Lowe was feeling fidgety. From time to time, he would unlock his phone and run through his notifications, only to get despondent the next second. The boy had tons of them from unread messages, usually from the drawings he posted online. But nothing about the one he was waiting for.

For someone who couldn't interact very well with others, he was quite famous on the internet. What started as something similar to a diary, in which he posted the drawings he judged good enough to show other people, resulted in his way of earning money. 

For some reason, his account got well-liked, and soon people began to ask for commissions. At first, he would get all anxious about texting them back, but with time, and his mom helping every time he got a doubt or couldn't understand a sentence, he got confident enough to work by himself.

On the internet, most of the texts he received were technical, unlike his real-life interactions. They were merely instructions of what people wanted in their drawings, so it was a lot easier than having to judge people's feelings through a message.

Time after time, his phone would vibrate with a new notification. And time after time, he would try to gather all his self-control to not unlock it the same instant, unsuccessfully. He was just as eager as his time as a teenager who couldn't fall asleep before a school excursion day.

Maybe he also felt akin to that when he was a child. His memory from those times was too much of a mess, driving him to uncertainty. Sometimes he had dreams about his days in the orphanage, but the thread between fiction and reality was too blurred for him to make them apart. It was impossible to be sure if what he was reminding was in fact a dream or a memory.

Perhaps his father could feel that he was lacking, so he used to tell stories from when they met or some parts of Lowe's childhood. He probably wanted him to complete the tellings, but most of them felt so far that sometimes the boy could convince himself that they didn't happen to him at all.

Even though he couldn't remember much, he usually had a good grasp of the feelings he felt during those moments. The first time his dad told him about the day he found him, Lowe was pretty sure that by that time, he felt unimaginably sad and also overwhelmed to some degree.

His father had just enrolled in college when they first met, and you can't just take a kid from the streets and decide to adopt them. At least, you are not supposed to. Formerly, he was sent from place to place to assess his situation. At the time, he was too young to understand what was happening, but later, in one of those "do you remember when" conversations with his dad, he found out what happened.

After spending some time with him in the street, his father took him to the police station to declare him a missing minor and see if they had some information about the boy. They didn't. As someone not even registered in their data bank, Lowe got into the system.

They sent him to an orphanage. From what he heard, initially, he didn't get along with anyone. Not with the adults, not with the teenagers, and not even with the other kids. William was the only person he would interact with every time he went there to visit him.

It wasn't hard to guess why he kept all those years in the orphanage without being adopted. The lady workers always found it amusing how Lowe would turn from a frightened kid who would bite anyone if he got startled by an unexpected approach to a sweet and needy kid every time he got his particular visitor.

Following William everywhere like a lost puppy was part of their routine every single visit. His dad even told him that the ladies would often ask him what he did to tame the quiet boy. He wasn't sure what they were talking about since Lowe was a meek kid from day one.

It took about a month for the people in the orphanage to learn that the boy was deaf. His difficulty interacting and communicating with people made them think that the boy could be diagnosed with some degree of autism. Since the orphanage didn't have enough funds to hire a psychologist to consult, they were never sure. And seeing how Lowe was the first one to run from whichever room he was to the front door as soon as William got into the place, it just didn't cross their minds.

In reality, it was his father who found out the boy was deaf. They had a bit of an accident in one of his visits, and Lowe wasn't the slightest bothered by the thunderous noise that struck the place. Seeing how the boy didn't even flinch at such a racket, he could guess why the boy was left behind, and Lowe's behavior started to make more sense. After snapping his fingers close to the boy's ear to see his reaction, only to receive none, William was sure about his finding.

From that day, William stopped trying to talk to him, and they started to communicate with drawings instead. Slowly, his father worked on learning sign language the best way he could, and then he taught the boy the basics. After some time, they were able to study it together. The orphanage workers also learned some handy vocabulary, but not enough to engage in a complete conversation with the boy.

And that was their routine for years. In one of those years, William introduced him to Sophia, who would become his mom not so long after that. She also started to visit and pamper Lowe with everything she could, and as soon as they finished college and got a stable financial life, they got the paperwork to adopt the boy.

Smiling to himself, he was brought back to reality after his phone vibrated again, and his smile grew even wider when he saw a particular message saying: "Hey."