—Were you ever seventeen like us or were you born a middle-aged man?

—If you were ever our age, did you think you would be teaching high school at 40?

—Or are you already 50?

—Will you still be teaching when you're 60?

—Do you secretly wish they will fire you before that?

—Are you secretly terrified they will fire you and you won’t be able to find anything better?

—If you go homeless, is there anyone in your life who would notice it?

—What if you die?

—Is a slow death that much better than a quick one?

—Do you think any of us will remember you?

—Does it bother you that we never get older?

—Is being around seventeen-year-old girls arousing or depressing?

—Is the depression arousing?

—Is the arousal depressing?

—When I make out with my boyfriend in the corridor, do you notice it?

—Do you think about it later?

—Do you ever find yourself wishing you were seventeen again so you could go out with any of us?

—Do you then remember no girl ever looked at you when you were seventeen?

—Are you at peace with the fact that you’ll never know how the naked body of a seventeen-year-old looks like?

—Do you still imagine it?

—Do you browse porn websites searching for girls who look like us?

—Did you ever find one?

—Who did she look like?

—Was it Alicia?

—What did you do then?

—Do you ever look at women your own age?

—Do they ever look back at you?

—Why are you on Tinder?

—Is it true that you matched with Laura?

—How did it feel when she blocked you right afterwards?

—Did you really believe she would go out with you?

—Didn’t you imagine she had done it just to show everyone what a creep you were?

—Did you know it, but still went along on the 1% chance she actually felt something for you?

—Did you really believe you had a 1% chance?

—Do you think we don’t notice the way you look at us?

—Don’t you notice the way we look at you?

—Will any of this be in our exam?

—Can I go to the bathroom now?

When I was born, they didn’t have a name for my condition.

“He’s normal,” the doctor said.

Back then no one was upset by his choice of words, even though it implied that quite a few people — including my parents — were not normal. The hospital interpreter looked at my parents and translated “normal” into sign language. Her right hand drew two small circles in front of the heart, clockwise, with two extended fingers, then moved down toward the stomach and touched her left fist. My father smiled. Normal was good.

*

There was nothing normal about my childhood. Unlike the other kids, who had been mumbling words to their parents since their first year of life, I only discovered spoken language at school. I heard it before, of course, on the street and on TV, but never truly needed to use it. My parents were my life, and life was quiet. Even when friends visited our house, nearly all of them were deaf, just like mum and dad. Before I was old enough to go to school, I could spend days without hearing the sound of a human voice.

My parents had warned me that school would be different, but nothing could have prepared me for their voices.

“Are you deaf? Huh? Deaf? Can you hear what I’m saying?”

They took turns shouting at my face, one louder than the other, trying to test the limits of my silence. All I ever did in response was shake my head. A universal sign for no. The only sign they could understand.

When I mentioned my struggles to dad, he told me I should speak up. I was normal, just like them. Why didn’t I shout back? I shrugged and signed back to him: "I prefer silence."

I was eleven years old when I found out they had finally come up with a term to describe people like me. I was a Coda: an acronym for child of deaf adults. I learned it first from a school psychiatrist, who insisted on seeing me after a teacher voiced her concerns. The psychiatrist tried to keep her notes out of my sight, but I noticed the words "social anxiety".

"Why don't you speak to your classmates, Tom?"

Looking down, I mumbled an answer I had rehearsed the night before. I had grown up use to silence. My native language was sign language, not English. Speech was foreign to me. I even disliked the sound of my voice, just like a native English speaker might hate his own accent when speaking French.

The psychiatrist stared at me as I answered, her pen suspended a few inches over her notebook. At the time, the first thing they used to do after a teacher complaint was diagnose you for something. A lot of my classmates were on Zoloft, Klonopin, Ritalin. They would show the tablets to anyone—even to me. It had become some sort of club.

My case was trickier. There was no pill to make my parents normal, and even if there was one I wouldn’t get anywhere near it. I hated normal. It was noisy, aggressive, uncomfortable. The best part of my day was hopping off the school bus, walking back into my house and quietly talk to my parents about anything else. Sometimes their deaf friends and their kids would come over, too. They knew better than to ask me about school. There was no place for it in my temple of loving silence.

“You need to find your voice,” said the psychiatrist. I mumbled something about sign language being my true voice, but she was having none of it.

“A speaking voice. Your parents are not the only people in the world. How are you going to speak to everyone else?”

I said nothing in reply, but a sentence in sign language crossed my mind. I had to clench my fists to stop myself from signing it.

“Why would I want to do that?”

*

The silent question echoed in my mind until my father’s funeral. His death was sudden for us, but his illness had been growing silently for a long time before it was discovered. Middle-aged men are usually not big fans of going to the doctor. Combine that with the difficulties in communication, the need to find an interpreter, and it's not a surprise that he took years to get his cough check and tell someone about his throat pain.

I was 14 when he died. I remember many moments from his funeral, but what struck me the most was how noisy it all was. The church was crowded. We used to go there every Sunday, but entered and left quietly. The language barrier stopped us from making contact. Very few of those people had ever said a word to us. Save for a couple of other deaf families, none of them were our friends. Yet everyone had come to my father’s funeral, along with the very few friends we had.

I saw pity in their eyes. Not the usual pity one has for a child who has just lost a father. No, there was something else. They pitied us — my father, my mother, even me. They probably thought I was deaf, too, and spoke carelessly in front of me. I could hear their comments from the front seats.

“Poor man. Such a difficult life.”

“It must be hard for the kid. First you have a deaf father, and now not even that.”

Their words made me wish I was deaf.

In sign language, it’s hard to be offended by a stranger. Whenever someone starts saying something hurtful, you can just close your eyes or look away. Communication requires full attention and consent on both sides. A hearing person had no such luck. I tried to explain it to my mother several times, back when the mean comments at school were just starting, but the concept was foreign for her. How could I feel offended by something I didn’t want to hear? Why did I choose to hear it?

Even though she couldn’t understand it, she knew me well enough to notice when it was happening. Right there, as we stood in front of our father’s coffin waiting for the minister to give him a final blessing, she let go of my hand for a second and made a sign to me.

“Ignore it.”

In any other day, I would have followed her advice. I wouldn’t have walked to the pulpit. I wouldn’t have grabbed the microphone. I might have looked at the audience, but I would never have said the words I said to them. I would have thought them, yes, but never said them.

“My father was a greater man than anyone sitting here today. We were lucky to have him in our lives. If you feel any pity for us, I pity you.”

At last, they were all quiet. I looked at their faces as many of them stared me in disgust, shrugged and walked back to my mother's side. If I had to hear them, they had to hear me.

Nathan was thinking of chicken wings when he found the note in his backpack. “Whatever happens, don’t die. See you on Monday.” No signature. What the flying fuck. Was that more of the chief’s motivational bullshit? Did Zack choose today of all days to pull another of his stupid pranks? Could it be from Kyle or one of the other boys? Nah. That would be fucking weird.

See you on Monday. Yeah. right. Like he’d be seeing any of those fat asses on Monday. Their first day back home after nineteen weeks stuck in that North African shithole. Fezzan, Libya. Not on the top of anyone's list of tourist destinations. The Special Forces command would make shitty travel agents, that’s for sure.

Anyway, their holiday in the desert was almost over. Nathan already had his Monday morning all planned out. A big bowl of hot chicken wings, a case of ice-cold beer, a blowjob from his girlfriend. Fuck, he wouldn’t mind having all that for the entire week, breakfast, lunch and dinner. He had no plan to see the other eleven guys anytime soon once they were stateside again. No offence, but hey. Priorities.

Priority one was not to get shot, sure, but the note made that sound easy. Seriously? “Whatever happens, don’t die”? Get out of here. The officers were trying to play it down, but the entire team knew they could end the last operation with a couple of extra holes in their bodies. They called it a suicide strike against suicide terrorism.

You hardly saw one of those anymore. Sneaking up on an ISIS big shot like that, as if you were playing a game on your Xbox. Those were the ones you would vaporise with a drone strike nowadays. Boom, gone. Thanks, Obama. Why they wanted that particular motherfucker to be caught alive, well, that was way above Nathan’s pay grade. He only had two orders. Follow the plan for as long as it works, avoid killing the wrong bad guy if he had to improvise. And, of course, try not to be the unlucky bastard who ruins homecoming for everybody by getting shot on the last day at the office. Whatever you do, don’t die. Chicken wings. See you on Monday.

The rest of the country was asleep, but the TV lights stayed on all night at the houses of those twelve families. Live from Tripoli, CNN had breaking news about a military operation in Fezzan which led to the successful capture of the Isis leader codenamed Jihadi Tom, number three in the CIA’s most wanted list, as well as five of his closest associates. It was an outstanding victory in the war on ISIS, which the entire country would celebrate when morning came.

In those twelve houses, the capture of Jihadi Tom was an afterthought. What kept those families awake until dawn, dialling furiously on their phones and with their eyes bloodshot from staring non-stop at the television, was the short sentence news anchors repeated every time they mentioned the operation. “One special forces soldier was reported dead.”

On the day of the funeral, Kyle’s girlfriend was catatonic. Nathan had seen other military widows before, but nothing came close to that. Everything else was the usual. Family members would cry, friends from the army and school would exchange stoic looks, maybe have a short conversation and share a memory of Kyle. But the girl just stood against the wall, not a tear in her eyes, not a word spoken to anyone, not a sign of emotion on her face, staring at the casket for five hours until they removed it. Fucking creepy.

“He was going to propose to her,” said Kyle’s mother when Nathan went to pay his respects. She took Nathan aside and showed him what they had found with Kyle’s belongings. A thick engagement ring with a discreet diamond on it, stuffed inside his gloves along with a small piece of paper. The handwriting was the same Nathan had seen in the anonymous note left in his backpack. “I want to fight by your side for the rest of my life. Will you marry me? K.”

Nathan’s girlfriend fell asleep on the couch while he watched TV in the dark, drinking can after can of warm beer. His chicken wings were getting cold.

Fucking Kyle. A note and an engagement ring? Is that the kind of shit you leave in your backpack on the day of a suicide operation? Seriously? What the flying fuck.

They had an agreement when they went on those long missions — Kyle, Nathan, a couple of the other boys. It was no big deal. They would get together to let off some steam, forget about fucking ISIS for a night or two, try not to lose their shit like those veterans who go nuts after months touching nothing but military gear and their own junk.

The other side had their jihadi brides, their harems with two dozen virgins or whatever the fuck they had been promised. He and the boys only had each other. In the States, they would go back to their girls. What happened in Fezzan stayed in Fezzan.

Sure, Kyle would say some girly shit when they were together sometimes. Nathan played along and enjoyed it, but he would always tell himself it was a little game between the two, just to kill time. Maybe the desert had been messing with their heads lately. But an engagement ring? Holy shit.

Before falling asleep in front of the TV, Nathan thought about Kyle’s girlfriend again. Did she know the truth? If she did and was playing along to save his face at the funeral, well, that would explain the creepy fucking look on her face. That must be some tough shit to swallow. Nah. It couldn’t be that. The poor girl sent a boyfriend to war and lost a husband. That alone would be enough to leave her the way she was.

On that night, Nathan dreamt that he was at Kyle’s funeral again. Instead of military uniforms, they were both wearing suits and ties.

We were a healthily unhappy family, each with an equal share of responsibility for everyone’s unhappiness. But we were not willing to admit it, so each of us took turns being single-handedly blamed for the collective misfortune. It was Lindsay’s turn this time.

Mum and dad were sleeping in separate beds again. Although Lindsay swore she didn’t know the reason, they both looked at her as if she was somehow responsible for the crisis in their marriage. Even I was feeling angry at Lindsay lately. I didn’t know why. But when you’re a high school junior, your senior sister doesn’t have to do much to piss you off — just exist. She annoyed me with her good mood, her easy laughter, with the way her permanent mental peace contrasted with our constant dissatisfaction. And, of course, with her cake. I hated that stupid cake.

Mum and dad agreed. It looked out of place in the dull whiteness of our fridge, in between mum’s cottage cheese and my 1% milk. An exuberant chocolate cake. It didn’t fit — just like Lindsay’s smile didn’t belong in the breakfast table with our traditional Saturday morning frown.

—What? Are you a morning person now?— dad asked. Lindsay just kept smiling.

—Of course not, honey. If she was a morning person, she wouldn’t be late for breakfast again— mum remarked. Lindsay ignored her, too, and calmly poured my 1% milk in her cereal.

Two shots, two misses. It was my turn to try and take that stupid smile off her face, and I was not in the mood for small talk.

—You know what? This is bullshit.

—Language!— said mum, out of reflex. Dad also seemed displeased but allowed me to continue. I knew it was okay to break the rules of politeness if the intention was to take a shot at Lindsay. And, unlike mum and dad, I had managed to catch her attention.

—It’s bullshit. It really is. You taking all that space in the fridge with this stupid cake for your friend’s party. It’s not even your party.

Lindsay sighed. We couldn’t see that annoying little smile anymore. I had scored. Smelling blood, mum pounced with her biggest weapon, which we all knew and feared.

—I have done so much for this family, Lindsay. Do you remember how many cakes I have baked for you? Do you see how I cook and clean for you every day? And now you bake this stupid chocolate cake with your friends, leave it in our fridge, and you don’t even share it with your family. No! All you care about is that party of yours!

There were tears in mum’s eyes when she was finished. We had seen that scene enough times to know that she could cry on cue, but that didn’t make her performance any less effective. Lindsay was sulking now, staring at the bottom of her half-empty cereal bowl. She had lost her appetite — very unusual for her. Dad took advantage of her weakness to deal the final blow.

—Party? I don’t remember giving you permission to go to any party. Not a chance. You have upset your mother and your brother. You and your cake are staying home tonight.

That was the kind of moment when we felt most united as a family: a victory against a common opponent — which always happened to be one of us. Breakfast had been just an appetiser: Lindsay’s tears would be our main course. Knowing her, though, she wouldn’t give us that pleasure. Lindsay was great at disguising her anger as indifference. If tears were mum’s superpower, that was hers.

—Whatever. You can have the fucking cake. I’m not hungry anymore.

She went to her room before they could ground her. Dad and I exchanged annoyed looks. One step ahead of us, mum opened the fridge. Yes, we didn’t get the sweet, intoxicating taste of Lindsay’s tears, but why would we skip dessert? With her cake now on the kitchen table, we each took our share of the victory spoils.

Half an hour later, dad and mum went to their room before they could finish reading the paper. Weird. I thought they were separated. Maybe our triumph against Lindsay had rekindled their relationship. I wasn’t in the mood to celebrate it, though. I soon started feeling lightheaded, a little sick. I knew better than to disturb my parents when their door was locked, so I texted Lindsay.

—Do you know where they keep the paracetamol?

—You’ll be fine. Come up to my room. Bring some cake.

It took me an enormous effort to climb the stairs. I expected Lindsay to be angry at me, but there it was: the same silly smile on her face again. She laid some cushions on the floor for me, told me to relax and started showing me some of her favourite music. I didn’t know she was into Pink Floyd. We began with The Piper at the Gates of Dawn and chronologically made our way up to The Dark Side of the Moon, which we played in sync with The Wizard of Oz on her laptop. It was crazy fun. Having an older sister wasn’t that bad, after all.

I confess I lost track of time, but it was getting dark when dad knocked on Lindsay’s door and told us to go to the kitchen. He and mum had ordered pizza — lunch and dinner. Lindsay didn’t seem upset with them at all. If anything, she was amused. Dad kept telling jokes. I don’t remember any of them. They must have been pretty good, though, because everybody was laughing. When there was no pizza left, mum took some leftover cake out of the fridge. I followed Lindsay’s advice and skipped dessert. Mum and dad had two slices each and went back to their room.

Lindsay only told me the truth about her cake a week later, when she came to me for help. Mum wanted her to bake another cake for all of us, but her allowance was not enough to buy the secret ingredient. Not for two weekends in a row; not for four people. I was happy to help. We weren’t even halfway through the Pink Floyd discography yet.

Our parents only found out several months later, after mum insisted on getting the recipe and preparing Lindsay’s chocolate cake for her friends from church. Lindsay ended up having to confess. I said I knew it, too. It was unfair for her to take the blame alone.

For someone as uptight as he used to be, dad was surprisingly cool with it.

—If it’s legal in this state, it’s legal in this house.

Mum had second thoughts and went to the reverend before she agreed to our new arrangement. With his blessing — “in moderation, and never before coming to mass” — the cake became our Saturday tradition. Lindsay and I loved to hear the news. We were a healthily happy family now, sure, but each should pay their share for the collective happiness. It was about time mum and dad started to chip in.

"Did you catch anything today?"

"The usual stuff. My companion thought of quitting his day job to open a bar with some friends. I told him it was a stupid idea."

"The bar, again? He’s almost 40 already, isn’t he?"

"Yup. It comes and goes. I don’t mind, really. He has talked himself out of it so many times. I barely need to make an effort for him to give up now."

"True. Hey, let me tell you about mine. Seven-year-old girl, remember? Today, she said her dream was to become president. Can you believe it? I’m trying to convince her it’s a man’s job. She’s a tough one, but I think I might be making progress."

The two dreamtrollers’ chatter was interrupted by the arrival of a third one. It emerged from beneath the clouds looking with the physical complexion of a starving man, looking drained after another long journey. On the end of his fishing rod, no dreams could be seen. The others acknowledged its presence but remained in silence. There was no need to ask any questions. They all knew he had come from another unsuccessful visit to its companion, a middle-aged man named Allan.

Every single person on Earth had a dreamtroller assigned to them at birth. It had been that way since well before the invention of written language.

Even the first Homo sapiens, with their limited intellect and scarce knowledge of the world, were equipped with the ability to desire. On the day the very first man had the very first dream, his dreamtroller was there, hovering over his head, trolling the waters of his thoughts to catch it. The man heard a sobering voice, seemingly coming from inside his own head, calmly convincing him that pursuing his dream would be futile. Then the dreamtroller rose again to the sky, taking with it the first of billions of human dreams which would never be fulfilled.

All humans heard stories about dreamtrollers in their childhood, but they were still considered to be legends. It would be pointless to attempt to prove otherwise. They lacked anything that could be perceived as a body by human senses, and no instrument could detect their presence.

The only way a dreamtroller would manifest itself was through a very subtle form of speech. Whenever a dreamtroller spoke, its companion received the message in his mind, bearing the sound of his own voice.

Their disguise was also an irresistible persuasion strategy. How can you argue against someone if their thoughts are indistinguishable from your own?

As a result, all humans had developed the habit of dreaming about the future, then giving up on most of their dreams. Everyone, except for Allan.

He was a child when he first heard of dreamtrollers. Like vampires and werewolves, they were the kind of creature that would flash into children’s memories at night and make them lose sleep for a couple of hours, but their terrifying nature didn’t stop them from being forgotten. No one actually believed in them after a certain age.

Unlike all his friends, however, Allan never outgrew his fear of dreamtrollers. He was terrified of the idea of something invading his mind to steal his dreams. He also knew that trying to ignore the dreamtroller’s words would also be fruitless. From a very early age, therefore, Allan decided to live a life without dreams.

While others fantasised about all they wanted to achieve in life, making themselves an open target to the dreamtrollers, Allan conditioned himself to suppress even his deepest desires before his mind could manifest them. And every night, when his dreamtroller came to collect its toll, it would always find Allan’s mind empty.

Allan never dreamt of becoming a firefighter, a football player or an astronaut when he grew up. In fact, he didn’t even dream of growing up at all: becoming a teenager, an adult and then an old man was just a natural development to which he attached no particular desire.

Everything that happened in his life was either due to chance or to the dreams of others. He went to church every Sunday on his mother’s suggestion. His father, who was an accountant, mentioned that Allan should follow his footsteps after noticing his talent for numbers. Having no other ideas in mind, Allan accepted the suggestion and spent forty years on a cubicle job at the first company who made him a job offer. Despite never asking for a raise or a promotion, he slowly advanced to a comfortable position in which he served the company’s interests well without interfering in no one else’s ambitions. At home, he would watch whatever was on television, order food from takeaway restaurants that left menus on his front door and go to bed at 10 PM, at the suggestion of a doctor. He never got married, of course, but his solitude didn't bother him. He knew the dream of finding love was the most dangerous of all desires.

Before Allan, it was assumed that dreaming was an essential part of life — and, therefore, no dreamtroller would ever starve. Every one of them would thrive for as long as its companion lived, then blissfully vanish into the clouds with a smile, having lived a fulfilling life. Allan’s dreamtroller was the first to experience frustration and despair: two feelings which were previously only known to humans.

As time passed and others in its generation began to vanish, Adam’s dreamtroller became acquainted with another deeply human emotion: fear. It dreaded the possibility of going through its entire existence without ever getting to know the rich, delicate taste of an unfulfilled dream. It was with bitter resignation that the dreamtroller kept visiting Allan every night, always returning to the skies as empty as when it left.

The dreamtroller had long lost all its hopes when, on a night which could be their last, the hesitating vibration of a human dream began to shake at the end of its fishing rod.

Allan was lying in a hospital bed, alone, his withering figure bearing an odd resemblance to that of his starving dreamtroller. He didn’t think of the family he never had, the women he never loved, the difference he could have made. A life of suppressed dreams had erased every trace of those feelings off his mind. Yet there remained one last nagging wish, which had been hatching in the depths of mind for many years and only now manifested itself in words. Unable to contain the thought any longer, Allan mentally uttered his first desire.

"I just want to die."

Just as Allan finished his sentence, he felt a dark, ancient presence in the room. A smile began to form on his face, but the rest of his body shrieked when a reply echoed in his mind, carrying the terrifying familiarity of his own voice.

"Not yet."