Daddy always came home in the night once Mom and Helena and I were in dream's clutches, unconscious and vulnerable, but happy like we should be. But they never did see him until morning, because they weren't Daddy's favorite. I would open my eyes to his voice, deeper than the ocean at its deepest, saying, "Stella, Stella;” which was my name. His voice the color of slate would pound in my sleep until I jumped awake, fearful, because I was easily startled while the world was dark.

I would teeter out of bed on tiptoes, then we'd ride in his car. He'd drive, and I'd ride, a nightshirt-clad passenger taking in the smell of his cologne wafting from the deep fibers of the carpet and seats. I'd egg him on and laugh as we broke the speed limit. By the time we reached Go-Lucky's eighties-style diner twenty miles from my school, Dad’s car would be rocketing, bordering on ninety miles per hour. Then we'd order milkshakes. He'd get the choco-mint, and I would get coconut strawberry with extra whipped cream and flakes of coconut ground finer than dust, a signature flavor of Go-Lucky's. Seated in one of the cherry red booths so cold I could feel the chill through the seat of my nightshirt, we'd talk. About electricity, which he liked, and sometimes about drawing, which I liked. A pen always rested in my breast pocket for creating art hastily because ink bleeds quickly on napkins. And while I worked, I'd hold the napkin down with taut fingers so it wouldn't blow away in the fan's breeze and jabber, so much so that I bet Daddy wished he could glue my lips to the table, because I hated silence.

It was a time where my school was only fifteen miles from Go-Lucky's, middle school, when he touched my arm instead. I opened my eyes to the bristling of the tiny hairs under his palm because he couldn't wake me with his slate voice deeper than the ocean, and I knew, somehow in the dark that late night, that the world- mine- had fallen silent forever. And it was.

The doctor said that gradually I’d lose my hearing. Nothing more, just my hearing. Just the ability to hear the sound of steady rain at night. Just the ability to listen to wind whistling through the leaves on big oak trees and deep laughter from the belly. Just the ability to dance along in the car to funky songs with my mom. I would never be able to hear the voice of a young singer, laced with passion, or the rustle a fox made as it slipped through fallen leaves in Autumn. Everybody reminded me to stay positive. “At least you’re not dying, you’ll still be alive.” They said. I continued to wonder why they didn’t get that I was still losing.
The day I didn't notice the big old garbage truck clanking and sputtering down my road I knew that all of it was gone, along with everything that had ever made me, Stella, a usual one. When I scrawled it on paper and showed it to my friends at school they thought it was a prank, nothing but a stupid joke. I’d been avoiding telling them. I could see it in the way their mouths opened wide and their cheeks fattened and flushed as the obvious peals of laughter leaped from their tongues all rich and pink, or would've been if I could hear it. If I could hear it. All I saw afterward were the words "disease" "hearing" and "deaf" on their lips, and it gave me a sour feeling inside, like I'd swallowed a strawberry, pale and green with prematurity. In the years to come not a single one bothered to take sign language lessons with me so we could communicate, just black ink on paper in notebooks or bleeding on napkins that made me feel like I was stupid. Their hands cramped up too much from penning notes to me at sleepovers, so they didn't bother to at all and I sat in a group of people but very much alone.

I missed sound. The world slipped through my fingers now, diluted, watery, useless without anything but the sound of my thoughts, spinning so fast that I couldn't hear anything but a buzz in my head and nothing. I missed the color, the slate grey of my daddy's deeper than the ocean at its deepest voice. I missed the vibrant tropical mango of my little sister Helena's voice too. Her young golden curls clashed with it when she'd just had a bath and were softened and light from the soap, but on those days, I missed it even more. I wanted more than anything to see Mom speak in gothic purple instead of her eyebrows twitching like they did when she was sad as she signed to me in broken ASL.

One day of the summer before I started high school, a day I do not remember the date for, I read a quote. A quote in a pretty font against a mountain backdrop, "Positivity is the key to happiness.”  So, as I stepped into the high school for the first time in my life, into a place where my future would begin and began, I finally chose to like the silence. I should've done it long before then, because now I became a caged bird set free into the sky of elated happiness, a place I’d forgotten. I wasn't missing out on social opportunities in the hallways anymore. I was in a state of bliss in constant chaos. I could think now, without my thoughts similar to a whirling tornado of confusion and buzzy nothingness. I read books and let the words and characters color my world. When it was night and I was in dream's clutches, I wasn't frightened awake by Helena's footsteps pounding through the house in search of a glass and a faucet. Boys hooting at their friends couldn't distract me from the board. I relished in the silence and let my own world become dynamic and beautiful and unstoppable, like it should've been in my last days of middle school fifteen miles from Go-Lucky's. And somehow my world seemed less silent and loud in a way that was better than anything.

But Daddy quit waking me up in the night. I'd drive over to Go Lucky's in my own car with my own license and black licorice in the glove box. My hands would shake on the counter as I ordered coconut strawberry and reminded the waitress to grind my coconut finer than dust even though she knew me by name and she wouldn't forget. I'd take my milkshake and sit at the booth in my nightshirt and watch Daddy and Helena. I'd catch the word "electricity" on his lips, and watch her pen dart like lightning behind the curtain of her hair. Laughter on their faces made me shivery and freezing, and I would crank the heat up in my car and finish my shake and eat black licorice while the world was dark. Helena’s drawings weren’t even that good.

After nights like those when Helena would kiss me good morning and I could smell sugary milkshake on her breath, and Daddy's eyes were meeting anything but my own, I'd draw again. Such a pretty picture it always was, fluent curves clashing with crisp angles in a way that wasn't clashing at all, but mesmerizing. I drew it with the pen that was still a weight in my breast pocket on fancy paper that artists use, and I gave it to Daddy. When I took the trash out before school every day I could always see a few of my pretty lines on pretty paper sticking out from under old soggy cereal.

On mornings like these after nights like those, when Helena was Daddy's favorite because she could hear his voice deep as the ocean at its deepest, and my lines and me were invisible to him, positivity wasn't the key and I wondered if it had ever been. I always remembered why I hated the silence. And I wondered for the thousandth time why the silence hated me.