THE QUIET BETWEEN US

WHERE SILENCE BEGINS. Jenny had always been a deaf girl, born without the ability to hear. Not hearing the world moving around was a normal occurrence for her. Her parents always felt sorry for her when she got picked on, this got her tired of even trying to understand why people acted that way. She has already resigned herself to this fate and this was the last rehab she was ever going to attend, It didn’t really matter if it was for her good or not she wasn’t gonna take it. She pushed the double doors and walked in, the building breathed differently inside. She noticed it the moment she stepped through the doors—the way the air felt held, as if sound itself had been asked to behave. The rehabilitation center always smelled faintly of antiseptic and dust, but today there was something else underneath it. Paper. Old wood. Rain carried in on clothes. She adjusted the strap of her bag against her shoulder and paused, letting her body settle into the space. Rooms announced themselves to her not with noise, but with resistance. The echo of movement. The way the floor answered her steps. This one felt wide. Open. Careful. Someone was already inside. She sensed him before she saw him. A presence near the window—still, but not absent. The light from outside fell across his face, catching on lashes that didn’t quite react to it. His posture was composed, hands resting loosely in his lap, fingers relaxed as if he wasn’t waiting for anything in particular. Blind, she realized—not because of the white cane leaning against the chair beside him, but because of the way he listened with his whole body. She hesitated. Habit made her lift her hands, fingers shaping a greeting before she stopped herself. The motion stilled halfway through, unfinished. He wouldn’t see it. A small, private smile touched her mouth. She stepped forward instead, careful with her feet. The floor betrayed her with a soft creak. His head turned immediately. Not sharp. Not startled. Just aware. His mouth moved. She caught the words easily—slow, deliberate. Someone’s there. She nodded reflexively, then remembered. Reached into her bag. The notebook was already worn at the edges, pages softened from use. She flipped to a clean one and wrote quickly, the pen scratching a thin line of sound she didn’t hear but felt in the movement of her hand. “Hi. I’m new”. She tore the page free and stepped closer. Instead of placing it directly into his hand, she brushed the back of his fingers with the paper—an instinctive warning, a question without words. His hand turned at once. His fingers closed around the page gently, as if the paper itself mattered. He read slowly, brow furrowing—not in confusion, but concentration. Then his mouth curved. Not wide. Not per formative. Real. Welcome, his lips said. He tilted his head slightly, orienting himself toward her. “You didn’t rush,” he added, voice calm. She blinked. She wrote again. “How could you tell?” He smiled a little more this time. “Because most people apologize when they enter a room like this,” he said. “Or they freeze. You didn’t do either.” Something in her chest loosened. She hadn’t realized it was tight. Before she could respond, the door opened. She felt it in the sudden shift of air. The scrape of movement. A presence that entered the room without asking permission from the space first. Another boy. Blind too—she saw the cane immediately, held loosely, almost carelessly. He moved like he trusted the world to get out of his way. His mouth was already forming words before he stopped short, registering them. “Oh”, his lips said. Then he grinned. “Well,” he added, turning his face between them, “this is either awkward timing or excellent timing. I’m hoping for the second.” The boy by the window sighed. “You’re late.” “I’m consistently late,” the newcomer corrected. “There’s a difference.” She watched the exchange, reading what she could, filling in the rest from expression and posture. The second boy was all motion—hands, shoulders, energy. The first was anchored, contained. Different silences. The second boy angled his body toward her, curiosity evident even without sight. “And you must be the new variable,” he said lightly. “The room feels… rearranged.” Her eyebrow lifted. She wrote, tore, and pressed the page into his hand with less caution this time. “Is that your way of flirting?” His laugh was immediate. Broad. She didn’t hear it, but she saw it—the way his shoulders shook, the way his mouth opened without restraint. “Absolutely,” he said. “I flirt with the environment. Sometimes it works. I’m Luka, who might you be?” The boy by the window shook his head, though his mouth curved again. She looked between them, then back to the first boy. Something about the way he’d noticed her—without watching her—settled into her bones. “I’m Jenny”, she wrote and passed to the both of them. He reached for the notebook gently. Hesitated. Then lifted his hands, awkward and slow. His signs were clumsy. Careful. “Hello”, he shaped. “I don’t sign well”. He paused, then continued, brow furrowed with effort. “But I want to”. Her breath caught—not audibly, but unmistakably. She nodded, hands moving in response without thinking, before writing, “That’s enough”. His smile this time was unmistakable. And in that quiet, held room, something began—not loudly, not obviously—but with intention. Silence, after all, was never empty. It was waiting.