The Silence Between Us

Seventeen-year-old Maya Harris, her mother, and her brother, Connor, have recently moved to Parker, Colorado from their old home in New Jersey. It is Maya’s first day at Engelmann High School. Maya is nervous and unhappy because Engelmann is a hearing high school, unlike Pratt, the New Jersey school for the Deaf that she attended for the previous four years. Maya and her mother head toward Engelmann’s office; Maya’s mother tries to reassure her that the school will be fine and that Maya’s educational interpreter, Kathleen, is a nice person whom Maya will like. Maya is skeptical. Her negative expectations cause her to be somewhat rude when they meet Kathleen, and Maya’s mother reminds her to be polite. Dr. Rivera, the principal, is waiting in his office with a student named Nina Torres, who has been assigned to mentor Maya through her first weeks at school. Maya angrily asks why she has been assigned a “BABYSITTER,” but they insist that peer mentors are a regular part of the school’s operation, not a special accommodation for Maya (15). Realizing that her negative attitude is causing more strain for her mother, who is already stressed from the move and from caring for Connor, who has cystic fibrosis, Maya gives in and accepts Nina’s presence.