CHAPTER FIVE
‘Three Kids & A Kitten’
Kiyaya watched Harper slip a saucer under the dumpster for the kitten as he sat on the large bay window overlooking the backyard from the boys’ dorm on the first floor.
Kiyaya was a Native-American name meaning ‘Howling Wolf’. His American mother liked to remind him how he howled like a wolf when he was a baby, his Native-American father always joked that he screamed like a girl. Neither of them made any jokes like that anymore now that he didn’t talk at all.
Instead, they themselves went mute when they crossed the state line to come visit him and take him out on their silent family day trips once a month.
Still, at least he had a family that cared. Most of the kids at Winter’s Hall had been abandoned
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He tried and tried to work the words out of his mouth when he was on his own in the dorm or when he had a few minutes in the bathroom, but they never came. Although he understood what was being said perfectly well, he just couldn’t speak no matter how hard he tried.
Instead, he watched Harper zip around on her skateboard completely entranced by how she seemed to charm everyone that she met – even though she rarely spoke herself.
Harper was never invisible like him. Even though she had the stature of a mouse, she had such a huge personality everyone noticed when she was in the room.
Although they had been living in the same building and going to the same school for nearly a year, Kiyaya was painfully aware that Harper seemed to have no awareness of his existence.
His thoughts lifted as he wondered if their joint concern for the welfare of the kitten could perhaps change that.
Just as he reassured himself with this thought, Kiyaya felt a new panic rising - what if it was an unwelcome surprise that he was looking after the kitten too? Even worse, what if Harper didn’t notice him because he couldn’t speak to her using spoken words like the other