February had a meeting with Superintendent Swall and learned that he was shutting the school down because of budget cuts. However, after several weeks of full immersion and ASL lessons, Charlie started to feel at home in her new community. Austin began mentoring Charlie and developed a crush on her despite the fact that they initially had trouble communicating. She decided to have Austin be Charlie’s mentor since he was fifth-generation Deaf and was considered River Valley’s golden boy. She knew Deaf children deprived of ASL could have many behavior and anger issues as a result of the frustrations of language deprivation. Her mother, a former musician and pageant coach, had no interest in learning ASL and thought being Deaf was an embarrassment for her and for Charlie.įebruary was worried about Charlie’s success because she was the only high schooler starting without any ASL. In addition to being enrolled in the full immersion school, Charlie and her father signed up to take ASL classes after school so they could communicate together.
Doctors told her mother that she would adapt to her implant better if she did not have ASL as a “crutch,” but this only resulted in Charlie being unable to speak or hear anyone with any accuracy because she could only decipher about 60% of what she heard through her implant. Six months earlier, Charlie’s father got custody of her and used his parental powers to take her out of Jefferson High and send her to River Valley where she was taught ASL for the first time in her life. In the first chapter, Headmistress February Winters talks to the police about three students who have disappeared from River Valley School for the Deaf: Charlie, Eliot, and Austin. At the ends of many chapters, documents from February’s Deaf History class are presented for the reader to view. Chapter Two through Chapter 60 are told in past-tense. Chapter Two is set six months before the events in Chapter One.
The first chapter is told in present-tense, as are the last seven chapters of the novel. The novel is told by an omniscient narrator who presents the perspective of a focal character during each individual chapter. The following version of this book was used to create this study guide: Novic, Sara.
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