The thing about running a gym in Colorado, Ala had figured out, was that come summer it would completely clear out as everyone shifted their activities to the great outdoors. In LA, the gyms kept a pretty consistent body count; sure, there was always the upswing of New Year’s resolutions in January, but they died out steadily and were all but gone by the beginning of March. Hardly made an impact on a gym. The summer didn’t lose people to the outdoors because the outdoors were just as shitty in the summer as they had been in the winter, only with the bonus of being hell sauna hot. People enjoyed air conditioning too much to exercise outside.

But not in Coleville, Colorado, where the average temperature in mid-August was 80 and the wind blew steadily through the valley. The town was just west of Denver, nestled into the Rocky Mountains on highway 119. Set in easy reach of mountains, rivers, and lakes, no one in town seemed bothered to stick around come summer, leaving the whole place feeling ghost town dead. The fact that there were not literal tumbleweeds rolling down main street was, frankly, a surprise, and one that left her feeling let down by every cartoon she had watched growing up.

Or maybe this was just Ala’s impression because she spent all her time working at Rock & Roll, her Auntie Camella’s rock climbing gym/bowling alley/fitness center. Ala remembered when Camella had opened this place six years ago. She’d only been ten and still thought it sounded kind of hokey, too much stuffed into one business, but her dad had laughed for a solid minute at the name so she hadn’t said. Back then, anything that made her dad laugh was good in her book. And the place had thrived. She still thought it sounded kind of hokey, but she couldn’t deny that it did well for itself, mostly. Except for the summer, when everyone took their rock climbing and running outside, leaving only the very old or the very young behind to teeter around the bowling alley.

Rock & Roll was split in half, with one half taken up by the rock climbing gym and the other split into two stories. The entrance lead to the front desk and a small waiting room, with a hallway to the right leading to a set of stairs and the door to the bowling alley. Up the stairs - or the elevator - were the locker rooms and fitness center, which had a small selection of exercise machines, weights, and some closed-off rooms for classes. Set in the middle of this was a large Plexiglas wall, through which you could see the two-story high walls. The exercise machines faced the glass, so people could watch the climbers.

It was actually a pretty nice set-up, Ala had to admit. Clean, efficient. No messier than gyms with pools taking up half their space.

Ala stood at the front counter, folding towels and watching the desk while the actual receptionist, Cameron, took a break. Camella was in her office going over numbers, her dad was upstairs teaching a kid’s 6-8 boxing class, and nobody had come into the gym for the last twenty minutes. The rock walls were clear of people, and there was just one family in the bowling alley - some grandparents with their grandkids. She hadn’t been upstairs in awhile, so she wasn’t sure who was left up there, other than the ten or so kids her dad was teaching to hit a punching bag. She wondered how many he’d been forced to separate to keep from hitting each other today. The image of her dad - a 6’2” middleweight champion boxer - wrestling a bunch of squirming, chubby-limbed kids made her laugh out small huffs of air as she folded the last of the towels.

Towels folded, she put them away: A small pile on the end of the counter for easy guest access, the rest distributed in the little cubbies set against the wall behind the desk. She made more of a job of it than necessary - boredom, she thought mildly - making sure every towel was straight and perfect. She glanced at the clock set on the wall in front of her. Cameron would be back from his break soon. Maybe she’d go climbing when he returned. It was something she’d only picked up recently, after the move, but she liked it a lot. It worked her muscles in different ways than boxing or martial arts did, exhausting her in new ways. And her favorite spotter was working today, Hanna, with whom she’d managed to work out a communication system - Hanna would tug on the rope a certain number of times if she needed to let Ala know something, and Ala would hold out a certain number of fingers if she needed to tell Hanna something. So far, they were accident free. Ala hadn’t fallen off the wall since she graduated off the kiddie wall, where no ropes were used.

With the last towel in its placed, Ala turned back around to face the counter. She stopped mid-turn, muscles tensing as she saw a woman there. The woman stood a couple feet away from the desk, fiddling with her phone. Ala let out a breath, checking that her sign had been placed behind the computer. Camella had made it when Ala had started working there, a little sign that read,

HELLO! MY NAME IS ALA JONES,

I AM DEAF

SO IF I DON’T SEE YOU THERE

JUST WAIT OR TAP MY SHOULDER

TO GET MY ATTENTION,

AND I WILL BE HAPPY TO HELP YOU!

So far, the sign had been pretty effective. Ala had yet to have anybody be out-right rude to her - there’d been some awkward moments from people who didn’t know how to interact with her, but that was easy to deal with. The worst she’d had was people waving their hands rudely in front of her face to get her attention.

Ala watched the woman for another minute, but she seemed engrossed in her phone. Her long, dark hair hid half her face in its curls, her long nose and one bright eye just visible. Ala settled in the chair behind the computer, pulling up guest check-in just in case, and waited. After a couple seconds, the large glass doors opened again, and a few more people came through. The group varied in age from mid-twenties to mid-thirties, none wearing work out clothes or carrying gym bags, and for a second Ala wasn’t sure what they were here for. Then the first woman looked up from her phone, glanced at the hallway to her right, and Ala got it. A moment later, there was the slightest tremor in the floor as a stampede of five- and six-year-olds came down the stairs, excited and energetic still, with her dad right behind them. The kids greeted their parents with big smiles and wide arms. One, a little black boy with corkscrew coils whom Ala thought was called Liam, leaped dramatically at the woman who’d been playing on her phone. She caught him easily, shifting her hair out of her face as she gave him a wide smile.

She sensed someone walking behind the counter, and turned to face her dad. He gave her a small smile, looking tired.

“I thought you were supposed to wear them out, not the other way around,” Ala said, grinning cheekily at him when she pointed to the kids being lead outside. Her dad rolled his eyes, bringing up a fist to sign yeah, yeah back at her. He grabbed a towel off the counter, wiped it across his forehead.

“Those kids are going to run me into the ground,” he said, the towel flapping awkwardly as he signed around it.

“I thought you’d be used to this.”

“You,” he said, pointing at her emphatically, “were just one kid. Not twenty. And you were more disciplined than any of them are.”

“Plus you could push me off onto one your buddies when you got tired,” said Ala, quirking an eyebrow.

“Well, yes.” He grinned unabashedly, his entire face transforming with it. Ala couldn’t help but smile back. Most people thought her dad - Darnell Jones, semi-famous middleweight boxing champion - a serious, maybe even dangerous man. He was 6’2” and weighed 200 pounds, with broad shoulders and a barrel chest, thick muscles all over his body and hands that people usually saw curled into fists. There was a scar cutting through his left eyebrow, more scars dotting his knuckles, a couple knots in his nose from where it’d been broken too many times, and when he scowled, it looked dangerous. It didn’t help, Ala knew, that he was black - his dark black skin gave people pause as much as anything else.

But when he smiled, she thought, all of that changed. People couldn’t help but feel reassured by that bright, wide smile, the way it made his eyes crinkle in the corners. It certainly always made her feel better.

Sometimes, she wondered if people thought the same about her. Her and her dad looked a lot alike, were never mistaken as anything but father and daughter. She got her curves and her short height - only 5’3” - from her mom, but everything else from her dad. They had the same broad face and broader smile, full lips and wide nose, the same shoulders and large hands. Ala thought, sometimes, that she might look more like her mother if she didn’t work out so much, that she’d have a softer, even curvier body. But as it is, her dad and her also shared thick muscles and trimmed torsos, everything about them tough and hard. Ala could never find it in herself to be disappointed; she didn’t much care for looking like her mother.

“You ready to go?” he asked, throwing the towel in the bin behind her.

She shrugged. “Just waiting for Cameron to get back.”

“How long’s he been gone?”

Ala glanced at the clock on the wall, pursing her lips. “Twenty minutes.”

Darnell shook his head. “Probably out smoking again. I’ll go get him, you gather your things.” He turned to step away, then stopped, turning his upper body back towards her. “Are you wearing that, or did you want to change?”

Ala looked down at her self. She was wearing a tight tank top over a sports bra, a pair of baggy sweats that ended mid-calf and athletic shoes. She looked back at her dad and shrugged. “Should I?”

He ran his hand over his trimmed fro, scratching at the springy curls. “Maybe a t-shirt? I think the dress code doesn’t allow tank tops.”

Now was Ala’s turn to roll her eyes, a move she did so dramatically her head rolled with it.

“Please don’t act like that in front the principal,” Darnell said.

Ala huffed. “I’ll try.”

He fixed her with a look - one of those parental, I-see-through-your-bullshit looks he was so good at - until Ala promised she’d be on her best behavior. He left to go find Cameron, and Ala slipped off the chair to look under the desk for one of the many gym t-shirts held there for sale. She found a simple shirt, with the Rock & Roll logo on the front right, and slipped it on over her tank top. As she pat down her pockets to make sure she had her phone, her dad came back around the corner with Cameron in tow. Cameron was only a couple years older than Ala, about 19, and had been working at the gym since he left high school and found himself with nothing better to do. He wasn’t a particularly hard worker, took long smoke breaks, but he was a cool guy who had hooked Ala up with some pot her first week. Ala was pretty sure Camella only let him keep working here because he was the only one who could get the pin retrieval in the bowling alley to work when it broke down, which was several times a month.

“We’ll be back in an hour,” Darnell said to Cameron, checking his own pockets. He still had on the tight t-shirt he wore when teaching boxing, but had changed his athletic shorts out for jeans and put on athletic shoes. He motioned to Ala, turning to leave, and she followed, only dragging her feet a little.

Coleville High School was a sprawling, one story brick building set on a wide, two lane road that Ala guessed must have been the main road through town once upon a time. Now, the town used a four-lane road lined with businesses and city hall, leaving this one to things that required larger buildings and more space - there was a hospital a quarter mile from the school, and a cemetery just across from that. Ala tried not to take that as an omen.

The school wasn’t as big as her old one, but that had been a private boarding school for the Deaf, so Ala hadn’t been expecting that. Still, this seemed so… small town. The entrance was on the far right, with the rest of the building sprawling out to the left instead of back into the woods that surrounded it. It looked like it had started off small and been added onto over the years, the brick near the entrance looking significantly more worn than the rest. There was a large lawn set between the parking lot and the building, and a spot right in front of the entrance for buses to pull in, with a large, grassy median where there sat a statue of a ferocious-looking badger. Across from that, there was the football stadium, and Ala could just see what looked like a field for another sport disappearing around the side of the building - maybe for soccer.

She glanced at her dad, raising one single eyebrow. He shrugged.

“What do you think?” He signed it single-handedly as he pulled into a parking spot, the words formed a little awkwardly.

She turned back to the school, ran a hand over her shaved head. “Small,” she said, holding her hands, palms facing each other, in front of her, then bringing them closer and closer together, until they were almost touching. Her dad rolled his eyes, reaching over to shove her hands apart again.

“It’s not that small, Ala,” he said. He used her sign name, a combination of the sign fight with the first letter of her name. His fists brushed against each other in A shapes - thumbs at the side of the fist, instead of the thumbs tucked in front as it would normally be for an S shape - then he used one fist to cuff her lightly on the jaw. It was something he’d started doing when she was a kid, whenever she seemed anxious or upset, and the familiar motion made her relax, a smile tucked in the corner of her mouth. Darnell grinned back. “Come on, let’s go.”

The inside of the high school looked more like her old school. Rows of lockers broken up by doors or hallways, the walls an off-white with accents of purple, which were the two school colors. No stairs, just one long hall leading down to more classrooms and more halls. The office was just to the right when they entered the building, probably the last room on this side of the building. Inside, the light was on, but they could only see one person in there. It was a guy, probably in his mid-sixties, settled behind the receptionist’s desk, tapping away at the computer. He looked over when they came in, wild eyebrows raising a little before settling back down heavily over a sagging face with thin, papery lips. The man looked serious and stern, and Ala got the impression he didn’t take anything lightly as his eyes raked over them. The nameplate on the front of the desk said Carl Mathers, Receptionist.

“Can I help you?” he asked, looking between her and her dad. Her dad smiled, keeping pace with Ala as he spoke and signed at the same time.

“Yes, my name’s Darnell Jones, this is my daughter, Ala Jones. We have an appointment with Principal Williamson.”

Carl Mathers’ face cleared, and he nodded, glancing down at one of the papers strewn about his desk. “Oh yeah, Paul mentioned something about that.” He spun in his chair slightly, face turned completely away from Ala. She glanced at her dad, who told her he was shouting back for the principal. When the guy turned back, he caught the tail end of the sign, and frowned again.

“He’ll be out for you in a minute,” he said, still glancing between the two of them. His eyes slowly settled on Ala. “I’m the receptionist here, Carl Mathers. You can just call me Carl, all the kids do.” Ala glanced at her dad, watching him translate what the man had said. Mathers had a way of talking without his lips, his chin tilted down towards his body a little, that made reading his lips difficult.

After her dad translated, though, Ala smiled, turned back to Carl. “It’s nice to meet you, Carl,”she said, her dad translating her words into speech. Carl did a weird half-jerking motion with his shoulders and head. She looked back at her dad, a little bewildered. Darnell bit back a laugh, holding his fingers in a claw-like fashion and pressing them against his chest several times. Ala bit back her own smile, glancing back at Carl, where the continued slight jerking motion suggested he was still grumbling at his computer. She got the feeling he wasn’t nearly as bothered by everything as he seemed, though, if he let students call him by his first name.

Another man appeared from the hallway behind the Carl’s desk, wearing a pressed but slightly shabby dark grey suit. Like almost everyone else in this town, he was white, with brown hair that was starting to recede in the front, and a round, clean shaven face. He had small, dark eyes that quietly sized them up, and when he smiled it didn’t quite seem sincere. There was something strained in the wrinkles around his eyes.

“Mr. Jones, it’s nice to finally meet you. I’m Paul Williamson, the principal here.” A slight pause, so small Ala almost didn’t catch it, and then Mr. Williamson looked over at her. “And this must be Ala. It’s nice to meet you as well.” He leaned forward slightly as he said it. Ala glanced over at her dad, who took a deep breath and looked up at the sky as though praying for patience.

“She’s completely Deaf, Mr. Williamson,” her dad said, speaking and signing at the same time. “Talking louder or slower won’t make her hear you.”

“Oh, well.” Mr. Williamson stepped back, embarrassed. He glanced over them both again in discomfort. “Well, why don’t you two just follow me back to my office.”

“He’ll learn,” her dad signed at her as the principal turned his back. Ala resisted the urge to roll her eyes, but by the sympathetic grimace her dad gave her, he knew. People could be so weird around anyone with disabilities, and it never got any less annoying. At least Ala didn’t have to hear any of the awkward attempts people made when talking to her, but she felt bad for her dad. Judging from his expressions, it looked painful.

Mr. Williamson’s office was fairly large, with a large window showing the fields that had disappeared around the side of the school. Now, Ala could see that the field was a combination baseball and soccer field, large and green with a corner of pale sand. The office itself was well decorated, with a couple book shelves lining the wall on either side of the large desk and certificates and diplomas from various places. There were two comfy chairs set in front of the desk, where Ala and her dad both sat. Her dad turned his chair just a little on an angle with the desk so Ala could see his hands and chest better.

The principal sat on the other side of the desk, opening a folder there. Ala could just make out her name on the paperwork inside.

“So,” Mr. Williamson said, dragging his eyes from the paper. He glanced at Ala then settled his gaze on her dad. “We’re all set to have Ala start school here. We have her transcripts from her old school, and she has excellent grades.” He glanced again at her while he said it, eyes a little wide. Ala settled back in her chair, half watching her dad’s hands and half watching the principal, a single eyebrow raised. What had he expected? Bad grades?

“She’s all set to take the classes you indicated over the phone, and we’ve contacted students in each class to help her with notes. Unless you’ve decided to hire a translator?”

Her dad shook his head. “No, she’ll stick with note takers. It should work out fine.”

“Okay. Here’s the names of the students who agreed,” Mr. Williamson said, sliding a piece of paper across the desk towards her dad. Ala frowned, reached forward to jerk it towards herself with a pointed look. The principal gave her a stuttered glance, uncertain once more. But when he spoke again, it was still to her father. “We asked the students with good grades, so you can be sure that Ala will get good notes. And if she needs help with the subject, she’ll have someone to turn to.” The principal said this with a kind smile, like he was proud of his thoughtfulness, but as Ala saw her father’s hands shape the words out, she could only think of that smile as demeaning. This man expected her to struggle, because of her deafness, because of her blackness, because she had corded muscles and had won junior boxing championships and her father was a semi-famous black boxer. She had seen this response many times over, from all sorts of people, but she had not seen it in a teacher in a long time. She was surprised at how heavy that hit her, a tight pinch right between her collarbone.

“I’ll be fine,” she said, settling the paper in her lap, the names distorting against the curves of her thighs. “I don’t need extra help.” Mr. Williamson watched her father as he relayed her message, barely even glancing at Ala, that mild smile still in place. Her hands clenched into fists in her lap.

“I’m sure that she doesn’t, but just in case,” Mr. Williamson said. He straightened in his seat, shuffling through the papers. “Now, here’s her course schedule and a map of the school. A calendar of events.” He slid each one across the desk as he spoke, head tilted down, making it difficult to read his lips. Ala followed her dad’s hands out of the corner of her eye. Then, Mr. Williamson got to the last piece, a thick pamphlet emblazoned with the school logo on the front.

“This is a student code of conduct. In here you can find all the rules and regulations that we keep in place here at Coleville High.” Now his eyes settled onto Ala, his expression serious and tense. “We follow the rules strictly here, so she should be sure to study and learn it before the start of term. We don’t want any trouble here, and…”

Ala didn’t catch the rest of what he said. She’d been watching her dad sign, and suddenly he stopped, his hands dropping into his lap, curled tight into fists. His upper arms tensed and flexed, the muscles seeming to bulge against the sleeves of his t-shirt. The principal seemed to have noticed, because he stopped talking, eying her dad wearily.

“What did you say?” her dad said, not signing along. Ala knew immediately this was not a conversation he wanted her to know about. This was confirmed when he turned to her, hands forming the words, “Ala. Please wait outside.”

“Dad,” she started to say, caught between uncertainty and annoyance.

“Ala.” His hands cut through the air like a battering ram as he signed her name. “Outside. Now.”

She glanced between him and Mr. Williamson - sitting so still in his chair - and then got up with a huff, storming out of the room. She let the door close heavily behind her, and then stood there for several minutes, breathing deep through her nose.

Ala didn’t know exactly what had happened, but she had a good feeling. Though nothing had gone on her record, everything that had happened last May had been reported by various news sources. A group of deaf kids, one the daughter of a well-known athlete, getting hauled off in handcuffs by the police - not something that went unreported. Especially not when it caused said athlete to drop out of the game, disappointing fans the world over. Especially not the lawsuit that followed, still going on, one she knew she’d have to return to California to bear witness. And with her school record clean, she couldn’t think of any other trouble the principal could possibly be referring to, anything else he might have concerns about. Because a group of black and Latino kids getting arrested would look suspicious no matter what the truth…

A large, warm hand wrapped around her bicep, and Ala startled from where she’d leaned against the wall. Her dad hovered over her, ducking his head a little to meet her eye. With his other hand, he formed two letters - O and K, his eyebrows turned in a question.

Ala let out a breath. “Am I?” She didn’t elaborate, but she didn’t need to. Her dad could read her better than almost anyone - better than anyone now, she supposed.

He squeezed her arm, then let it go, his expression stony. “Yeah. I just had to straighten up a few things with your new principal.” He gave her a wry smile, then knocked his fist against her chin, pulling a smile out of her, too. “Come on, let’s go.”

As they walked out, she glanced back at the principal’s office. The door was still open, and she could see Mr. Williamson slumped forward in his chair, one hand scrubbing at his face. He looked shaken and abashed, like a child who’d just been told off. Ala quickly faced forward, following her dad around the receptionist’s desk and back out of the building with a hollow feeling in her stomach.

She didn’t bother asking her dad what they’d discussed. She already knew. Her dad would have set him straight on everything, not let the man hold any misconceptions. As they got into the car, her hands started to shake. Slowly, she clenched them into fists to hide it, slowing her breathing until black spots appeared in her vision, and tried not to think about how many other people out there thought what her new principal did: That she, and her friends, had done something to deserve what had happened. That they’d been causing trouble, and got exactly what was coming to them. With measured breaths, she tried to ignore the ghost of blood splattering across her face and chest, and the way it had dried like a tattoo into her sense memory. Physically fleeting, but permanent in every way that mattered.