At the top of the stairs and to the right is a door. It’s her door. I can tell because it’s already open, ready to be seen, and neat as a pin. But it’s not always that way—the trash can is full, and there are a few things peeking out from under the bed.

“My room!” she signs.

It’s a small room with a twin bed and a desk with an old computer. There are posters all over the walls—band posters of women with long hair and men with beards, holding string and wind instruments. There’s a huge collage, too, of pictures. I go over to it and see Robin at all stages of her teenage life, smiling. Jenni is in many of the pictures and a card at the bottom says, “Happy Sweet 16, Love, Jenni.” There are pictures of Robin playing a guitar or that little metal flute. She’s in her tennis uniform and she’s hiking in the woods. She and a guy have their arms around each other and a little jealousy flares up in me when I realize it’s the clueless guy from the overlook. She’s singing in a choir. She’s wearing a fancy dress, probably at a dance. I could stay there forever, looking at all her different smiles, but she taps me on the shoulder. “You like it?” she signs.

“I love it,” I sign back.

She smiles and writes. “It’s a gift from Jenni for my sixteenth birthday. It’s one of my favorite things.”

And I can’t help myself—I stroke her hair, ending with my hand right behind her neck. I lean down and gently pull her up onto her tiptoes, kissing first the tip of her nose, then her mouth. My other hand finds the small of her back and I press her to me. Our kiss deepens, her hands sliding up my back to my shoulder blades and then down around my waist. And then she breaks away. I startle. My hand flies to my chest.

“I’m sorry,” I sign. I grab for the pen and paper. She is backing up and wiping the corners of her lips. “If I did anything—” She takes the pen out of my hand and smiles.

“My mom just called up the stairs, that’s all,” she writes, smiling. “Don’t worry. It’s only time for dinner.” She reaches up and kisses me on the cheek and takes my hand once more.

On the way out the door, I notice a guitar in the corner and a music stand with one of those metal flutes resting on it. She catches me looking at the guitar and signs, “My baby.” I smile and reach for it but I don’t want to break it, so I don’t pick it up.

“You should show me sometime,” I start writing, but she’s already out the door.

I hurry to catch up and when I enter the dining room, her mom is just laying out the last of the meal. The jam I brought is in little serving dishes next to rolls. The spreading knives have grapes on the handles. Dinner looks like beef Stroganoff, a thick mushroom and beef gravy and egg noodles that are absolutely not Asian.

“This looks amazing!” I write, and Robin’s mom flushes with pleasure.

Her dad enters, book closed in his swinging hand, looking kind of like a clean shaven, graying Abraham Lincoln in jeans and a T-shirt.

He sits at the table and they bow their heads and I follow suit, hoping somebody will tap me when the prayer is over. He slides his paper over to me and I read, “For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly grateful. Amen.” I look up and the rest of the family’s mouths are saying “Amen.” He timed it perfectly.

I smile at him. “Thank you,” I write under his prayer.

“You’re welcome,” he writes back.

Dinner is funny. There is no real translator, since Robin doesn’t know a whole lot of ASL and still gets stuck in basic conversation. I see a lot of awkward conversational pauses as well as sighs and yawns. Not because they’re tired or bored—hearing people just have a hard time with silence. They’re always filling it with sounds that don’t mean anything.

By the end of dinner, I am writing things down and Robin is reading them aloud. Her parents are writing and speaking aloud, and Robin is doing a funny combination of all three. At one point, she passes her mom’s notepad to me while saying what I was writing in reply to an earlier conversation and trying to sign that her dad would like the butter, please.

I have to stop my writing and laugh. Her face while she’s concentrating is one of the cutest things I’ve probably ever seen—right up there with Trina’s pudgy toddler hands signing from her high chair when she was a baby. Robin’s eyebrows furrow and the tip of her tongue sticks out the side of her mouth, just like in a cartoon. Her hands stop and start and stop again. Instead of spelling “butter” she spells “burret,” and I laugh.

“You are too cute,” I sign to her, and she drops her concentrating face and smiles, shaking her head and turning pink. I pass her dad the butter and smooth a little curl that’s escaping from her ponytail.

When I look back to the table, her parents are looking at each other and communicating in secret parent-look language. They turn their attention to me and their smiles tell me that I did something right.

“Dinner was wonderful,” I reiterate as the meal comes to a close. “Absolutely delicious.”

Robin’s mom blushes and smiles and signs, “Thank you.”

“You wanna go to Sciarrino’s and get a movie?” Robin writes.

I shrug, “Yes,” I sign, and I follow her to her beat-up Subaru. “What’s Sciarrino’s?” I sign when we get to the car.

She laughs. “DVDs” she signs.

“You still have a video store?” I write.

“Yeah,” she signs. “Westfield is small.”

Despite her living at least a mile from any neighbors, the drive to town takes less than five minutes. On the way there, she drums her fingers on the steering wheel, bopping her head around. At first, I have no idea what’s going on and then I glance at dashboard—sure enough, whatever sound system she has is lit up. “Track 05” says the screen. I give her a little smile and she turns red. She punches a button on the radio and it turns off.

“Sorry,” she signs.

I don’t have time to tell her it’s okay—we’ve pulled up to a little storefront with a big window and a lit neon sign. It smells like stale smoke in spite of the New York smoking ban that’s been in effect as long as I can remember. There’s a wall of DVDs and Blu-rays, a wall of video games for the various systems, a ton of candy, and a few newspapers. These places only survive in tiny towns and big cities. There’s one down the block from Jolene’s apartment in Queens, and we go all the time to buy Nerds and Twizzlers.

Robin wanders over to the wall of new releases and I follow her. She runs her finger along the titles, stopping when she gets to one she wants to see. I shrug or nod or shake my head until we finally decide on one. As she lifts it down (a superhero movie—action and romance and not depressing or pretentious), she turns around and says hi to somebody standing behind us.

I look. There are two prettyish white girls about our age. They have light brown hair and they’re smiling too big at me. I sigh inside and set my face into what I hope is a pleasant, open expression. It’s just so different here. In the city there are thousands of ethnicities and hundreds of languages and most people don’t care much about what makes you different. Yeah, people stare. Especially if I’m speaking ASL. But they would never actually try to meet me.

“Hi,” Robin says and signs. “This is Carter, my… boyfriend.”

Boyfriend. I like it. I smile. “I didn’t know you knew that sign!” I sign to her.

She shrugs and blushes. “I learned it last night,” she says.

I smile at her and she looks up to the girls, who are talking to her. They look at me with raised eyebrows out of the sides of their eyes, like they want to include me, but they can’t. It’s a little distracting.

“He’s from New York City,” Robin says, signing and spelling the city out. “Yeah, he’s deaf. No, I don’t mind.”

The girls pretend to look curious and I see the word “music” on their lips.

Robin blushes and her smile becomes forced. She stops signing. “Yeah,” her lips say. “I know. I guess I like him more.”

I look away for a second, pretending to study the old movie posters. When I look back, Robin is teaching them how to spell their names, “Ana,” and “Callie.”

“Hi,” Callie signs slowly, still smiling too big. “I’m C-a-l-l-i-e.” A flicker of recognition flashes through my head. This is the girl that wanted my number—the number of a guy she doesn’t even know. And I thought Lexington was a small community, ready to pounce on fresh meat.

“Hi,” I sign. I’d really just like to get back and watch the movie. “Nice to meet you.”

“Hi,” Ana signs. “I’m A-n-a.”

“Nice to meet you,” I sign again. I turn to Robin. “Want to go?”

She turns to them and talks. She holds up the movie and says something about the dark. Oh right— I’ve got to get back to Chautauqua before dark.

The girls giggle and wave and Robin and I walk over to the counter. Another teen girl is sitting behind the counter, watching TV on the little screen above her. She turns to us, bored, until she sees me and her face lights up. I don’t know how much longer I can take this small-town thing. Turning to Robin, she says something. She points at me and I catch the word “boyfriend.”

Robin nods and looks up at me. “Yeah, he’s my boyfriend,” she says and signs, smiling again.

The girl turns back to Robin. “He is sooooo hot,” comes clearly from her mouth. I grin and look down at Robin. Does every new guy get this special treatment?