Page 35 of Resilience

“Tell your mom I want to help,” Sam signed. “Anything she needs, anything you need, I’m in.”

Sitting in her car in the school parking lot that evening, Athena smiled at her phone.

Smartphones were one invention entirely made for ‘normal’ people that had accidentally greatly improved the lives of people with disabilities. Suddenly, Deaf folks could communicate like everybody else did. Hardly any hearing person (well, any hearing person under the age of about forty, at least) used their smartphone to make actual, old-fashioned phone calls. Everything was text or video now, and video was pretty much only for close friends or work stuff—and all of Athena’s close friends and co-workers were fluent in ASL. She had table-top tripods at home and work and one of those dashboard holders in her car, so she had both hands free and could actually have phone calls.

Not to mention all the apps for captioning, text-to-speech and speech-to-text, and myriad other tools to make life easier. All hail Steve Jobs.

“You’re a good hobbit, Samwise,” Athena signed.

Strangely, a flash of melancholy went through Sam’s expression, and then he looked down. When he stayed like that for a few seconds, she clapped her hands to get his attention again. He looked up and gave her a smile that, after a beat, seemed sincere enough.

But something felt off. “You okay?” she asked. “Your mood seems off.”

“I’m good,” he signed. “I don’t want to talk about me. Nothing going on with me is as important as you.”

“But I don’t want to talk about my bullshit anymore. What’s your bullshit?”

He smiled. “Okay. Maybe I’m in a little bit of a mood. I fucked something up when I was stocking new inventory, and Eight chewed my ass over it.”

“I always knew Uncle Eight was kind of a lovable jerk, but since you’ve been prospecting, he seems a lot less lovable.”

“Yeah. Dad says he just gets off on riding the prospects and I should try not to take it personally but ...”

“But it’s hard not to take it personally when it’s you personally getting abused.”

“Not abuse. Just ... I don’t know. It just makes me worry I’m not cutting it. It would suck to be the first legacy to wash out as a prospect.”

“Do you regret doing this?” Athena definitely regretted it for him. He’d been happier before he’d decided to prospect.

Sam’s eyes slid away from the screen as he contemplated his answer. The fact that he had to think about it might have suggested regret, but Sam was generally thoughtful, especially about important things. When he was asked what he thought about something, he considered his answer before giving it.

“I really hate being a prospect,” he signed when he’d thought enough. “Everybody told me it was going to suck, and they did not lie. They also told me there was no way to understand how bad it sucked until I was living it, and that’s also true. I hate every bit of this—except just working in the shop. That’s fine.” He paused and thought some more, then added, “But I sit there in the shop, watching the guys working in the bays, laughing and giving each other shit, coming in sometimes to laugh and give me and Monty shit. I work behind the bar in the clubhouse and feel the vibe there, and yeah. I want it. If I have to go through this bullshit to get there, so did all the patches. No, I don’t regret it. I just have to survive and not fuck up so bad my own family gives me the boot.”

“If you want it, you’ll get it. I know you, Sam. You’re tough and smart, and you’re so good. You’ll get what you want. You deserve everything you want.”

He stared at her through their phones. He seemed fully sad now, and Athena wished she could reach through and hug him, let him lie in her lap so she could comb her fingers through his hair and rub his scalp in the way that always made him feel better.

“I’ll be home in about twenty minutes,” she told him. “Come over when you get off work. My parents are both busy tonight, so we can order in and take over the big TV. We haven’t done a hate watch of The Hobbit for a while. We’ll get pillows and blankets and make a fort and stay in our happy place all night.”

Again, the sadness in Sam’s expression deepened, when Athena had expected it to ease. He looked away. When he looked back, he signed, “That sounds awesome, but I can’t. Mom wants me home to help ... do a repair in the stable.”

He was lying. If her instinctual understanding of Sam hadn’t been enough to be sure he was lying, he’d said in this very phone call, not ten minutes earlier, that he had nothing going on tonight and was probably going to hang out in bed playing Xbox.

Sam didn’t want to hang out with her.

With a small few exceptions for their occasional squabbles over the years, she didn’t think he had ever not wanted to hang out with her when he was free. And she knew for a fact he’d never lied about it. Why would he lie?

As she was trying to figure out how to respond, whether to let him have his lie or to call him on it, Sam signed, “Hey, there’s somebody at the pumps and Monty’s in the john. I have to go. Talk to you later, okay?”

“Okay. Hey—I love you, Samwise.”

Sam flinched.

He flinched.

And then he ended the call.

Athena stared at the Sam-less screen for a long time. Something was going on with him. Maybe it was simply the stress of prospecting. Maybe her situation and his frustration at not being able—not being allowed—to do something about it was just too much stress on top of the prospecting stuff. But if it was that, why wouldn’t he be honest with her?

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