Chapter Ten

Gracie and Liam are lounging on the living room couch, watching a nature documentary on closed caption TV, and they can see Coach Taylor there in the foyer, getting ready to head out the door. Coach Taylor pops his burgundy cap in and then out with his fist before situating it on his head. The fidgeting gives the hat a bit of a crease, so it doesn't look quite so new. It's still fairly stiff and crisp, no mud splatter anywhere, because summer training hasn't even started. Today he's holding summer try-outs.

Gracie remembers the old dark green Pioneer cap, faded to a kind of olive in spots, permanently sweat stained in one place toward the back. Mom says Dad never coached a team for more than three years in a row before the Pioneers. He'll stick with the Falcons for at least four years, though, as long as Liam is in high school, because they can't afford the tuition without the waiver. Franklin Academy costs more than twice as much as the private school they're sending Gracie to. "As much as Harvard," Gracie heard Dad grumble, and Mom replied, "Harvard is actually fifteen thousand more." Then Dad muttered, "Holy sh…." Before noticing Gracie and ending with "..shucks."

Mom expects Gracie to get into Harvard or Princeton or the University of Pennsylvania or one of the other ivy leagues one day, and so she's been socking away money like crazy. Dad says Gracie should just go to Penn State, because it's one-third the price and there's "no sense paying for a brand name" and "the thing with education is you get out what you put in" and plus he'd really like to buy some land and build a cabin "down home" in Texas, for winter vacations and if he ever retires from coaching.

Dad adjusts his belt. Then he adjusts his cap before digging into his pocket for his car keys, which he swirls through three times before settling on the truck key. Gracie realizes that when he told her he was worried about this new coaching gig, he wasn't just trying to relate. He wasn't pretend sympathizing with her over starting a new school. He was telling the truth. He is nervous. Damn nervous, as he would say (and then scold Gracie for using the word an hour later). He was with the Pioneers for years. He got comfortable. "Maybe a little complacent," Gracie heard Mom tell him once, when they were discussing the change. "Maybe the Falcons will be good for you, sugar." The Pioneers were familiar. And they could hear. That's the main thing. They could hear. It must have been hard for Dad to leave the Pioneers. But he did it for Liam. Of course.

Gracie's checks her jealousy. She doesn't envy Liam as much as she did just a few days ago. She got a glimpse of his pain and that kind of makes it hard to resent a guy. Plus they've been "talking" lately, the past couple of days. She's starting to think maybe it wouldn't be so horrible to have a big brother after all.

Liam catches Gracie's eye as Coach Taylor opens the front door, flinging back these words to his adopted son: "See you later at the try-outs."

As the door clicks shut, Liam's blue-green eyes grow wide.

"You haven't told him you're not trying out?" Gracie asks. "He thinks you're biking over to the school later?"

Liam swallows and Gracie shakes her head. "Dad doesn't do well with surprises. Mom threw a surprise birthday party for him when I was six. It didn't go over that well. They ended up arguing under the punch table about who she invited."

Liam shrugs and Gracie continues, "I'm telling you. You should have told him before he left for try-outs. It wouldn't go over well, but it would be better than you just not showing up. Dad likes people to be totally upfront."

"Not about everything," Liam signs. "Your Mom has to be subtle with him sometimes."

At least Gracie thinks he means subtle. "Mom? Subtle?" Gracie laughs. "You'll see." Gracie rises from the couch and goes to the hall closet, where she grabs down her bicycle helmet. She hates that Mom still makes her wear a helmet. She doesn't insist Liam wear one. But there's a double standard for Liam, of course. "So, that thing you wanted me to help you do? Are we doing it or what?" Gracie's slides on her pink and white helmet and clicks the strap. The thing fits way too snugly. She's not the same little girl she was when she finally learned to ride a bike on their suburban cul-de-sac, two years behind her peers, at the age of almost seven. She'd long preferred books to exercise, and her father had to cajole her to ride.

Liam rises, alarmed. "Now?" he signs.

"Now or never, Romeo."

She looks back to read his hands: "Do you even know who Romeo is?"

"Sure. I watch the movie with Leonardo DiCaprio on Netflix." She's also read it, but she doesn't want to sound like a show off. Well, she read a "plain language" version of it, anyway. Not the actual play. But Mom says she can probably tackle Shakespeare by seventh grade.

"Aren't you afraid to do it?" Liam signs. "Because you're" – she doesn't quite know the last gesture he makes, but she's guessing it means shy.

"A little. But she's totally older than me." She's older than Liam, too. He's going to be a freshman, and this girl's going to be a junior. What makes Liam think this girl will ever go to a homecoming dance at another school with a freshman is beyond Gracie, but whatever. A guy can dream. Not that he's asking her today. He's just trying to get himself introduced. Move the whole thing beyond smiles and waves. "It's not like I have to go to school with her. Or that I want to be friends with her. Or that I'll see her hardly ever again." She tilts her helmet back a little. "Besides, I want to help you out, believe it or not."

They ride their bikes over to the street where the girl lives. Liam knows this is the hour she comes home from her morning summer school class. He seems to have second thoughts and starts pedaling by, but Gracie comes to a dead stop just before the girl's driveway, forcing him back.

Suddenly, Gracie's confidence drains from her. The voice coming out of her sounds distant. "Hi," she half whispers. "I'm Gracie. I live a couple blocks down?" Was that a question? She clears her throat. "This is my cousin Liam."

Liam is studying the stray grass growing up through the cement in the cracks on the driveway.

"Hi," the girl says, a little bit of caution in her voice, but still friendly. "I'm Cindy." Silence all around. Cindy shifts from one foot to the other. She's quite pretty, with this really thick long brown hair Gracie would love to have and eyes kind of like Dad's, a whole bunch of colors all at once – eyes Gracie wish she had inherited, instead of her boring blue. The girl's also a little nerdy looking, though, with those glasses she's wearing, bigger than Gracie's, not the fashionable ones Mom got her. "Did you…want something?"

"Umm…." Gracie stammers "Liam's deaf." Liam glares at the abrupt way she says it. "So he can't really talk." Her words are coming out fast, super-fast now. "But he's great at mowing lawns. So if you want him to mow your lawn, he'll totally do it for you, because he thinks you're – " Liam kicks her lightly in the ankle "uh…in need of lawn mowing."

Cindy looks at her lawn. "I mow the lawn. I think I do a pretty good job. What looks bad about it?"

Liam's hands start flying. Gracie translates: "It looks great. Just, if you want more time for studying, I thought I could help. I know you're in summer school."

"I'm not stupid," Cindy says. "I'm trying to get ahead. I want to graduate at the end of my junior year. I'm tired of high school."

"Me too," Liam signs, but Gracie doesn't translate, because he's not even in high school, so how could he be tired of it? Instead she says, "That's cool."

The awkward exchange goes on for a while, until Liam finally gets the lawn mowing gig, but when they get back to the house, his head is hung pretty low. "I'm an idiot," he signs. "It was stupid to try to talk to her. I can't even talk to her. I'll be lucky if I can get a deaf girl to go to homecoming with me."

Gracie doesn't say anything, but Liam's kind of good-looking and, she thinks, totally not dumb. He's nice enough. He shouldn't have any problem getting a classmate to go to the dance with him. But it would be really gutsy to ask a hearing girl from another school who's two years older than him. It was gutsy just to do what they did today.

What they did. Gracie was gutsy too. She puts her helmet on the shelf in the hall closet and smiles.