Victor: Her Ruthless Crush by Theodora Taylor (beach read book TXT) 📕

“You already thanked me in ASL,” he signed back with a smug smirk. “You should practice your CSL.”

“Thank you?” I made the CSL version of the THANK YOU sign with a questioning grimace.

He reached across the space and replaced the index finger I was pumping with my thumb. Then he sat back to sign, “You did not practice over the break.”

I confessed the truth with a shy mix of ASL and CSL. “I didn't think you would be coming back. You and Han made it seem like you two were definitely going to be staying in Hong Kong.”

He paused, clamped his lips. Then he signed, “Han remained behind to assist my father in Hong Kong. Not me.”

“Why didn’t you stay too?”

It was a simple question, but he didn't reply right away. “I told my father I wanted to try going to a normal school. I never have before.”

I guess that was a reasonable answer. Made sense. But he was looking off to the side like he couldn't quite meet my eyes.

“You wanted to go to a normal school, even though you never did before? What changed?” I signed.

He raised his hands, collapsed them in his lap. Then raised them again.

His next sign was universal. The kind anyone anywhere could understand. Even if you were a foreigner. Even if you were an alien.

He simply pointed at me. “You.”

Me? So many emotions rushed to my head, making me feel dizzy and confused.

I waited for him to sign something more, but that was it. He dropped his hands into his lap. And a few seconds later, the car stopped in front of our apartment building as if he had commanded it to end our conversation.

This was the part where I should have woken up my brother, thanked Victor again as any polite girl would have, and left.

But I didn’t.

I couldn't leave it there. I had to raise my hands again to say, “I don't understand. Why did you come to my school? Why did you fight Jake for us? Why did you do all of this for me? Why did you—?"

I stopped signing when he abruptly looked away from me—the signing equivalent of cutting someone off.

So many silent moments passed after that. I wasn't sure if he would ever raise his gaze. Even to say goodbye.

But eventually, he reached into the inside pocket of his school blazer and pulled out a pad. It was a mini-version of the blank scratchpad he had used during our tutoring sessions, and he wrote something down on it.

But instead of showing me what he’d written like he usually did, he tore off the piece of notebook paper and carefully folded it in a pattern.

The final product wasn’t what I would call origami, but it was beautiful. A much more precisely folded version of what Byron and I used to call ninja stars before we actually moved to Japan.

“Like you, I have a secret, too,” he signed. “Put this secret in your pocket. And do not open it until you are ready to know.”

With that, he offered the folded paper to me in the Japanese way. Both hands extended.

I took it from him, confused for the umpteenth time that day. But I did as he told me. I slipped it into my left blazer pocket.

“Thank you,” I signed again. This time in much better CSL.

A smile flitted across his lips, like an animal too reluctant to come out.

“You're welcome,” he signed, also in CSL.

We both lowered our eyes after that. But neither of us moved.

We were one of those cheap anime scenes where the camera scans over the same still picture to simulate motion. It felt like so much was happening, but neither of us was moving at all.

Byron woke up with a jerk.

“Did I fall asleep?” he asked, lifting his head from my shoulder.

“Yeah, we’re here,” I answered, speaking out loud for the first time since we'd climbed into the car.

My voice sounded new somehow. Older and less innocent.

The door opened. And I looked up to see Donny standing on the other side, waiting for us to get out.

Climbing out of the Bentley felt like emerging from a fairytale. But I still wasn’t clear on the moral of the story.

I turned to see if one last look at Victor over my shoulder would reveal any answers. But Donny closed the door before I could get a final glimpse.

11

I’d spent a lot of time over the break trying not to think about Victor. But that was all over now. His secret pulsed in my pocket as I entered our apartment behind my brother.

“What took you so long to get home?” Mom demanded as soon as we walked through the door.

We were less than fifteen minutes late, thanks to the unexpected ride home from Victor. But instead of defending ourselves, we lied to her about basketball practice running late.

Mom muttered in Korean. The complicated version we didn't understand. She'd only taught us the most basic words in her mother tongue, insisting we’d never need it. I guess she was right. Here we were in Japan, speaking in English as we all signed in ASL.

Byron and I hovered near the front door, expecting a lecture of some kind about coming home too late and worrying our poor mother. But in the end, she just told us to go to our rooms and do our homework.

“Be quiet in the hallway,” she warned us. “Your father’s still sleeping.”

With my dad's hours, dinner was often breakfast for him, and we knew better than to wake him up. But that didn’t stop Byron from starting a conversation when we made it to our doors, which were located directly across from each other.

“Sorry about what happened before winter break with Jake,” he signed.

“It’s okay,” I immediately signed back.

“No, it’s not okay,” Byron answered just as fast. “I wanted to defend you, but I didn’t know how. I feel bad that your tutoring client had to come in to do