Daddy's Little Girl

            "Daddy!"  Isabella Wayne rushed forward and embraced her father, arms barely meeting around his waist.  She was two months shy of her thirteenth birthday and extremely tall for her age, the top of her head almost reaching his shoulder.  Her long black hair was braided down her back, styled by her roommate, Tiffany.  She wore the mandatory uniform of the Bellweather Academy: white oxford shirt with the crest embroidered on the left pocket and blue and green plaid skirt, with white socks and brown loafers.  Because it was Saturday they weren't required to wear the navy blue blazer.  If anyone had bothered to ask Isabella her opinion on the outfit she would have told them to burn it, but no one did.

            The Bellweather Academy was as boring as it was exclusive.  It had started out as your run-of-the-mill prep school, but more and more wealthy families started sending their special needs kids there, the deaf, the blind, the handicapped.  Soon that's what they started catering to, offering superior education for those kids who didn't fit in to regular classes.  And that was the biggest problem in Isabella's opinion.  To her being deaf was like having dark hair: it was just a part of her.  She got along fine with it.  She could lip read in five languages, not to mention signing.  She didn't care for signing though, except when she and Tiffany could have secret conversations.  Then it was fun.

            She hated the school even more than she hated the uniform and had become slightly rebellious, but she was a good girl and never caused more than a little harmless mischief, like sneaking into the kitchen and dumping a load of pepper on the headmaster's supper.  She hadn't been caught that time, but there were others.  As far as she knew they'd never called her parents for those pranks though, not wanting to bother such important people with trivial matters like toilet papering the dorm halls or instigating a food fight in the cafeteria or breaking into the nurse's office and stealing a box of rubber gloves to make water balloons.

            But aside from being known as a troublemaker, she was also the top student at the school, excelling in every class she took, and had even started tutoring the younger kids (although what she taught them was not always from the curriculum).  For some reason she remembered everything she was told or read.  Her dad called it an eidetic memory or something like that.  Didn't matter.  She was tops and of course all the kids wanted to cheat off of her, which she would never, ever do.  Of all the pranks she pulled, she knew her dad would be most upset if he found out she cheated and he would give her that disappointed look, that no-child-of-mine look.  She'd only been on the receiving end of it once before and she had no intention of ever seeing it again.  It was about three years ago when her mom had refused to take her to a movie over spring break simply because she had put a frog in some girl's bed.  Isabella was furious because this was the movie everyone was going to see and she would be the only one in school not able to talk about it.  So she'd gotten angry and screamed, "I wish you were dead!"  Her dad had been in the room at the time and that was when she got The Look, and it had scared her more than anything else in the whole world.  Calmly he told her to go to her room and wait for him.  A few hours later he'd come in and sat on the bed beside her and held her as she trembled.  He looked into her eyes and carefully explained how her mom's mother had died when she was very young and how both his parents were killed right in front of him in a terrible way.  Furthermore, he went on, all life is precious and we must all do our part to preserve it.  It was an important lesson, he said, and he hoped she'd learned it well.  She had, and she made a vow to herself never to upset her father like that again.

            Now though, as she stood in the headmaster's office, she was a little concerned.  If her dad was here on an unscheduled visit, something had to be wrong.  She looked up into his face and smiled.  Surely they hadn't told him about hiding Mrs. Peabody's lesson plan?

            He smiled back in his dad-way.  She knew some people considered him grim and dour, thought he had no sense of humor.  Her mom had once said that he couldn't laugh if his life depended on it.  But Isabella knew better.  He smiled at her all the time and while he didn't laugh outright at her, she knew when he was amused with her, as opposed to those times when she just annoyed.  "How are you?" he asked looking directly at her.

            She grinned up at him and held up one hand with her forefinger and thumb touching.  "A-ok."  She spoke with only a slight distortion that people who can't hear their own voices get.  The school had a class specifically designed to teach the students to moderate their voices.  She looked around the office.  "Where's Mom?"

            His face seemed to fall at that, but he simply said, "She's not here."

            "Oh.  What are you doing here?" she asked innocently.

            "Taking you home."

            Her eyes widened.  Were they kicking her out?  "Why?" she squeaked.

            "Because we missed you too much," he said, bending down and kissing her on the forehead.  When he raised back up he said, "Now go pack your things." 

            Relief flooded through her.  She clapped her hands together and then turned and ran back to her dorm room.  She couldn't wait to tell Tiffany she was finally getting sprung.  She wondered if Dad had brought up public school with Mom.  Her mom could be so rigid about things like that.  She thought Isabella wouldn't be able to handle it 'out there'.  She was always so worried, but she had no idea what her daughter was really capable of.

            "I'm so sorry to hear about your wife, sir," the headmaster spoke to Bruce from behind his desk.

            Bruce looked him over.  "You haven't said anything to her?"

            "No sir, absolutely not."  He shook his head.  "And we made sure to discourage TV time to avoid seeing it on the news."

            "Good," Bruce nodded. 

            "Ah, Mr. Wayne, there is the matter of the damage bill.  I hate to bring it up, but if you are withdrawing her then we do need to settle up."  Bruce blinked at the man, who seemed almost rapturous at the thought of finally getting rid of her.  He could see why Isabella disliked him.  He'd actually found the pepper story amusing, and insisted they not tell her that she'd had been discovered.  Of course it had cost him a new set of bleachers for the gymnasium.

            "I'll have my accountant send you a check on Monday."

            "Very good sir."

            They waited without speaking until she returned carrying a large suitcase.  "Got as much as I could in here," she declared, dropping it down with a loud thud.

            "Fine.  We'll have them send on the rest of your things."

            "So I'm really leaving for good?" she asked him.  He nodded.  "Am I going to public school?"

            "We'll see."  He grabbed the bag and started out the door as she skipped along beside him.  Outside Terry was leaning casually against the car.  He straightened as he spotted them coming down the walk, reaching out to take the bag from Bruce and putting it in the trunk.  When he came back around Bruce said, "Terry, I'd like you to meet Miss Isabella Wayne."

            Terry smiled at her and then said,  "How do you do?" in an exaggerated way that made her giggle behind her hand.  He looked up at Bruce.

            "Isabella lip reads with almost perfect accuracy.  You don't need to enunciate so much."  Looking down at his daughter he said, "This is my friend, Terry McGinnis."

            She looked up at the young man and grinned, her cheeks flushing pink.  "Hi," she said holding out her hand for him to shake.  "You can call me Bella.  That means 'beautiful one'," she informed him.  Bruce frowned.  The only person to ever call her Bella was Mardi.  He knew the children at the school called her Izzy, though they never dared use the nickname in his presence.  She turned to him then and made several emphatic gestures with her hands.

            He scowled down at her and said, "Isabella, you know we do not use sign language to talk about people in front of them."  She giggled at the reprimand and ran around the car, climbing in the passenger door.

            "Precious," Terry commented.  "What did she say?"

            "She said you are the cutest boy she has ever seen," he paraphrased the message uncomfortably.

            "Oh.  Wow."  He smiled and nodded.  "So I'm cute.  Cool.  Hey!" he cried as the tip of Bruce's cane pinned him at the chest.

            "Don't even think about it," the older man growled.

            "Think about what?" Terry cried.  "She's only a kid for pete's sake!"

            "Exactly.  And don't you forget it."

            Terry shook his head as he slipped behind the wheel and Bruce walked around to get in the other side.  Then they hit the road.  Isabella sat between them, offering a running commentary.  She didn't even bother to see if they were paying attention as she told them how she pointed out to her math teacher that a problem on last week's exam was inaccurate or how she performed the best gymnastic routine in their last competition or how she was so sick of spaghetti and meatballs on Saturdays and could they please go out to dinner tonight, preferably for Chinese?  After about forty-five minutes of non-stop chatter she yawned and Bruce slipped his arm around her.  She leaned her head against his chest and shortly she was snoring softly.

            "So you going to tell her the truth?  About Powers?" Terry asked sullenly.  Bruce knew the young man was thinking about the loss of his own father at the hands of Derek Powers.  He would give anything to not have to deliver such pain to his child.

            "I don't know," he replied.

            Isabella wasn't sleeping completely, though long car rides always made her drowsy. Leaning against her father, just enjoying being close to him, she felt the deep rumble in his chest as he spoke with Terry.

            She remembered sounds, sort of.  Often she would try and remember what sounds went with certain things, like she would drop a fork to the floor and try to recall what the clatter would sound like.  But more often than not she really didn't care.  After all, she could just turn her head or close her eyes when she didn't like what someone was telling her, which she usually did when Headmaster Pickles (And who could refuse picking on a man with a name like Pickles?) was reprimanding her for something she had done.  Silence was golden to her.

            The only sound she really missed was her father's voice.  She remembered sitting in his lap as a little girl and listening to him read to her, and not those silly children's stories either.  He read big books with difficult words, and often he would quiz her afterwards.  His deep, serious voice always comforted her, never spoke to her like she was a child; it was music to her ears, and it was the one thing she would give anything to hear again.

            Finally the gentle vibrations from the car became too overwhelming and she drifted to sleep, happy that she was finally going home for good.