Leap of Faith by Cassidy Shay (the giving tree read aloud .txt) 📕

“You have to call him tomorrow.” I try to ignore my sister. Usually it’s not that hard. All I have to do is turn my back, and she gives up because I have no way of knowing what she's saying. But this time it doesn't work.
    She grabs my face in her hands and looks at me. “You need to call him. He’s trying to help you figure out what happened, and how you’re supposed to use this to your advantage.”
    I shake my head. “He’s not trying to help me. He told me the homeless guy is better off than I am. How is that helping me?”
    She closes her eyes for a second, and I know she’s trying her best not to slap me. “He didn’t mean it like that. Just call him tomorrow. If you won't do it for him, do it for all the people waiting to hear about it. Your story could move so many people, Amia. You could change so many lives with this.” I shake my head, but she latches onto my arm and squeezes a little. It's something she's always done, a threat. Even though I know that she she's not going to squeeze hard enough for her to hurt me, I always agree with her when she does it, just in case.
    “Fine,” I say. “I’ll call tomorrow.” I stomp up the stairs and shut my bedroom door. I press the button on my clock to turn the radio on. I always laughed at that clock. It has a radio, and an alarm. Like I could hear either one. I flip through the channels until I get to the Christian station, hoping that somehow, I’ll be able to hear something. Of course, nothing happens. Once I get back to Mikey’s station, I lean back, close my eyes, and listen to the music.

    I wake up in the morning to Lisa shaking me awake. I keep my eyes shut and try to ignore her. Maybe she’ll just go away. 
    When she keeps shaking me, though, I roll over and throw the covers off me. “Okay, I’m up!”
    I see her talking, so I turn my head to see what she’s saying. “Look out the window.”
    I look out the window, and what I see makes me groan so loud, I almost hear it. Covering my lawn are countless strangers, all holding cameras, notepads, and tape recorders.

“No, no, no,” I say, shaking my head and backing up from the window. “Lisa, I can’t do this. I don’t want this.” I bury my head in her shoulder and feel her arms come around me. I hate being the center of attention, and I love my privacy. I can’t remember a time, even when I was little, that that wasn’t true. And now I have people who are getting paid to squeeze out information about my life. And they’re camped out in my front yard.

After about a minute, I go over and sit on my bed. “This is terrible. I don’t want this.” I sit bury my face in my hands. “Can’t I just go back to bed until they leave?”
    My mom bursts into my room. “Amia!” She has a smile on her face. How is she smiling right now? “I just got off the phone with the doctor. He talked to a guy that he went to school with, and he said he thinks he can figure out what’s going on with your hearing.”
    I let out another groan. Great. I can't imagine why he would be able to figure it out when my regular specialist couldn't. “Mom, she doesn’t need that right now,” says Lisa. I mumble a "thanks" to her, but I don't know if she hears. She talks to me now. “Amia, get ready for school. Meet me in the garage, and then I’ll drive you to school.” I sit on my bed for a couple more minutes, trying to muster the courage to get up and face this horrible day. When Lisa comes in to check on me, I hurry up and get dressed, then head to the garage. My sister opens up the garage and starts the car.
    It’s never taken me this long to get out of my driveway. People are pressing up against the car on all sides, yelling at me through the glass. It's like an angry mob, only with flashing cameras and microphones instead of flaming torches and pitch forks. Lisa has to drive extremely slow in order to avoid running people over. Finally, once we turn onto the street, she can go at a normal speed.
    When I get to the school, it’s no better. I see the school security trying to shoo people away, and the principal is yelling with a bull horn. Only this time, it's not reporters. It's the students. They're all crowding the drop-off zone, getting as close to my car as the staff will let them. It's like another angry mob, only I'm more scared of this one. The reporters have certain etiquette that they have to have. They can't tackle me to the ground. And the school doesn't have to let them in the building. But the students don't have a job that they're trying to keep. If they want their story, they'll get it. And the school can't just ban all the students from going inside.
    I slide down in my seat. “I can’t go over there." I shake my head. "This doesn't even make sense. Why are they going crazy today? Why not yesterday?"
    I know Lisa is probably trying to say something, so I look over at her. To my surprise, she is just sitting there, staring at it all. After about thirty seconds, she pulls the car into a parking spot. “They probably just didn't realize it was you until after you were already at school, and it would just be easier to form a mob this morning instead of chasing you around the school." She shakes her head. "I’ll go with you until you get inside.” I look back out the window and my principal is standing at the door. 
    "I'll escort you inside," he says. Lisa comes around to my side and opens my door. She grabs my hand and we sprint through the crowd of gossips and cell phone cameras. I have a person on each side, and they're both holding onto one of my arms.
    I expected it to be a lot harder to get through the crowd. But they part almost instantly, creating a narrow pathway to the office door. I bump into people the entire way, and I feel the pathway close in behind up after we pass. I want to scream.

We head to the principal’s office. Lisa stays with me while he goes to get the guidance counselor. I lean my head on her shoulder. “Holy crap, Lisa,” I say. “What the heck is going to happen to me?”

The principal comes in with the guidance counselor. They both sit at the other side of the desk, facing Lisa and I. “Amia, yesterday I expressed my concerns of your success to your mother. I know that she insists that soon you’ll be able to hear perfectly well, but I don’t know where she got that idea. Plus, although we’re working on hiring an aide to help you in the classroom, we really don’t have any other resources available for someone who is completely deaf.” The principal clears his throat.

“But that’s not the point here,” she continues. “We are here for you. We want to make sure that you get the best education that you can while you’re here. And that means that we will not tolerate the other students interfering with your learning. Now, I’m sure that they’ll all have this out of their systems by the end of the day. They’re teenagers, and they have short attention spans. But I’m guessing that you’re being bothered at home as well.”

She addresses Lisa now, but her face is still aimed in my direction, which I appreciate. “Will you be available to pick Amia up from school today?” Lisa nods, and the counselor focuses her eyes on me again. “Okay, Amia. After your last class, I want you to go ahead and come here. And throughout the day, if anyone gives you any trouble at all, please come here and we’ll take care of it. Sound good?” I nod, wondering if she sees the irony in her closing words.

I say goodbye to Lisa and I’m given a hall pass. I get to class a couple minutes late, and sit in the empty seat up front.

    After class, Mikey comes up to me. “Did you listen to the radio yesterday?” I nod. “Are you going to call today?"
    I nod. “My sister made me promise that I would. But if you start telling me that I’m worse off than the homeless person, I’m hanging up.” My day is already off to a bad start, and I don’t need this know-it-all Christian kid to lecture me about letting Jesus into my life.
    He smiles. “No, I promise I won’t do that. And I’m sorry for snapping at you the other day. I just want to hear your story. How everything happened. What makes you the way you are.”
    I frown. “How am I?” I know he's not talking about the fact that I'm deaf.
    He shrugs. His eyes look down at the ground. “I don’t know how you are. Not yet. But I do know that God has a reason for choosing you instead of someone else. Not that you're a terrible person or anything. But He chose you for a reason. You specifically. And I want to know why.” I can’t hear it, but I still know that his voice is soft as he speaks. 
    “I want to understand what God saw in you, what he has planned.” We’re at his next class now, and I watch as he goes into the classroom. I’m not sure about him yet.
    For the rest of the day, people stare at me in all my classes. The teachers constantly try to turn their attention back to the front of the classroom, but it takes the students about two seconds before they turn to look at me again. At the end of each class, I apologize to the teacher for the distraction, but they all assure me that it's okay, it's not my fault. When I'm not warding off all the attention from the students, I think about what Mikey said. And my sister, and the doctor. Why is everyone telling me about the big plans that God has for me?
   By the time school ends, I’m exhausted. Trying to pay attention and learn when you can’t hear is exhausting, especially when halfway through the lesson the teacher starts facing the board as they write, so that you have absolutely no idea what's going on.

     By the time the last bell rings, people seem to have gotten over my situation. I see them talking, and stop when I get close, which is absolutely ridiculous because it's not like I can hear what they're saying about me. But at least they aren't forming a mob anymore. I get my stuff from my locker and walk to the office, where my mom is waiting