"How was the festival?" Josh asked, approaching the three teenagers outside Loco Bueno. "You got a candle?"

"I made one for my mom, Tyler made one for his bedroom, and Riley made one for Lucas," Maya said and signed, and Riley nodded.

'Vanilla and shea,' she fingerspelled slowly for Josh, handing him the candle to smell.

"Nice," Josh said and signed. "Shall we get something to eat? I'm starving."

Tyler nodded. 'My parents said they would have some burritos ready for us at 6. On the house.'

"Oh, no, we can't accept that," Josh said after Maya had translated for him.

'On the house,' Tyler repeated, grinning. 'We don't take no for an answer, especially not from our new friends.'

Riley smiled wide, her chest jumping at the word 'friend'. Tyler hadn't even said 'Deaf', she was just his friend.

'Thank you,' Maya signed. 'Now let's go eat before my stomach starts feeding on itself.'

The next morning, Riley, Maya, and Josh left early on the 9am train back to New York City, planning to be home before dinner. Maya had promised her mom she would be back to help decorate the house, and Riley had a dinner date planned with Lucas that she wanted to dress up for. Lucas had reservations for a nice restaurant that had an upscale dress code, and she was excited for the chance to dress up for once.

On the train ride home, Riley laid back with her feet on Maya's lap and signed a conversation with her, while on the other side of the car, Josh uploaded and sorted through his photos on his laptop.

"How many photos did you take?" Maya asked Josh.

"1500," Josh said and signed distractedly.

"1500?!" Maya asked, bewildered.

"Only about 10% of the photos you take are good enough to use," Josh explained, still not looking up from his laptop.

"You're going to use 150 photos?" Maya asked in disbelief.

"No, I'll probably use about 40," Josh admitted, finally looking up. "But the more options I have the best chance I have for good photos."

Maya still couldn't wrap her head around the fact that Josh had taken over a thousand photos and would have to sort through them all. "How much time does that take you?" She asked.

"A couple hours," Josh admitted, closing his laptop. "And then a few days to edit the top choices." He rubbed his eyes. "I can't look at any more right now though, I'm starting to see inverted colors."

'What does that mean?' Riley asked, following along the conversation as Maya interpreted everything said.

"When you stare at a computer screen going through pictures for long enough, the colors in the photographs start looking weird, like their opposite on the color wheel," Josh explained, leaning back. "Red becomes green, blue becomes orange, etc."

"Sounds weird," Maya agreed.

"The downsides of being a photo major," Josh said. "But I love photography, so it's all worth it."

'You do take nice pictures,' Riley complimented from where she was still laying.

'Thank you,' Josh signed with a smile. "Maybe I could take some photos of you guys sometime," he said aloud. "You're both very pretty, might be nice subjects."

'Aww, thanks,' Riley signed.

Maya, however, was too distracted. Had that been an excuse to compliment her, or had he genuinely thought they were both just pretty photography subjects?

Overthinking the past few days had started to give her a headache.

"I'm going to take a nap," Maya decided, before signing to Riley, 'Switch.'

Riley sat up, and Maya laid down the other way with her legs on Riley's lap.

She closed her eyes in an attempt to make it easier to knock out, the rumbling of the train underneath her lulling her to sleep.

Riley pursed her lips, looking up at her uncle, who had picked up a book and was not really paying attention to it.

Noticing her looking at him, Josh glanced up. 'What?' He asked silently.

Riley hesitated before signing slowly, hesitantly, 'I know you kissed Maya.'

A/N: Fun fact: I was on the yearbook staff for two years in high school and I actually took 2046 photos of spirit week in my senior year. 15 of them ended up in the yearbook.

I know it's a really short chapter, but I wanted to end it on a cliffhanger, and I'm super busy with my classes (they started this week). I'm not sure when I'll update again.

(I also have no idea where I'm going to go from here, haha.)

I know, I'm evil.

Kisses,

C