Geography 101 was supposed to be a breeze, one of those easy-to-fill social science requirements. I thought it was going to be a strict lecture-hall thing and that I could just sit in the middle of the room, half listening, and do Sudoku puzzles for an hour. I've done it before. (There's a shop off campus that sells class notes, so it's easy to catch up. I've done it before, so often that the clerk there calls me Miss Daniels as soon as I walk in the door. I've kept my 3.0, so my methods are working.)

    Instead, this class is in an actual classroom, maximum occupancy of 30, and I am near the front of the room so that I can see the chalkboard (yes, chalkboard - this building hasn't been renovated since, like, 1985). The professor is this flat-chested brunette pixie-cut with glasses, and she hates me because I look like a girl who's actually had a date in five years. First time she called the roll, she got to my name and paused.

    "Riley Daniels?" she asked. "Were you named after an American Girl doll?"

    Her name's Dr. Cynthia Tankersley, probably six years older than me, but she insists we call her Dr. Tankersley for the sake of maintaining decorum or whatever. And for three weeks now, she's been talking to us about plate tectonics and volcanoes. (I misunderstood what this class was going to be. Seriously, I thought we were going to be memorizing state capitals.) 

  Because of the roll call, though, the boy with the interpreter has been nice to me, passing me notes. His name is Matt, blond and 6'3, and his handwriting is excellent. His first note to me read, "My Cabbage Patch Kid was named Riley, but he was a boy."

    I laughed, and he smiled at me - even though he maybe couldn't hear a sound that was coming out of my mouth. I didn't know the sign for laughter.

    Only loud, blaring noises have been able to make their way to my brain since I was 18 months. Everything else is hushed. I caught this fever one week, Dad tells me, and then I stopped turning my head when they called my name. If someone honks a car horn, I feel it. It shudders me. I move out of the way.

    That girl Riley in geography class, she has a voice as abrupt and damning as a siren. I see its impact on the faces of the people who can actually hear her. She starts, and they wince. And I don't know that she has any idea. When her tones are particularly harsh, though, I can feel it. She reminds me of alarm clocks.

    Still, hearing unpleasant noise is delightful for someone like me - because it reminds of what it's like to hear anything. I don't know how to explain it to you if you've never lost anything. I remember what it's like to hear.

    So I asked her to lunch. And we eat together after class everyday, like Beauty and the Beast. We are the Silent and the Shrill. But, from the looks of it, she thinks I'm the one who's unfortunate.