Even if he didn’t really like it compared to his real home, there was something relaxing about living on the island. Nate, although he’d never admit it out loud, enjoyed listening to the bird's chirp and the cicadas sing while the breeze of the lake cooled down the hot summer winds. There was also something about the foliage that he liked. There were plenty of woods to go walking through in Lacrosse, but there was always a building towering in the distance that shattered his illusion. Here he didn’t have to worry about it at all. The tallest building was the Town Hall, which was only a two-story building that tripled as the town library and post office.

“Ow…” Simon groaned, leaning down to feel his ankle.

Nate sighed, spinning around to look at his handicapped classmate. “Listen. Hey, you paying attention?” He snapped his fingers, too, just to be additionally annoying.

Simon rolled his eyes. “I can hear you. You don’t have to do that.”

“Aren’t you deaf?”

“I’m not completely deaf. I just have significant hearing loss.”

“Huh,” Nate crossed his arms. “Kelly told me you were deaf.”

“Well, Kelly is a liar.” Simon’s face got red. “Her and Adrian are always messing with me, so it doesn’t surprise me they’d lie.”

“So…” Nate cocked his head, trying to get a look at the hearing aid in his ear. “What can you hear without that thing?”

Simon touched the plastic without even thinking too. “It’s kind of like I’m submerged in water. The sounds get muddy and mixed together.”

“Huh.”

“Does that make sense?”

Nate shrugged. “Sure. Why are you following me, though? I could just walk it back to the bait shop.”

“My art lesson is on the island in this direction. I figured it’d be a waste of time to wait for you.”

“Alright.” Nate turned around and kept up the hill.

A few minutes into their walk, they reached the house. It was an old, two-story white house that stood on the cliffside, overlooking the trees onto the lake. If there was something Nate was grateful for about living with his uncle, it was the view.

They walked through the door, which lead straight into a hallway with a staircase directly in front of them. To their right was the living room that eventually spilled into the kitchen and dining room. Right around the corner was the sunroom where his aunt Clara had her plants. “Take your shoes off. My aunt hates tracking in mud.” Nate said before ascending the staircase.

He turned at the top of the stairs down the hallway and opened the last door on the right.

Before Nate moved in, the room had been used as a second study. There was a large bookshelf built into the wall and a heavy wooden desk facing the window. To the very right corner was a futon, upright in its couch position, and a folded blue blanket placed neatly at the foot.

Nate started rummaging through the desk. “So why are you suddenly so frantic to get the book?” He asked, but received no answer. He wondered if his voice had reached the thing in his ear.

He turned. “Hey. Did you hear me?”

“Huh?”

“I asked you a question. You didn’t hear me?”

Simon shook his head. “No. Sorry. What did you say?”

He sighed and turned back around. “Forget it. I’ll just find you the damn book so you can leave. After all, I get out of paying for half of the car.” He really couldn’t believe he’d sunk the mustang. At the time he seemed to remember it being incredible. However, now… it really wasn’t so grand. “Kinda wish I hadn’t done that.”

Nate slammed the door shut, making Simon jump, and looked through a new one. He wasn’t entirely sure what he was looking for, but he figured he’d know once he saw it. Eventually, he did. “Here, this the thing-” He cut himself off, looking at Simon holding onto a picture frame of him and his mother. He slapped the sketchbook down on the desk and snatched the photograph from his curious hands. “Don’t touch my things.”

“Sorry.” Simon frowned. “You took my hearing aid right out of my ear.”

“Yeah… well…” Nate gently placed the photo face down. “Don’t look at it.” He pointed at the desk. “I found it. Go away now. You’re annoying.”

Simon felt compelled to ask about it. To the best of his knowledge, he didn’t even have a fake happy family photo. The walls in his house were white and bare. When family or friends planned to come over, his mother would frantically clean the house with a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other. She’d quickly nail baby photos of him on the wall, and act as if they’d been there since the day they were printed. However, none of them were of him and his mother together.

She couldn’t even fake that one.

“Where’s your mom?” Simon spoke without thinking and mentally cursed himself for talking instead of leaving. “You don’t have to answer that. I’m sorry.”

“Why?” Nate asked, almost put off by it. “She’s not dead. If that’s what you thought.”

“No, I was just… You live with Carter, so I thought something happened to her.” He clenched the book in his hands, feeling the awkward he’d caused fill the room.

He really wanted to leave.

“Nothing happened to her. She’s just sick, so now I’m here.” He leaned against the nightstand the picture was on and crossed his arms. “How do you know my uncle?”

“I’ve always known him. He’s been on the island for as long as I can remember.”

“You were born on the island?”

Simon let out a little laugh. “No one is born on the island. Unless they’re born at home. We don’t have a hospital here.”

“Not what I meant. You’ve always been here?”

He nodded. “I guess. My mom got our house after my grandfather died. He left the house and some inheritance for us.” He stopped. Why was he telling the new kid all of this? Not even his classmates, who he’d gone to school with for several years, knew this story.

“Okay, but how do you know my uncle?”

“Oh. I go to the peer to draw. The bait shop is there so I started talking to him one summer and now I spend all my summers talking to him.”

Nate huffed. “Don’t you have friends?”

“You know the people we go to school with. Do you think any of them are my friends?”

Nate thought for a moment. “No.” As harsh as that was, it was the truth. No one wanted to deal with having to reexplain everything when Simon couldn’t hear them. It was annoying.

That’s how it was in elementary school before Simon had gotten his hearing aid. His classmates would say things, the sound would get muddy, and he would be left out.

“W-what?” Simon had tried, over and over again, to become part of the group. At first, they happily reexplained things, but after a while it just got old.

“Just forget about. Okay?”

Just forget about it. That was a phrase he’d become very familiar with.

“You leaving now?” Nate asked, tapping his shoulder and getting him to jump. “Look, I’m gonna pretend like we couldn’t find it until after five, okay? That’s when I get off work. If my uncle asks, tell him that.”

“Wait. You want me to lie to him?”

Nate grabbed the sketchbook from the desk and slammed it into Simon’s chest. “Exactly. Thanks.”