Superhuman

I still hadn't been to the storefront that would become Quirke Family Photography, but Dad had been back and fourth at least a dozen times moving in the brand-new equipment. This morning all three of us were needed to whip the place into shape before our first-ever clients' appointment, which Mom had haphazardly scheduled for this afternoon.

The boutiques and artisan shops were nestled together on a sloping cobblestone street lined with little fenced-in trees. Our store was sandwiched between a nail salon with a blinking neon sign and a clothing store with a chic purple awning. For now, the store's façade was empty, the wide window in front bare, but we would make it our own soon enough.

The air inside was thick with the smell of dust, splintery plywood, and nail polish remover. Mom and I bustled around, trying to clear the empty space of sawdust and debris. The clothes shop next door had recently expanded, knocking down the shared wall and re-building it, making our store considerably smaller than it used to be, but Mom was sure its current size would suit our needs just fine. The bare drywall looked bleak, but it would have to do for now until we could paint it.

I twisted my hair into a messy bun and looped a ponytail holder taught around it. Have you met the family who made the appointment for today? I asked Mom once my hands were free.

I talked to the mom on the phone. She made the appointment for her son and daughter. She says she has lots of pictures of them individually, but she needs pictures of them together, she filled me in. It should be fun!

How old are they? I wondered. It couldn't be Nathaniel, could it? Didn't he say he had a younger sister?

That was all it took for me to get swept up in a fantasy in which I choreographed stunning glamour-shots of a shirtless Nathaniel, his feathery hair blowing in a breeze generated by an out-of-frame box fan.

Mom frowned. You know what? I forgot to even ask her how old her kids were! She mimed smacking her own forehead in exasperation.

It wasn't Nathaniel and his sister, then. It's no big deal, I assured her, disappointedly letting my daydream dissolve. I was just curious. We'll figure it out when they get here.

But the damage was done, and I could tell Mom was flustered. Photography was her hobby as long as I could remember, but buying the studio and living her dream was a huge step. Before we moved, she'd been a children's librarian, and Dad worked for a contractor that restored historic buildings. They poured their whole lives' savings into this transition because all three of us needed a change—me especially.

While Mom busied herself with cleaning the window of smudges, Dad waved me to the back of the studio. We need to fix this to the ceiling, he said, motioning to a heavy-looking metal rig of interchangeable muslin backdrops that lay on the dusty floor.

Couldn't you have found a neighbor kid for this? I whined, Nathaniel still on the brain.

Enough, Dad stifled me. I could tell from the way he tiredly ran a hand over his receding white-ginger hair he felt the pressure of the approaching deadline. We talked about this before the move. You'll do it, and you'll do it with a smile on your face—for your Mom.

'Do it for Mom' was sort of our mantra. Since Dad and I were deaf, we often depended on her to interpret for us around hearing people, and she likewise depended on us to take care of physical tasks beyond her capabilities. She was born with legs of unequal length, and over time scoliosis had twisted her spine into an unnatural arc. She walked with the help of corrective shoes and, depending on how much it bothered her on a day-to-day basis, a cane.

Today must have been a good day, because she lurched around the studio without the help of her cane. I wasn't nearly as spry as I reluctantly obeyed Dad and took up half of the cumbrous metal rig, bemoaning my lack of sleep.

He must have felt guilty for subjecting me to heavy lifting in the dust and the heat; the next task Dad had lined up for me was considerably easier. While he set up the lights, he had me go through his and Mom's portfolios and pick my favorites to display in frames on the wall once we got it painted.

Their portfolios weren't labeled, but it was easy to tell them apart based on subject matter. Mom liked taking candid shots of people: some deaf, some hearing; some adults, adults, some children; some smiling, some scowling; some mid-conversation, some sitting alone on park benches. Dad was more of a landscape guy; he captured stills of Mount Vernon, the National Mall, the Jefferson Memorial framed in cherry blossoms, the steps in front of the Smithsonian drizzled with snow, and the ghostly emptiness of Ford's Theatre.

As the only child of two photographers, I was often a guinea pig, and both of them had several dozen Johanna pictures that they deemed portfolio-worthy as well: me as a fourth-grader playing Cat's Cradle with other deaf girls, me as a twelve-year-old appreciatively touching a random name on the glossy black surface of the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial, me as my current seventeen-year-old self holding an armful of peonies from a neighbor's garden.

I lined up my picks from each collection in neat rows on the countertop that would become the cash wrap.

Good choices, Mom said as she looked over the selection. I love this one, she said of the most recent picture of me. Remind me to print another so I can put it up on the wall at home.

When she turned to continue her anxious puttering, I checked the time on my phone—and instantly regretted it. How was it only 9AM?

I waved at Mom to get her attention. What time did you say that appointment was again?

One o'clock this afternoon, she reminded me with a glance at her wristwatch. Oh my God, we still have so much to do!

I was equally aghast, but for the opposite reason.

Four hours away? Are you kidding me?

I was giving serious thought to asking Mom if I could go home and take a nap (and not come back), but I knew the answer would be no. I busied my hands by checking and re-checking my phone for texts from a certain neighbor boy, even though I knew there would be none. I wanted desperately to text him, but I had to let him sleep; he'd stayed up even later than I did last night.

But of course I couldn't help myself. To satiate my craving, I decided I would send him a short message to read when he woke up. "I'm a wreck! I haven't been much help at the new studio so far. My whole body hurts I'm so tired."

I was slightly ashamed of myself. I might as well have written, 'Hey! Wake up and pay attention to me!'

To my surprise, he responded almost immediately. "I'm sorry. It's my fault for keeping you up so late."

"No, it's not!" I sent back, smiling giddily. "It's my fault for opening the window and letting you in!"

"But I'm glad you did," he answered suavely.

Nathaniel was pushing all the right buttons. He must have woken up on the flirty side of the bed this morning!

I coyly changed the subject for the sake of giving my palpitating heart a break. "I can't believe you're already up. I'd give anything to crawl back into bed and sleep for days. Aren't you tired?"

"No. I got three hours in."

Was that a typo? Three hours—and that's it? "Yeah, right! That's nowhere near enough."

"I don't usually sleep more than four or five," he replied. "If I sleep any more than that, I just feel more tired."

Was he bragging about his sleep deprivation? Was I supposed to be impressed? "You're superhuman," I played along, shamelessly stroking his ego. "I can't function unless I get at least eight."

"You're the one who's superhuman. You amaze me, Johanna."

I blinked and reevaluated his last message to make sure I wasn't just imagining things—but my bubble was burst when my nosy mother tried to peek over my shoulder at what I was reading.

Who are you texting this early in the morning? she wanted to know.

S-H-E-L-B-Y, I lied, conjuring the name of a random classmate from the School for the Deaf in Virginia.

Well, give it a rest! I'm taking that stupid thing away from you if you don't come help us, Mom snipped angrily, holding out a hand for my phone. Your father and I don't pay for you to have it so you can sit on your butt and do nothing.

Crap. Here was a predicament. If Mom looked through my received texts, not only would she find out I'd lied to her about who I was texting, but she'd see what Nathaniel sent me last night and know he was in my room. On the other hand, if I deleted all the texts from last night (and this morning), she'd know I had something to hide. Either way, she'd freak out and start lecturing me about responsibility and trust and telling the truth—and I really didn't want to go through that again.

I'm turning it off, I said, stowing it in an empty drawer behind the cash wrap. I would have to risk leaving it unattended, but as long as I didn't check it too often, Mom would have no reason to suspect anything. I wished I could have sent Nathaniel a text letting him know that I'd be away, but I could always apologize for not answering later—hopefully in person, later tonight.

They'll probably let me go out again if I'm a good girl and finish all my chores, I reasoned. With that, I plunged headfirst into cleaning and organizing the studio with newfound zeal.

After three long, dirty, toiling hours, we were left with a space that somewhat resembled a functioning photography studio, albeit a still brand-new one will bare walls.

Dad looked about ready to pass out from exhaustion. I'm going to head home and take a shower, he said, mopping his sweaty forehead with his t-shirt. Are you okay to stay here and help your mother, Jo?

That wasn't him asking me to stay with Mom; that was him telling me to stay with Mom. Yes, I agreed, even though I wanted nothing more in that moment than a cool shower and a change of clothes.

It seemed Dad had just pulled away when a dented Honda CR-V came into view on the street outside and parked where his car had been.

I think that's them now, Mom signaled.

Whoop-de-do, I threw back, sarcastically pantomiming party crackers and not even trying to mask my annoyance at Dad for making me stay.

…But when I saw him, my mood did a complete one-eighty.

Lo and behold, it was Tall, Dark, and Handsome from the House of Mirrors, ducking through the doorway like he was walking into a dollhouse.

All of a sudden I was extremely aware of the fact that I was covered in a layer of filth. It must have looked like I'd rolled in dust, and my hair was falling out of its bun in sweaty ringlets. Last-minute preening would do no good at this point, so I stood in the middle of the floor and stared at him unblinkingly…

…And he stared back.

He was the picture of perfection, as pristine as I was disheveled. Those eyes, the exact color of honey, were syrupy and sweet as they took me in head to toe. He carried himself with confidence, obviously comfortable in his own skin—which, by the way, looked irresistibly soft. He raised a teasing brow when his eyes made contact with mine, and a sexy facial piercing I hadn't noticed before glinted in the afternoon sunlight. For his portrait sitting, he was dressed in a slinky, sleeveless, red-on-white basketball uniform, the number ten emblazoned across his stomach, the name 'Asad' in bold letters on his back.

'Asad'… How do I know that name?

My heart was about to be stolen—not by the mysterious basketball player, but by his little sister.

She was tiny, and devastatingly shy, hiding behind her brother's long legs and tugging at the bottoms of his knee-length shorts. He glanced down at her as though worried she would accidentally pull them off (which I wouldn't have minded one bit.) She was his 'little' sister in more ways than one; she couldn't have been older than four or five. Her mother had dressed her in a red-and-white polka-dotted sundress that was doubtless meant to both coordinate and contrast with her brother's masculine uniform. Most heartbreakingly of all, she had the same honey eyes, hers wide and watery as she gaped around our somewhat dismal studio.

Mom greeted the brother with a smile and hobbled over to shake his hand, which he returned without hesitation, momentarily dropping his bad-boy swagger. He was unshaken by Mom's uneven gait, which was a relief; I could already tell from they way his face lit up when he talked to her (looking straight down) that he was uncommonly compassionate for a boy his age.

…Kind of like Nathaniel.

After they exchanged introductions and chatted for a bit, Mom turned to me and fingerspelled their names. The little one is I-A-N-A. She's five. And this is D-A-J-A-N. He's your age, she said with a knowing wink. Their mom is going to be here later, once she gets off work.

So that's his name. Dajan.

Now I know I've seen that name somewhere before…

I turned his name over and over in my mind, but I still couldn't find where I knew it from. Utterly perplexed, I shied away and went to adjust Mom's tripod so that her camera sat at a higher angle.

Good thinking, Mom signed to me over her shoulder when she saw what I was doing.

What setup do you want to go with first? I asked, distractedly reaching to pull down the appropriate backdrop.

I could feel Dajan's eyes on me as Mom and I signed back and forth. He watched us both carefully, politely, and with considerably more interest than most other hearing people did.

Plain white, Mom decided. First I want to take a few of them standing just like this. It makes for a cute comparison, since he's a giant and she's so little.

I rolled my eyes. Why did I feel so offended by Mom's suggestion? Mom, I don't want you to make him do that. Don't you think he has to put up with enough crap about his height? He probably can't go anywhere without someone saying something about it. And besides, I thought the whole point of having portraits taken with his little sister is to bring them together, not set them apart. Isn't that what you said their mom wanted?

Mom smiled, genuinely impressed. I think you're right. You're pretty good at this, Kiddo.

I smiled back, appreciative of her understanding. She knew all too well what it was like to be set apart for being different.

In that case, go get me one of those tall director's chairs so we can try a few with her up on his level, Mom requested. Then maybe we'll try some with both of them sitting on the ground.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Dajan kneel down beside Iana, presumably to whisper something in her ear. But he didn't.

He pointed at me.

See that pretty girl right there? he signed, slowly and carefully, so that she could understand. That girl is deaf, just like you.