The first thing that I see when I wake up in the morning is the desk in the corner with the pile of books on it. Nothing good though. Just stack after stack of AP Study Guides, a few from 5 Steps to a 5, most from The Princeton Review. Balanced precariously on top is the sleek black laptop I got for my birthday last year.

What I really wanted was new sheet music. 

I’ve woken up before my alarm again. And when I say alarm, I really mean my mom. She refuses to get me one of those vibrating pillow alarm clocks, where a metal plate is connected to the alarm, and then placed under the pillow, so that when the alarm goes off, the pillow vibrates and wakes me up.
Her exact words, “Why do you need one of those expensive alarm clocks when you have me?” I told her our insurance will cover it, but she either doesn’t believe me, or just doesn’t care.
Our insurance company is very pro-independence. They like to know that I’m taking the initiative to start planning for living alone. Most of their customers never leave home. 
I can promise you, that will not be me.
Sliding out of bed, I pad over to my closet and select an oversized gray sweatshirt, pulling it on over my black leggings. I glance at the clock over my door. 5:10. There’s another twenty minutes before my mom comes in. The sun hasn’t come up yet and my room is full of shadows, but turning on the light is a risk I don’t want to take. Most of my sheet music is kept downstairs in the piano bench, but I keep a few simple children songs underneath my bed for practicing notes with.
I go to my knees beside my bed and pull out the shoebox full of music. Sitting cross-legged, I place “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” on my lap. For the next fifteen minutes, I sit with my hand over my throat and hum the notes of “Twinkle Twinkle”, trying to match the vibrations of my voice to those of the piano downstairs.
Suddenly my mother appears in front of me. “What are you doing?”, she signs angrily at me. I shrug and sign back, “Practicing.”
She looks insanely peeved, and stomps towards the door before turning back and quickly signing, “Breakfast is in five minutes.”, before abruptly turning and disappearing down the hallway. I roll my eyes and shove the shoebox back under the bed.
Breakfast is silent. My dad shovels cornflakes into his mouth while reading the paper. I cut my waffle into pieces, trying to ignore my mom as she stares at me, her omelette untouched in front of her.
“You have a tutoring session with Mr. Peterson today after school.”, she signs.
I look up, angry. “I thought I had piano tonight.”, I sign back.
Her left eye twitches slightly as she signs, “I decided you should focus more on getting into Yale than messing around with the piano.”
There’s a tense silence before I look away.
The hands of the clock tick silently in the background.
I stare down at my plate and cut my waffle into tinier pieces.
Breakfast took too long and now I have to rush around like a madman, grabbing my backpack and coat before rushing out to the bus stop. I’ve just finished tying the laces on my Converse when the bus comes, puffing smoke and exhaust into the early morning air. I pound up the steps and slip into the first seat behind the driver. No one sits next to me and I don’t care.
School wouldn’t be that bad if you took away the fact that I have no friends and everyone thinks I’m a freak, that the teachers treat me like an idiot even though I pull all A’s, and that small problem of when the fire alarm rings but I can’t hear it and suddenly I see everyone stand up and rush out of the room while I’m left still sitting.
I get to my homeroom class and write up a pass before the bell even rings, leaving for the choir room where I spend every homeroom, lunch, and free period. Someone bumps into me just as I leave the room, and my books go skidding across the floor. I stop to pick them up and ignore the tears prickling in my eyes, because this has happened almost every single day since Freshman year and I’m still not used to it.
There’s no one in the choir room when I get there, and I quickly drop my books on the nearest chair and head over to the piano. It’s much nicer than the one at home, which came with the house and is scratched up so badly it looks like it got into a fight with a cat that hadn’t been declawed.
I slide onto the piano bench and carefully run my fingers across the keys. There’s a pile of sheet music on top of the teacher’s desk to my left, and I grab a song at random. It’s titled “The Sound of Silence”, by Simon & Garfunkel, and I laugh because it’s ironic. The notes are familiar, and I place my fingers gingerly on the piano keys.
For the next half hour I’m lost in a world of concentration. For once, I don’t feel alone. For once, I feel like making music is something I could actually do for the rest of my life.
For once, the silence isn’t defening.
I’m late to my next class because I didn’t keep an eye on the clock and I never hear the bell. I’m stared at as I take my seat in the center of the first row, the “Sound of Silence” sheet music that I stole burning in my backpack.
The rest of the day is not worth remarking upon, but I don’t feel safe until I’ve gotten home and placed the stolen sheet music in my shoebox and under the bed.
I see a flash of a lavender sweater and look up. It’s my mother, standing solemnly in the doorway of my room. “Mr. Peterson is here.”, she signs, and I have to close my eyes for a second because sometimes I don’t know if I can take it anymore.
Mr. Peterson is waiting in the kitchen when I come downstairs, trigonometry and calculus textbooks spread out in front of him. I can see the piano out of the corner of my eye, sitting in the dining room surrounded by the ghostly shadows of antique unused furniture. My head hurts. I swear I can hear the chords of “The Sound of Silence” echoing in my ears before I remember that I’m deaf and will never hear the music I play.
My mom pulls out a chair and motions for me to sit down. For one wild second I imagine running past her and over to the piano, crashing my fingers on top of the keys and making as much noise as possible, as much music as possible.
I sit down instead.
Mr. Peterson pushes a calculus workbook towards me, questions fifteen through sixty circled.
I pick up a pencil and start working.
Two hours later, Mr. Peterson has left and I’m still sitting at the kitchen table. My dad is somewhere, I don’t know. My mom is in her room, lying down, because I obviously wear her out so much. My work has been long finished, and a fine dusting of eraser shavings cover everything. The kitchen smells like chicken broth and orange juice. My head hurts.
I open my eyes. Looking around groggily, I realize that I must have fallen asleep at the table.
No one came down to wake me up.
I brush the eraser shavings off my cheek and look at the time on the microwave through blurry eyes. 10:30. I’ve been asleep for about five hours, and I still have homework to do. I glance to the side and a pile of envelopes catches my eye. Reaching over, I pull the letters towards me. They’re college acceptance letters. My eyes narrow. Dad must have put these here after Mom went upstairs; if she saw them, they would be open already.
Mom has her heart set on Yale. Or Harvard. Or Stanford. She would settle for Columbia, or possibly Berkeley. She wants me to become an attorney, maybe, and then a Supreme Court Judge. She wants us to move to D.C. She wants all her dreams to come true.
I pick up the first letter. There are six of them. One from Yale. One from Harvard. One from Stanford. One from Columbia. One from Berkley.
I hold my breath.
And one from Princeton.
My heart drops.

Three weeks earlier, when Mom is at a doctor’s appointment and Dad is somewhere, I use Grandpa’s old video camera and videotape myself playing the piano. Fifty two takes later, I wrap the tape in bubble wrap and place it in a padded envelope along with my application for Juilliard.

When Mom comes to wake me up, she finds me huddled underneath my blankets wearing the same clothes I wore yesterday. She doesn’t say anything, her attention on something else. I look up and see the six snow-white envelopes in her hand. She’s smiling and laughing and saying something but I don’t know what. I have the sudden urge to take those envelopes and rip them into a million tiny pieces.
Instead, I get up and walk out of the room.
Mom finds me sitting at the kitchen table staring into a bowl of soggy cornflakes. She’s all bright eyes and smiles and waving hands and I can’t tell if she’s trying to sign or not. The envelopes are still in her hand, and I know for a fact that by this time tomorrow, all six of them will be framed and on the wall.
I stand up and put my bowl in the sink.
“Nora! Nora, this is it! This is what we’ve been working for! This is our dream!” She gttries to hug me and I pull away.
“No, Mom.”, I sign. “This is your dream.” I turn away and pound up the stairs.
The next morning finds me staring into the dining room at the spot where the piano used to be.
It’s gone.
I turn away and move towards the kitchen. It’s time I notified Yale. They should expect me come fall. 

I’m a firm believer in being your own person. For seventeen years I’ve gone against what my mother has wanted for me; the tutors, the AP classes, the college tours. I never wanted any of it. I spent my entire life trying to achieve what my mom thought would constitute me as a success. But while she was pushing me towards greatness, I was holding onto the piano with all my strength. My dream was to become a concert pianist, and play sold-out Carnegie Hall. My mother’s dream was, not for me to become successful, not really. Her dream was for me to overcome my deafness, which to her has always been a disability, something that needed to be overcome. In retrospect, it would’ve been easier for me to just go along with it all from the beginning.
Well, as they say, hindsight is 20/20.
And I’ve never had a problem with my vision.