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She looks mortified again and thanks him with two hands at her chin before grabbing her bag and rushing out the door.

Robbie collapses on his stool with a loud groan, and I lean back almost far enough to lift the wheels of my rolling chair off the ground. ‘Can I quit now? I think I’m done with life.’

I roll my eyes. ‘You don’t want to quit. You want lunch. We need food before your next class.’

He makes a c shape with his hand and runs it up and down his chest repeatedly, so I pick up a piece of scrap paper, ball it up, and throw it at him.

His head falls back in a laugh. ‘I’m sorry. It was just surprising. I was not expecting students to be signing “horny” at me today.’

I roll my shoulders, then stand and glance at the clock. We have an hour and ten minutes before his next class, so Robbie uses that as his escape from students and their problems. It’s one of the few times on campus he doesn’t need an interpreter, which is great for me because I really do need the break after morning lectures. Most students are too intimidated to interrupt his free time, so he uses that to fuck around on his phone and procrastinate on his plans to join the one gym in town that has a Deaf personal trainer.

‘What are you hungry for?’ I ask him.

At that, he perks up. ‘A friend of mine is here.’

I glance behind me, and when I look back at him, he’s on the verge of laughing.

‘No. My friend owns a food truck. Deaf Chef,’ he spells it, then spells his name, ‘Mellie. He was working in Seattle for a few months, but he’s back.’

Part of me wants to ask what kind of food, but then I realize I don’t care. I’m not really picky about that either. Food is food. It’s fuel. I don’t understand foodie culture at all. I know when something tastes good and when it doesn’t. It’s never more complicated than that. If I could take a pill every day instead of eating, I would.

Robbie’s got his phone in his hand, his fingers moving restlessly but slowly. Then my phone buzzes in my pocket. ‘I sent you my order. Tell him I said hi.’

And just like that, I’m dismissed. But I’m also off the clock, which feels oddly like a physical relief, and I grab my bag from the chair and make my way out of the classroom as he goes on to tidy up the whiteboard and then grab his things to take to his office.

The campus is quiet in the afternoons. It’s something I think I can say I genuinely enjoy about working at a community college. There’s a certain culture to a university that is appealing. It’s almost like a rite of passage a lot of students feel like they’re owed. But this is…softer.

Kinder.

It’s more like a home than a house, in a way. It’s easier to get to know people and professors in ways I could when I was in an auditorium class with hundreds of students. And by the time I did make it to my three- and four-hundred-level classes with the more dedicated academics, I was so fucking burnt out it was hard to care what was going on in anyone’s life.

At least here, I can relax. The gossip tends to be worse, but I’ve always been good at ignoring that.

I smile at a couple of people—Jack, the Deaf art teacher I’ve worked with in the past. A couple of students who recognize me and learned quickly not to talk to me over talking to Robbie during lecture. I turn my face up at the sun—it’s not very powerful, but it rarely is in the Pacific Northwest. It’s just right, as my mom likes to call it.

Like Baby Bear in Goldilocks. It was why she chose to settle here after my dad died.

I can’t really fault her for it.

Picking up the pace, I follow the smell of fry oil down the little path to the back parking lot that has a large roundabout. Every now and again, we get food trucks that roll in, but today, there’s only one.

It has a large propped-up sign on the top with a dark-haired illustration of a chef holding fingers to kissing lips. The truck itself is mostly white, with stenciled ILY signs all over it. There’s a large window, an awning, and then a menu on one of those folding chalkboards.

It’s tragically small, but there’s a line, so it must be good. Or, at the very least, edible.

I queue up behind a couple of young students who look like they’re together, but all three of them are on their phones, and I try to push back my annoyance at how much communication has changed. I can’t begrudge it.

It’s allowed my Deaf friends access to communication in ways that most of them hadn’t been able to conceive of in the past. Robbie and his siblings had gone to a residential school hours away from their parents and talked to them through letters, and eventually emails, and saw them on their weekends home.

But sometimes, this new technology feels like it’s creating a lack of empathy that’s becoming a little terrifying.

One of the girls laughs, and the other two lean in to look at their phone before all three are cackling. I don’t bother trying to see what’s funny. I also don’t understand their humor. I feel ancient sometimes.

Shoving my hands into my pockets, I rock on my heels and stare at the menu, not that there’s a lot to debate about. The Deaf Chef specializes in sandwiches, and there are three on the menu. Japanese egg salad sando, hot pastrami with spicy mustard served on rye, something called Nonni’s Fave that I think has four kinds of pork, and meatball.

I pull out my phone and look up Robbie’s order.

Robbie: Hot Past w fries extra mustard pls ty ily