them much more frequently then, of course, but even if she told him every day he would not cry anymore. He's in fifth grade, only a few months away from leaving elementary school forever. He is too old to cry just because his sister says something that hurts his feelings. She doesn't even mean it, really. She loves him, he knows she does. She takes him to movies when their parents let them, she plays with him at the pool and when the Pikes invite them along to Sea City, and she teases him about how he still asks for a babysitter when she can't watch him, not because he needs a babysitter but because he always asks if it will be Jessi. Matt has always liked Jessi the best of all of his babysitters. He thinks he might love Jessi. Sometimes when Haley has really upset him, he wishes that Jessi were his sister instead. The only people who treat him the way she does, like he is completely normal, are his parents and Nicky. He worries about the day that Jessi leaves for college, like his cousin in Stanford. Luckily, he'll always have Nicky around. Jessi is perfect but she's his babysitter. Nicky is his best friend, and so they'll never be apart.
Matt has a lot of friends. There will always be bullies, but everyone else is his friend. He likes people. That's part of who he is. But he likes Nicky the best by far. The other kids learn sign language so that they can understand him. Nicky learned it better than all of them not because it was the only way to understand Matt, but because it was something they shared. He told Matt it was like a secret language. Matt's deafness isn't strange to Nicky, it just comes with him the same way that the rest of the Pikes come with Nicky. He treats the fact that Matt can't hear exactly the way that Matt does, never really forgetting but not thinking about it at all. He can talk to Matt normally or he can sign, and Matt can respond either way, and it doesn't have anything to do with him being deaf anymore. It's just the way things are and that's cool.
Matt can't wait for the school year to end. Not only will he be able to hang out with Nicky all day every day again (at least if their parents say that it's okay) but next year will be his first year at Stoneybrook Middle School and he and Nicky might be in classes together and they can see each other between classes, too, instead of just on the weekends and a few hours after Matt comes home from school. Both of them are excited for this. Matt might be sad when Jessi leaves for college, but nothing will ever keep him and Nicky apart. They will always be together.
Matt knows it.