All the Words I Never Said

Ten years ago Layla's parents died pulling Elias Cole out of a burning building. She watched it happen, and the trauma took all five of her senses. Sight came back. Hearing and speech never did. Elias learned sign language for her and made her a promise: he'd be her eyes, her ears, her voice, and show her the whole world. The Coles raised her. The whole school knew whose girl she was.

Then a transfer student named Molly turns the school into a game, and in the boys' bathroom Layla's hearing comes back — just in time to learn that Elias has been on the other side of that game for a long time. She says nothing. She lets them keep talking, keep escalating, keep filming, while a recorder collects every voice, every insult, every line about a cripple who can't call for help. She takes the beatings, the wastewater tank, the broken ribs, and she keeps the file. Molly is going to hear her own voice played back to her. And when Elias finally turns around and starts breaking things to make it up to her, Layla will already be on a plane, with an uncle who has been waiting ten years for her call, learning to say her first word out loud.

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