Page 9

A feeling of excited anticipation had slowly been building up since the night of the party. I couldn’t fully understand what it was until Wednesday came around, and I was on my way to this week’s ASL class.

I made it to class earlier this time. For a moment, I thought about switching to a different seat than where I had sat previously.

However, since the class was held in a classroom instead of a lecture hall, I felt that there was an unspoken rule: where you sat during the first week would be your unofficial assigned seat for the rest of the semester.

Plus, the class did rely on students being in pairs, the wise decision would be to just sit where I had sat last week.

Not wanting to disrupt the peace and avoid any kind of confrontation that might erupt, I went to the back of the class and took my seat.

The class wouldn’t begin for another ten minutes, so I took out my book from my bag and tried to read whatever I could before Mr Albert got there.

I didn’t even manage to read a page when the seat next to me was pulled out and snapped me out of focus.

‘Hey,’ Colton greeted me, a smile on his face.

My heart started to flutter as he took the seat beside me. It seemed the excited anticipation was my heart waiting to get the chance to talk to Colton again.

Traitor.

‘Hey, partner,’ I greeted him back, closing my book. ‘How has your week been so far?’

‘Good. Practice is starting to get rough, but nothing out of the ordinary, with a match coming next weekend.’

Right, I remembered receiving an email about it a few days earlier. They only had three exhibition matches in total, two of them were away games, and the last one was to happen in our own college baseball stadium.

‘But don’t worry,’ he continued. ‘I’ll make time to practice ASL with you. When are you free?’

‘I should be asking you that, since you’re the one fully booked up,’ I pointed out, arching a brow at him.

Compared to his life packed with baseball practices, my schedule for the week had consisted of me either finishing my book and starting a new one, or finishing the show I had been watching, and starting a new one.

I would find some time to do actual work in between.

‘But I’m free after this, if you have time to spare. ’

He thought about my offer for a while, perhaps going through his schedule for the week. ‘I think I can do that. I don’t have a class after this, and practice doesn’t start in a few hours.’

‘So that settles it then.’

Before we could continue our conversation, we were interrupted by Mr Albert opening the front door and entering the classroom.

‘Good day, everyone,’ he greeted, setting down his briefcase on the desk and taking out a piece of paper out of it.

‘I hope you already found your partners for the class. I was supposed to do this last week: so, before I forget again, please write down your name and your partner’s here, for my own record,’ he said, gesturing to the paper he was holding in his hand.

He passed the paper down to the first row of tables in the classroom. ‘All right, now let’s get started.’

Halfway through the class, the piece of paper finally made its way to us, after the person sitting next to our table passed it to me.

As I looked at the list of names, I couldn’t help but think of it as a contract of me willingly going through with this decision, risking myself to the possibility of being struck by the curse.

Was I actually going to do this?

I was so caught up in my head, rethinking my decision, that I didn’t notice Colton talking to me.

‘Hmm?’ I hummed non-committally, turning to him.

‘Having second thoughts?’ Colton asked teasingly, snapping me out of my inner dilemma.

Caught off guard by him voicing out the exact thing I was contemplating in my head, a shadow of doubt appeared on my face, but I quickly masked it away.

Colton must’ve caught it, because the look on his face slowly started to lose its glint.

Last chance to back out, Clara.

‘Nope, no second thoughts. I guess you’re stuck with me for the whole semester,’ I told him and wrote down both our names on the paper, him spelling out his name for me so I didn’t misspell it.

It’s official then .

There was no going back now.

‘I think that will be all for today. I’ll see you all next week,’ Mr Albert announced, dismissing the class.

I started packing up my things, Colton did the same beside me. ‘Should we go to one of the coffee shops on campus to practice?’ I suggested, zipping up my backpack.

‘Anywhere is fine.’ He shrugged. ‘We don’t have to stay on campus, you know? I have my car and I’d be happy to drive you anywhere.’

‘But you have practice later, wouldn’t you prefer to stay on campus?’ I didn’t want to make this any more of a nuisance for him.

‘I’ll make it; practice doesn’t start in a few hours,’ he reassured me.

I considered his offer. I had been wanting to try out that new bubble tea shop that had just opened a few streets away from my apartment, but I hadn’t had the opportunity to visit it just yet.

‘Since you’re offering, do you mind if we go to a bubble tea shop instead? There’s one near my apartment building and I can just walk home afterward,’ I told him.

‘Sure,’ he nodded, before adding, ‘on one condition though.’

I looked at him suspiciously. ‘What’s that?’

‘I’m driving you home,’ he said with a teasing look in his eyes, then quickly got up from his seat and rushed his way to the door.

I sat there stunned, my mind slowly registering what had just happened.

Did he say he was driving me home?

I snapped out of my daze and rushed after him, only to see him lean on the wall next to the door frame in the hallway, waiting for me, with a crooked grin on his face.

‘Come on,’ he said to me, nudging his head as he made his way to the stairs. I noticed that he was walking at a faster pace than normal as if trying to outrun me before I could argue with him about his so-called ‘condition’.

When I finally caught up to his pace and was walking side-by-side with him, he slowed down his strides. We made it out of the building, and I could just about make out where his car was, amid all the others in the parking lot.

‘You don’t really have to drive me home, you know?’ I tried reasoning with him as we walked together toward his parked car. ‘I’m perfectly capable of walking.’

‘And I’m perfectly capable of driving you home.’

‘Then, let’s just go to the coffee shop on campus,’ I told him.

‘No problem,’ he said, ‘But I’m still driving you home afterward.’

‘Colton,’ I called out, my tone exasperated. ‘You don’t have to do that. I can just—’

I hadn’t even finished my sentence, when he abruptly stopped walking.

I paused in my steps as well, just as he turned to face me.

‘Look, I am not letting you walk back home when I am fully capable of driving you. The way I see it, you have two options. One, we practice at the coffee shop, and I’ll drive you home when we’re done.

Or two, we practice at the bubble tea shop, and I’ll drive you home when we’re done. So, what is it going to be?’

I blinked at him. ‘I didn’t say I was going to walk back home from campus. I was going to take the bus.’

‘Not happening.’ He shook his head. ‘Your only options are the two that I gave you. So where are we practicing ASL today?’

His firm tone had me so momentarily stunned, that I unknowingly stayed quiet as it passed. I felt like I should have been put off by it, but I was not. Moreover, I was drawn to it.

Colton must’ve mistaken my silence as a reaction to him being stern with me. He then added, this time in a much softer tone, ‘It’s your choice, Clara.’

I took both the options into consideration, and it doesn’t seem like either was fair to him, since he had been offering to drive me home no matter where we went. So, I guess he meant it when he said it was up to me.

A slightly better choice would be the coffee shop, since he only needed to drive me back home and back to campus for practice. However, I couldn’t deny that craving in my heart for a bubble tea fix, ever since I had heard about the new shop.

‘Fine, the bubble tea shop it is,’ I said, giving in. Then, deciding to play him at his own game, I briskly added, ‘But I’m paying for the drinks,’ before fastening my steps to his car and leaving him standing there.

That was one point for Colton and one point for me.

That day’s ASL lesson focused on learning the alphabet and perfecting the placing of the fingers for each letter.

Since ASL is a visual language and more about hand movements, as well as facial expressions, it’s hard to convey them on paper.

But Mr Albert had still provided us each with a printed sheet of paper with the hand placements for each alphabet as reference.

He had also encouraged us to practice using them daily, so eventually—hopefully—it would become a muscle memory.

‘Try spelling out words of whatever object you see or names of the people you meet every day. Before you know it, you’ll be spelling in ASL effortlessly,’ he had suggested during class.

‘Okay,’ I said, putting down my bubble tea. ‘My turn.’

Colton and I were sitting across from one another at a table placed in the corner of the bubble tea shop.

Aside from us, the shop had been quite vacant, with only one other table occupied, providing us with a pleasant environment to practice ASL.

While the tables might be mostly empty, that hadn’t stopped the inflow of customers preferring to have their bubble tea to go, if the sounds of the door opening and closing were anything to go by.

Following Mr Albert’s advice, Colton and I took turns spelling out random things or names that came to mind, with the other person having to say what word was spelled.

After I finished spelling my word, I waited for Colton to say it.

‘Bobs?’ he guessed, a look of confusion written on his face.

I shook my head. ‘Nope. But you’re close.’ I spelled it again and he finally caught on.