Page 2 of The Love Duet
Chapter 1
Roxanne~
The problem with having a friend who was as...animated as Pepper Milo was that the girl signed like a crack addict.
“So, I know you don’t like going to the games, but I heard that Carlos Duran has been asking about you, and he’s going to be there,” Pepper signed, or...at least, I was pretty sure that’s what she had signed.The girl’s hands moved so fast that it was like watching energy shift right in front of me.
“You want me to go to a football game because Carlos Duran is going to be there?”I signed back, throwing in a few question marks in there.
Pepper let out a dramatic huff, and it was theatrical enough that a few strands of her blonde hair flew upwards with the effort.“Sorry,” she signed.“I was just so excited.”
I laughed because that wasn’t saying much.Pepper was always excited.She was one of those rare people who were excited about life in general.We’d been best friends since the first grade, and she’d always been that way.Plus, her personality fit perfectly with her blonde hair, blue eyes, athletic body, and zest for sports, her passion being volleyball.Though Pepper was only five-foot-three, the girl played the net like she was six-foot-seven.
As for me, I didn’t play any sports, though I’d had when I’d been younger.While there were a lot of sports out there that I could still play safely, I wasn’t a big sports person like Pepper or my mother.I was a reader.I was the kid who found peace in the library.I was the nerd who would rather stay home on a Friday night than party.Now, it wasn’t that I had anything against parties or sports, but I was a certified wallflower, and I was okay with that.I’d been like that even before I’d lost my hearing, so my deafness had nothing to do with preferring to stay home.I just preferred peace to chaos.
My parents also believed that my comfortability with peace had been the reason that I’d taken my diagnosis of Usher’s Syndrome so well, though I was pretty sure that I’d hadn’t.I’d been born with the ability to hear, but I’d been later diagnosed with Usher’s Syndrome Type-3 when I’d started struggling to hear during my elementary years.It was a genetic disease, and my great-grandmother had also suffered from it.
Taking my lumps, I had become completely deaf by the time that I had hit the seventh grade, and while my parents had praised how well I’d adapted, I could have probably handled it all with a little more grace at the time.There were a lot of people out in the world who had it worse than I did, and that was something that I worked hard to remind myself of whenever I was having a particularly bad day.
Though losing my hearing had changed so much, I hadn’t been alone during this major life change.When I’d first been diagnosed, my parents and I had immediately begun taking ASL classes.We’d wanted to get a head start on what was to come, considering that the odds of me becoming fully deaf had been rather high.Pepper had also taken classes with us, bringing her zest-for-life personality with her.The girl could probably sign better than I could if she would just slow the hell down for a minute.
“It’s okay,” I signed.
Her shoulders sagged as she blew those strands from her face again.The one thing that always fascinated me about Pepper was that she was so damn pretty, but also so damn unkempt.She was the girl that you saw who always had one shoe untied, her hair thrown up any which way, her face fresh of makeup, and her clothes might match, they might not.It really was a gamble with her each morning.Still, she was the best person on the planet.
“Okay,” she signed, a bit slower this time.“Carlos Duran was asking Tara Freeman if you were going to the game tonight.”Tara Freeman was another friend of ours, though not close like me and Pepper.
“I’m not interested in Carlos, Pepper,” I signed back.“You know this.”Pepper pinched her lips tight as she eyed me.“What?”
Her eyes narrowed as I voiced that last part.When dealing with an overwhelming personality like Pepper’s, my voice was my superpower, and I used it to show her when I was being serious.
See, I could talk, but I didn’t like to.Even though my parents and Pepper had assured me that I sounded fine, I couldn’t guarantee how I sounded to a new set of ears.Plus, speaking invited all kinds of awkwardness.People would forget that I was deaf, then start speaking rapidly, expecting me to understand them, and while I could read lips, I couldn’t read them if someone was speaking quickly.That’s why me and Pepper chose to sign most of the time.She spoke like she had too much to say and not enough time to say it.
The opposite of that was when people started talkingtooslowly and loudly, making us both look ridiculous.So, signing was the easiest and the least awkward form of communication for me.People got out of having to talk to me because most people didn’t know ASL, and it got me out of having to go to parties and football games with Pepper.While I did go to her volleyball games, that was about it.
“You’re never interested in anyone,” she signed with enough irritation on her face that I could sense her attitude in her hand motions.
“That’s not true,” I signed back.“You know it’s not.”
Her blue eyes lit up, and I probably should have just let her be annoyed with me, rather than encourage her.“Well, there you have it.You know thathewill definitely be at the game tonight.”
I had an unfortunate crush on Royce Cameron, Yosemite High’s star quarterback, and I’ve had the stupid crush since he first started at Yosemite last year.He had transferred because his father had gotten a promotion or something, or so that’d been the rumor.Royce and I weren’t friends, so I had no idea what the truth was.He was a jock all the way, and I was a deaf library nerd.
Plus, there was also the fact that our skin colors didn’t match, though that shouldn’t matter had we lived in a perfect world and not the reality of this one.Royce Cameron was six-foot-something of brown hair, green eyes, a perfect face, and muscles for days.His father was a lawyer, his mother was a stay-at-home mom, and they all matched perfectly with their Caucasian skin tones.
