Chapter Two

Gracie doesn't look up from her spot when Liam comes into the kitchen, even though he taps his fingers on the table like she's the one who's deaf. Her head is bent to her book, but out of her peripheral vision, she can see the older boy waiving hello.

She has to admit, Liam tries. He's friendly with her and, really, with everyone, which is surprising considering his mom got run over by a pick-up truck three months ago and he's living with practical strangers and he can't hear a thing anyone says to him.

For the first three weeks, Liam didn't bother to sign to anyone. If he was desperate to communicate – and usually he wasn't – he wrote on a notepad he carried with him. But then Mom and Dad showed him they were trying really hard to learn to understand him.

Gracie got the impression that even though he once had a mom, Liam had kind of learned to live on his own already. He just did his own thing most of the time, and Mom and Dad had to remind him that it was courtesy to tell them where he was going and when he was coming back when he left the house on that bike of his, which was one of maybe five possessions, other than his clothes, that he'd brought from California. They also had to tell him that he didn't have to fix his own solo dinner, that they would all eat together as a family, every night, or, at least, one adult would always be at the table, because sometimes one of them had to work late.

Gracie refocuses on the words as Liam opens the refrigerator door, but eventually her sight is drawn to him. He stands, his head a good six inches above the top of the freezer, whereas hers just barely rises above the bottom part of the fridge. She doesn't understand how her dad can be so tall when she was the shortest kid in her fourth grade class last year. It's not as if her mom is short, either, at five foot eight.

Liam's got the fridge door open and he's drinking orange juice straight from the carton, because he was apparently raised in a barn. Literally. His mom rented one on an old Californian farm that had been turned into a winery. She made bedrooms in the loft and used the bottom as a dance studio where she gave lessons to spoiled, rich Californian girls, or at least that's what Gracie imagines. She doesn't put herself in the spoiled rich girl category, even though her mom is a big time Dean of Admissions at a "sort of ivy but not the ivy" college and her dad is a high school head football coach and they live in a 3,000-square foot house and she and Liam are both going to private school next year. She doesn't put herself in the category because even though her parents make plenty of money, they've always acted like they don't. When it comes time to ask for an iPhone you'd think they'd just barely managed to make the mortgage last month and that Mom had to spend an hour clipping coupons.

Of course, they got Liam an iPhone. They said he's older and besides he needs it. He's got all these special aps on it, like one that vibrates and flashes when it detects a loud noise, so, Gracie guesses, he doesn't get hit by a truck like his mom. Of course, his mom could hear and she still got hit by a truck. He's also got an ap that will record people speaking and transcribe the words into a written note, which he doesn't really need, because he can read lips. He's got an ASL dictionary on that thing, and a closed captioned video news ap, and she doesn't know what else.

All she gets is the prepaid cell phone, for emergencies. It doesn't have internet or even text messaging. Not that she has anyone to text message, really. She had a neighborhood friend two years ago, but the girl moved, and after a while she stopped e-mailing. She gave Gracie her phone number when she moved, but Gracie never called her. She hated to talk to people on the phone. It was even hard to talk to Julie on the phone sometimes. Gracie didn't know why, but she never quite understood when it was her turn to speak.

Gracie can tell Liam really likes her dad. He's always sort of hovering around Dad's edges, when he's not out riding his bike. Liam never met his own father, and doesn't even know his name. Gracie overheard Mom saying that Liam's mom didn't even know who the father was, and so Gracie had to ask how that was possible, which lead to a bunch of other questions, which resulted in Gracie learning pretty much everything there is to know about the birds and the bees. All from Mom, of course, because Dad sure made himself scarce fast when the real detailed questions started rolling in.

Gracie knows all about Liam not because she ever talks to him, but because she's been listening in on her parents' conversations ever since Liam moved in with them, wondering where she's going to end up in all this. She's taught herself some sign language, secretly, from a book and through the internet, even though she told her parents she wasn't going to learn it, that Liam wasn't her problem. She wants to know what he's saying to her parents, after all.

When Liam catches her eye now she looks straight back down at her book. She hears the fridge close. The glass door that leads outside slides open. When it slides close, she looks up to see that Dad's out there, standing at the edge of the porch with a beer in his hand, surveying the yard, which needs trimming at the edges. He sets his beer down so his hands are free so he can talk to Liam. Because Liam's the one he talks to most of the time now. Dad's even changed jobs so Liam can go to the best school for the deaf. Franklin Academy. So Dand Liam will be going to school together every morning. Mom will drop Gracie off on her way to work, but Liam will have Dad all to himself.

Not that Gracie's parents aren't sending her to a good school for fifth grade. Finally. She's only told them she didn't learn anything every year for the past three years. At least her parents say it's a good school. Veritas Academy is supposed to be "challenging." Her mom loves that word, "challenging." Gracie needs to challenge herself, she always says. Like she's her own game or something.

Gracie will have to learn a new language – Latin – and she'll have to catch up with the other kids who started learning it in fourth grade. She'll be assigned to read classic literature instead of all the stupid books they had to read in school last year, like Diary of a Wimpy Kid and all those Roald Dahl books. Well, Roald Dahl isn't stupid. She likes Roald Dahl, actually, but, come on, she read all those books in first grade already. She's going to have to memorize and recite poetry too. She likes poetry, but she doesn't like the idea of reciting it. And sometime she'll have to do in front of the whole class. Three times a year, she'll have to do recitations in front of the whole school.

When her parents took her to tour Veritas Academy, she wanted to crawl into a closet. All those kids standing up and chanting, reciting the history time line in unison, all projecting their voices, like they were trained actors or something.

But Mom says it will be good for her, that she can become a "learned extrovert" like her father. Dad apparently used to hate speaking in front of people too, and now he does it all the time, and he's totally okay with it. He's even okay with going to parties to "woo the boosters," well, if Mom helps him out and does some of the talking for him. He can initiate and maintain conversations at all those parties, even if he has to "seriously decompress" when he comes home. He can be "on" when he has to be, Mom says, even if his hair stands on edge when someone unexpectedly interrupts a quiet evening at home. He'll even go to the Braemore cocktail parties with her, at least, every other one. "It's true," he tells Gracie, "Sometimes you will have to do social things you don't like to do. Especially if it helps your job or it's important to people you love. But you don't have to do them as often as Mom thinks."

Gracie can learn to be "on" too, Mom says, just like Dad did. For the most part, Mom knows when to give Dad his "introversion time." He has a "man cave" down in the basement, except apparently it's okay for Liam to creep in on "introversion time." Maybe because Liam can't talk. Maybe because he's a boy. Maybe because his mom just died. At any rate, the basement isn't by invitation only anymore, at least not for Liam. Liam's down there a lot.

Dad used to defend Gracie, saying, "Not everyone's the same, Tami. Maybe she doesn't need to learn to be on." But now Dad agrees Veritas Academy is the best place for Gracie, and even if he didn't, he'd probably be too busy with Liam to fight Mom about it.

"You'll like Veritas, Gracie," he insists. "You're just not challenged enough at your old school. And the regular public speaking part…it'll be good for you. Trust me on that one. That's a skill that can't hurt you, whatever you decide to do with your life. And the girls…I think maybe they'll be nicer. You know, because of all that emphasis on character education."

Gracie doesn't dare to believe that's true, because the stuff that happens usually happens when adults aren't around anyway. Most of the time she just ignores it and buries her nose in a book. And when she does cry, she tries not to do it in front of those girls, or even in front of Mom or Dad, because then they just worry, worry, worry…and they give her those sidelong looks, like they're afraid she'll never be a Mrs. Julie Saracen, light of the Chicago art parties, NPR talk show host, supportive wife, the daughter who always had friends.

Dad's laugh penetrates the solid glass door. It's deep and low. Gracie wonders what Liam's done to make him laugh like that. She used to make him laugh like that.