Page 117 of Possibly Texas

Jack rolled his eyes and gave me what looked like a salute.

Don’t know.

He stood there for a minute, concentrating, then he brought his fist up to his chest, palm facing me, and bobbed it back and forth like a miniature head nodding. Next, he held both hands out and open, palms pointing to the sky, and raised and lowered his hands back and forth like a scale.

Yes. Probably.

I grinned at him.

His next sign was one I’d never seen before, but it was so expressive, that I got the gist of it. Apparently, he felt that I should go do something with myself that was physically impossible. He wasn’t being mean, though. He made his laughing face when he signed it, so I laughed with him.

“Fine,” I said. “I won’t talk about it.”

He signed “thank you.”

“But are you gonna ask her out on a date and get smoooooooches?” I teased. “Take her to Samuel’s for a sundae and ask her to wear your class ring?”

Jack’s head snapped up and he glowered at me.

“Okay, okay,” I waved him off. “I’m done making jokes.”

He signed “thank you” to me again.

“She understand sign language?” I asked.

Jack lifted one hand and tilted it back and forth while tilting his head back and forth. I was pretty sure that wasn’t official sign language, but it translated well enough.

“That’s good,” I said. “You have your notepad for the stuff she doesn’t understand, right?”

He nodded. I had told Jack I wouldn’t make any more jokes, so I hoped he wouldn’t take my next question as such, but I had to get it out.

“I guess your letters worked,” I mumbled quickly.

Jack tilted his head to the side and frowned at me. He signed “what?”

“Oh, come on, man,” I kicked at the ground with a smile. “The Shirlene letters. You have it bad for Sofia and the letters have been going to the post office. Also, I hear you going in and out of the house at night. You’ve been slipping letters into the post office slot, haven’t you?”

Jack looked at me like I was the craziest person he’d ever met, then slowly began shaking his head. He signed “not me.”

“Come on.”

Seriously, he signed.

“Oh.”

Jack began signing, and when he saw that I didn’t quite understand, he signed a second, then third time, then looked at me. He was indicating that he did something, ending with his two index fingers pointing up and down side by side above his head.

“Sky?”

Jack repeated the sign.

I thought about what he was trying to tell me.

“You look at the stars?” I asked.

He nodded happily.

“You come outside at night to look at the stars?” I asked, disappointment settling in my gut.