He Chose My Twin, So I Walked Away novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: Translation

Jenna lies to their parents about what Amy is signing, Lori takes Amy's phone, and Josh tells the family he's with Jenna now, and that Jenna will be the voice of Speakeasy.

I set the plates down on the floor of the kitchen, because my hands wouldn't hold them anymore.

Then I pushed the screen door open.

The spring on it whined.

Josh let go of my sister and stepped back so fast he hit the porch rail.

"Amy. Hey."

Jenna didn't step back at all. She smoothed her hair down over her hearing aid.

I put my hands up and signed.

"What is this? How long?"

Josh squinted at my hands. "Slow down. Babe, slow down, I can't follow that."

He had never learned more than hello, thank you and I love you.

I had never made him.

I signed it again, slower. He still looked at my hands.

Jenna watched them and understood every word.

She hadn't signed since she was twelve. She had never forgotten how.

"Okay," she said brightly. "Let's go inside. Let's not do this out here."

She walked past me into the kitchen and stepped right over the cake on the floor.

"Mom? Dad? Can you come in here?"

By the time I followed, she was in the living room, standing in front of the TV.

My father muted it.

My mother put her phone down on the cushion. "What happened? What's wrong?"

Josh came in behind me and stopped by the bookshelf.

He put his hands in his pockets.

I faced my parents and signed as clearly as I have ever signed anything.

"He kissed her. On the porch. She saw me watching and she kept going."

My mother looked at Jenna.

Not at me. At Jenna.

"What's she saying, honey?"

Jenna put her hand on her chest and took a breath.

"She says she saw this coming," Jenna said softly.

"She says she was going to break up with him anyway, and she's glad it's me and not some stranger."

I stared at her.

"She says she's fine," Jenna said. "She wants us to be happy."

My father was looking at my hands.

He knows the sign for kiss. He knows the sign for saw.

He looked at me for one second over his glasses.

Then he looked back at the muted TV.

I pulled my phone out of my back pocket and started to type.

"Oh, Amy, not the phone," my mother said. "Not in this house. We talk to each other in this house."

She held out her hand.

I kept typing.

She got up off the couch and took it out of my hand.

She put it in the pocket of her cardigan and sat back down.

"Thank you," she said.

There was a stack of graduation programs on the coffee table. Jenna's.

I grabbed one and a pen from the cup by the phone charger.

I wrote on the back in capital letters and held it up.

SHE IS LYING. I NEVER SAID THAT.

My mother read it and sighed through her nose.

"Amy. Enough."

"Lori," my father said quietly.

"No, Mark. Enough."

She pointed at the paper.

"This is exactly what she does. She waits until the one day that isn't about her, and then she makes it about her."

The one day that wasn't about me.

It was my graduation too.

Josh cleared his throat by the bookshelf.

"Look," he said. "I didn't want it to happen like this. I really didn't."

He looked at my mother. Then my father. Then, last, at me.

"But I'm with Jenna now."

Nobody gasped.

My mother put her hand over her heart and looked at Jenna.

"Oh, sweetheart."

Jenna went and stood next to him. He put his arm around her.

They looked good together.

They looked exactly like me and Josh, if I had been the kind of girl people listen to.

"Well," my mother said. "Maybe this is for the best. Jenna can give you a real conversation, Josh. A normal life."

"Mom," Jenna said, like it embarrassed her. She was smiling.

I signed to Josh, slowly, the way I'd taught him when we first started dating.

"Two and a half years."

He knew that one. I'd taught him the sign for year.

"I know," he said. "And I'm grateful. I really am, Amy."

Grateful.

I was a ride to the airport.

I signed, "Speakeasy."

He knew that one too. We'd made the sign up together, a flat hand opening at the mouth.

Speakeasy was my app.

You type, and it speaks for you.

I started it as my senior project in September 2024. I wrote all of it.

Thirty-one thousand lines of code, every one under my name.

Josh had joined the next February to handle the pitching, because I can't pitch.

Because I can't talk.

He looked at Jenna, and something in his face got businesslike.

"Yeah. About Speakeasy," he said. "That's the other thing."

My mother leaned forward. My father finally turned off the TV.

"It's going really well," Josh told them. "We've got investors interested. Real ones. Boston money."

"Josh, that's wonderful," my mother said.

"But they keep telling me the same thing. It needs a face. It needs a story. It needs a voice people actually want to hear."

He squeezed Jenna's shoulder.

"And Jenna's going to be the voice of Speakeasy."

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