CHAPTER 4
912 Words
THE SOUND OF CHOICE.
She had never liked the music room.
Not because of the instruments—she didn’t hear them—but because the room carried expectation. People walked in ready to be loud, to fill space, to perform. Silence felt like a mistake there.
She stood in the doorway longer than necessary.
The Jonathan noticed immediately.
“You’re hesitating,” he said, lips moving slower than usual. Careful. “That’s new.”
She rolled her eyes and signed, knowing full well he wouldn’t understand all of it.
You talk too much.
He grinned. “And yet you’re still here.”
She stepped inside.
The room smelled like polished wood and dust. A piano sat against the wall. Chairs were scattered, unaligned. The windows were open just enough to let in air.
Freedom, he liked to call places like this.
He leaned back against the piano bench, cane resting at his feet. “You don’t come here often.”
She wrote in her notebook.
“I don’t like places that expect sound from me”.
He nodded once. No teasing this time. “Fair.”
They stood there in a rare pocket of stillness. He watched her—not with the quiet boy’s careful distance, but with open curiosity. As if she were a puzzle he wasn’t trying to solve, just understand.
“You know,” he said eventually, “you don’t owe anyone silence either.”
Her pen paused.
She looked up.
He continued, softer now. “People assume not speaking means you can’t. Or won’t. Or that it’s tragic.” He shrugged. “Most assumptions are lazy.”
She wrote slowly.
“ I don’t speak because it’s not my language”.
“I know,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean it can’t still be yours.”
Her chest tightened.
She shook her head.
“My voice doesn’t sound right”.
He smiled—not gently. Not pitying.
“Whose does?”
She frowned at him.
He stepped closer—not invading, just present. “I’m not asking you to perform,” he said. “Or to become something you’re not. I’m just saying… if you ever wanted to try, this room wouldn’t judge you.”
She swallowed.
Her hands trembled slightly as she wrote.
“I’ve never used it. Not once”.
He didn’t react the way she expected. No shock. No awe.
Just a quiet, “Okay.”
That made it worse.
He gestured vaguely to the piano bench. “Sit.”
She hesitated.
Then she did.
He stayed standing, turning slightly away—not fully, but enough. Giving her space without announcing it.
“You don’t have to look at me,” he said. “I won’t look at you either.”
She nodded.
Her throat felt… strange. Like something unused, long dormant.
She placed a hand against her chest, feeling the vibration of her own breath. Slower. Slower.
He waited.
Minutes passed.
Then—
A sound.
Small. Broken. Barely formed.
It startled even her.
She froze, eyes wide.
He stilled completely.
“That was it,” he said quietly. “You did it.”
Her mouth opened again. Her voice scraped its way out, uneven and unsure.
“H—hi.”
The word landed in the room like a held breath finally released.
Her eyes burned.
He smiled—but didn’t speak right away.
“Hi,” he said back, softly. Like he was answering something sacred.
She laughed then—not soundless this time. A shaky, breathy thing that barely qualified as laughter but felt like triumph.
And she said, again, clearer now—
“Hi Johnny”.
That was when the door opened.
The sky stopped just inside the threshold.
He hadn’t meant to intrude. He recognized the room by its air, by the way space opened around soundless instruments. He’d come looking for her, feeling the absence she left behind like a pulled thread.
He heard it before he understood it.
Her voice.
Unmistakably hers. Unpracticed. Raw.
Alive.
Saying someone else’s name.
He froze.
His chest constricted—not with anger, but something colder.
Loss.
She hadn’t spoken to him.
Not once.
Not when he learned her language.
Not when he adjusted his care.
Not when he listened harder than he ever had to anyone.
But she spoke now.
For him.
The Jonathan turned first, sensing the shift.
The Skylar didn’t move.
He couldn’t.
She looked up, following the Jonathan’s gaze—and saw him.
Saw his stillness.
The way his face had closed in on itself.
The way his hands had curled slightly, as if bracing.
Her mouth opened.
She signed his name instinctively.
Too late, he couldn’t even see it.
He stepped back.
“I didn’t know,” he said, voice steady in the way that meant it wasn’t. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come in.”
She stood quickly, panic flaring.
“Wait Sky-
He didn’t.
The door closed behind him with a finality she felt in her bones.
The Jonathan exhaled slowly. “That went badly.”
She nodded, throat tight.
“He thinks—
“I know what he thinks,” Jonathan said gently. “And so do you.”
Tears blurred her vision—not because she’d used her voice, but because she finally understood the cost of choosing when and with whom.
Her first sound hadn’t been a rejection.
But to him—
It felt like one.
- Writer
