French toast always made Eve feel better. Her dad made a loaf of bread every Sunday from scratch then her mom would find eggs, butter and blueberry syrup from the farmers market on the way home from work. Today however she didn’t have a big appetite. Her bag was ready by the door and she had to leave soon to make her late arrival class. Her mother and father sat at the corner of the small table in their kitchen across from her chatting about what to unpack next and if they wanted to invite old friends over soon and how nice the weather was.  Her mother looked over at Eve with concern. 
“Eve, you will do great today,” she said, while she held her father’s hand on the table, “Do you have plans for tonight? You must want to see your friends again.”
Eve stood and put her plate by the sink and explained that she might go for a drive to the city and visit some old places after school. It was time to head to school now. She went upstairs to brush her teeth then gave her parents a hug goodbye. Walking to her jeep across the gravel driveway she paused to put on her mirrored sunglasses, a necessity for driving in the southwest, and to appreciate the warmth of the sun and the shade of the big cotton wood in the front yard. She felt free under a big blue sky in front of her house. She wondered if the people who lived there before she moved in had ever done the same.
By the time lunch rolled around Eve was sick of high school. She was trying to be optimistic and remain hopeful that she could gain something from being there, but the façade was wearing thin. Her classes had been painfully slow with the subject matter being syllabi and how the class needed to do better and try harder that last semester. The teachers seemed so resolved to improve the class and many of them seemed sincere, but half of the students sitting in their desks were silently back stabbing the teachers by using their smart phones in class. Eve’s spirit was dampened she tried talk with one of the boys in her precalc class; after offering small talk by asking how he like the class last semester he shrugged and said he didn’t know without even looking up from his enormous phone he was playing on. Eve casually looked over at the game he seemed to find so important, he was controlling a tiny character running through a bank zapping ghosts and collecting paranormal taco toppings. 
During lunch Eve wondered the halls of her old high school, during the passing periods she caught glances of people she knew, but not a single one greeted her as if they were all ignoring her. That was fine as Eve had never been a social butterfly and more of a wallflower who the butterflies never visited. She decided the Library was the best place to spent lunch without looking like a looser for sitting alone. 
The library was mostly empty accept for some kids napping on the sofas in the middle of the huge room. She headed for the literary criticisms section and sat at the big table with dividers to prevent the Librarians seeing her eat her Peanut butter and pickle sandwich while she looked for a new book from her list of books to read. When she sat down she noticed a girl behind a copy of Leaves of Grass. Eve had a moment of uncontained excitement and almost yelled out but she thought better of it, after all she was in a library.
 Eve sat in front of the girl and whispered hello. The girl peeked over her book and waved with one hand. 
“Hi!” Eve said, still whispering, “I noticed you reading that book and I just had to say how cool it is. Er, that you are reading the book. Walt Whitman is great right?”
The girl smiled and nodded. Putting the book down she pulled out a pad of paper and pen and wrote “Hi, I am Helen! I am mute but still normal, sorta! I have a text-to-speech machine but it is too loud for the Library. 
Eve was surprised, she had never met a mute person and she only knew about half the alphabet in sign language from second grade. Eve and Helen spent the rest of lunch writing notes about their favorite books and that led to their plans after high school. Eve told her about how she moved, Helen told her about how being mute affected her life. They planned to meet in the court yard in the back of their school the next day. Helen seemed to be the only one who talked and listened to Eve in the whole school, and she might be the only person who can’t speak there.
The street lights streaked yellow above Eve’s jeep as she sped along the empty stretch of road. Occasionally a brilliant flash of a passing cars head lights would blind her but she kept her speed steady. After school, Eve got in her jeep and drove to places she used to go. The radio blaring American Beauty she sang along for sake of making sound. Her head lights illuminated the road ahead and she was nearing the city her mother works in. The road merged to a highway and she joined the other cars speeding along. Signs signaled there was a tunnel ahead; she had driven this way a thousand times with her mother. The tunnel was her least favorite part. It was long and the mercury-vapor lights gave off a green hue. She sped up and rolled the windows down to let the music echo through the tunnel. The end approached rapidly ahead and suddenly she burst out of the tunnel, the wide view of the city lights and the escape of the tunnel gave her an optimistic feeling.