negative_feedback | (no subject)

Entry tags:

(no subject)

It's been three days since she arrived, and Regan has gotten a little bit used to the Home. She stays out of it as long as she can, all the same, so she doesn't have to worry about trying to interact with her Hearing roommates. It isn't that she thinks they're bad people. It's just . . . a lot. Another reminder that she's not like them. That she's Other.

So, she wakes up early and heads out, and she stays out all day, until just before curfew, and heads back in. She does that every day, now, and maybe it's a little cowardly, but she's also giving herself time to get used to the city proper, using the map Greta showed her and marking things of interest on it as she goes.

She's marked the cat cafe down, and that really cool tinker's shop.

She's set to start school next Monday. It would have been sooner, but she requested an extra week. Part of it is because she's nervous. She'll have an interpreter, but it's been so long since she's been in school. What if she's behind her peers?

She doesn't want to think about it. Instead, Regan heads towards the park, wearing her new winter boots that Greta helped her buy. She swings by an Ahab's and grabs herself a hot cocoa with espresso in it, and ends up adding extra sugar to sweeten it back up. The park is a nice place, and she gets to see all sorts of different things and people here.

Even if she's just killing time until curfew.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Regan breathes a little laugh when she reads that. I don't think I'll be punching anyone. I'll probably just ignore them. That'd always worked on bullies at her old school, but then again, ignoring a Deaf kid was as easy as closing your eyes. It probably wouldn't be as easy in a Hearing school. She'd have an interpreter, so maybe traveling in constant pairs, and with an adult, no less, would be helpful.

You're most friendly or your coworker is? she asks. It's harder to understand the shorter sentences he's using, and she's tempted to ask if he'd rather write it down instead of using his phone. She's not sure it'll be faster, but if it feels more natural then she's willing to switch over.

Neil points to himself, because he had meant himself. He feels a little stupid about the whole thing. He knows how to be articulate, but he's bad with it without time to prepare. It's why he ends up sticking his foot in his mouth so often when he speaks, too.

I wasn't very good at ignoring them. When it came to myself, it wasn't as hard, because none of the bullies were creative enough to come up with anything worse than what Peter had done to me. I had already lived with the worst possible bully in the world and I had survived. Maybe with a few scars, but still, I was here and I was happy and Peter wasn't.

But when it came to the other kids, I had a much harder time ignoring their bad behaviour. Still, I knew it was a strange thing, offering to hit someone for a person I'd only just met.

So I only wrote, That's smart. Less trouble that way. The workers at the Home don't like when I fight.

There's a brief, awkward pause after Regan nods, and she turns to her phone again to try to change the subject.

You look young, but I don't recognize you from the home. You don't live there?

Neil looks, and then shakes his head, sort of smiling. He'll be twenty this year, but he knows he has a young face. He makes a desperate attempt to articulate himself, and it's not awful, but it takes him a lot longer to type than his short little bits and pieces.

I have a friend there. I didn't get assigned there when I arrived. No idea why. But I turned 18 just a little after I got here and I'll be 20 this year. Didn't even know there was a childrens home until I was in school last year.

Most adults don't, she writes in agreement. She can remember when she and Marcus used to get into squabbles. They never really fought, not the out-and-out brawls like some siblings got into, but they had their share of bickering, and her parents had hated it.

She doesn't know why she doesn't share that with Jamie, but she doesn't. Instead, she writes, Do you like it at the Home okay? She'd like to know what she's getting into, in the long run. Maybe she can squat in Greta's garage, or something.

I nodded, smiling, then wrote quickly in my notebook. It's not perfect, but I like it a lot. I get to be close to my friends and I get to be in the same room as my boyfriend, Eddie. (Don't tell the workers he's my boyfriend, they might make me move rooms.)

I had called him my boyfriend before, but there was something about seeing it in writing that made my smile grow even further.

I didn't have anyone back home. No family. It's nice to be around the people who love me here.

Regan stares at his message for a moment. Then she turns her wide eyes to Neil's face, and the surprise is obvious. He's twenty? He doesn't look it. He looks so young. Regan feels herself blushing a little and she looks down at her phone to type on it so he doesn't see.

You don't look 20! I thought you were like 16 or 17.

Well 20 in July is the easy, quick correction, but Neil laughs, seeing her surprise before she looks away from him to type. He's fairly certain he surprises a lot of people, that he got his diploma back in the summer.

Are you 16 or 17?

Regan can't help a little smile at that. I won't tell anyone, promise. That's really awesome, though. It doesn't bother her, even for a moment, that Jamie has a boyfriend. He seems to be a sweetheart, and he deserves to be happy, and if his boyfriend Eddie makes him happy, then good. Might want to erase that, though, so nobody finds this and then finds out.

I'm only 14, she answers, with a little grimace that says just how much she likes being fourteen. And she feels very young and dumb next to him, now that she knows he's almost six years older than her.

Though she doesn't know any more about Regan's relationship with her brothers than the other girl knows about Rosie's relationship with her own, Rosie still feels a stab of sympathy when she sees them mentioned. It's difficult to be separated from family, even family you might not miss overmuch on any given day.

Yes, in England, she writes, then stops, tapping the eraser end of her pencil against her lips and considering her answer to Regan's other question. To say no is no more honest than saying yes would be; the true answer lies somewhere in the uncertain middle.

There are some things I miss and some things I don't. I had a neighbour there who was sort of a friend and I miss him (and his cat, even though Jenkins was always a bit grouchy), and I miss having a proper cup of tea, and I miss the parks and how beautiful the university buildings are. Every so often, I even miss my old school, even though the teachers here are much nicer and my classmates aren't all girls, like it was back home. Rosie draws a little smily face next to that, a simple dash of lines, before turning the paper around again.

Persephone probably could learn signs for things like come, or down, the way that Blue is accustomed to using body language as well as English for those commands to dogs, but she'd almost certainly pretend she didn't know. It's much easier for her having trained Blue into feeding her at the same time of day and knowing when she wants to be touched.

"I'm sorry I missed you!" Blue says, smiling and takes a seat with a little bit of a question. "Thank you. People don't always ..." She doesn't recall the sign for believe so she spells it out. "It's my real name."

"Are you new here?" She doesn't know everyone here by a long shot but she's gotten fairly good at recognizing when she's never seen a person before. The people like them who are out of place and time tend to congregate, a little.

Regan smiles as she reads that. That makes sense, she replies. I miss home and don't at the same time, too. It's weird. That's a bit uncolorful, but it's still the truth. She's not sure how to articulate the complicated feelings she has about it all, especially with a perfect stranger, so 'weird' it is.

I'm from the midwest. United States. I'm very boring, haha. Nothing cool like England.

She was right about that and I laughed, scratching out the bit I'd written about Eddie, even though I still liked seeing his name beside the word boyfriend. I could write it again if I wanted to. Whenever I wanted to.

It really isn't so bad, I wrote. But I also don't have anyone to miss. It might be a little harder, if you're missing your family.

I understood that, even if I didn't have a family who might miss me in return.

"Yes, I got here earlier in the week," she answers. "It's . . . really different from what I'm used to. The timeline is close, it's not that, but. Everything else. All the people, and the noise."

Maybe it seems ironic that a Deaf girl is talking about how noisy the city is, but she has a feeling that Blue will understand. Or, at least, she hopes she will.

I'm sorry to hear that, Regan writes down. I guess it's hard. You really don't have anyone where you're from? It's a hard question to even ask, let alone answer, but Regan doesn't take it back.

Rosie laughs at that, even though she knows Regan won't be able to hear it. I've never been to the midwest, or to America at all, so it sounds very cool to me. Much cooler than someplace that's just...home. When she'd thought about the adventures she might take, none of them had included the middle of America--a place she can really only picture as a lot of farms and very little glamour--but having never been there, who's to say there's not something grand about it?

I suppose it's a matter of perspective; we're interested in the places that aren't what we're used to. I suppose that means we ought to find Darrow very interesting indeed. She pauses in her writing and allows Regan to read it, punctuating her last sentence with a wry smile. Anyplace that yanked people out of their usual lives deserved a less kind descriptor than just interesting.

Once it seems as though Regan's read what she's written thus far, she picks up her pencil again, adding another few sentences. Is there a sign for wherever in the midwest you're from? The city name, or the state?

Neil feels a little silly for the question, now he's asked it and Regan's said she's younger than he supposed. They're on even keel now, both thinking the other was younger or older than they are. In his defense, Regan has a certain way. Even without a verbal voice, she comes across with maturity at least comparable to Rosie, or himself when he showed up.

He changes the subject, still a bit embarrassed that she seems put off by his age. How is Darrow so far? Different?

I shrugged, then considered what to write. It was a lot, trying to tell the story of Peter and what happened to my mother, and writing it all down seemed daunting in a way it didn't always when I was speaking. After a moment, I began to write again and it took me longer than I would have liked before I could show her, but I thought Regan would be patient.

I come from a very long time ago. It's very different from Darrow. My father was cruel and my mother was killed by someone I thought was a friend. I was living with that friend before I came to Darrow and I had only just realized what he had done to my mother. And to me. So sometimes I miss him, because I loved him for such a very long time, but mostly I'm glad to be away from him and somewhere I can start over again.

Regan likes Rosie, she decides. It's hard not to like someone who can make jokes and admit that anywhere can be cool if it's not where you're from.

There isn't really a sign for the state. Just the fingerspelling for it. I'm from Iowa, so it's... She waits until Rosie looks at her and signs it to her. But when my family and I talk about it, we use a name sign. It's... She shows that, too, so that Rosie can follow along a little better.

Very. The world kind of ended where I'm from. It's kind of a Thing to just say like that, but she says it anyway. It's different with a guy older than she is versus Rosie, who is practically the same age. She wants Rosie to like her. She'd like Neil to like her, but it's not the same thing.

"Iowa," she echoes, spelling out the state name more slowly and with less grace than Regan. But she spells it, her first word in a new language, and that's a triumph all its own. She doesn't try to copy the other sign the girl shows her; something about it seems private, maybe just the fact that her now-absent family used it back wherever Regan's from. But just to have managed Iowa is enough to make her grin, bright and open, at the other girl.

Oh, that's brilliant, she writes. Thank you for showing me--wait, how do you say 'thank you'?

On one hand, Beverly can't say that she's ever had a conversation like this with someone in person, writing back and forth out of necessity. On the other, it isn't really all that different from texting; she's just showing what she's written instead of sending it. Easy enough, and she decides quickly, easily, that it's not like she wouldn't just not talk to someone because they can't hear her. It seems like the kind of dick move the kids she went to school with back home would have pulled, and that's not her. If a few sentences are telling enough, then Regan seems nice, and for her own part, Beverly can roll with this.

Thanks! I'm Beverly, she types, already smiling before she finishes and holds her phone back out. It's nice to meet you. I don't think I've seen you around before?

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Page 3 of 4