Making a poor first impression is the norm for me. I’m not good at meeting new people and don’t particularly enjoy it. My world is small and predictable, and I like it that way. I have a handful of old friends, and that’s good enough for me—quality over quantity.
But it’s been a while since someone has had such a guttural reaction to me, and although it never bothered me in the past, I dislike it this time around. It’s not like I want Andrea Walker to like me, but I’d rather she didn’t hate me. It seems that I fucked it up, though, and changing her opinion of me would take much more effort than I’m willing to make.
Ultimately, she doesn’t have to like me as long as she respects my authority and keeps working for us.
She walks in with all her things, as well as a laptop bag. She doesn’t wait for instructions and marches up to my desk. “‘Evening,” she greets me.
My desk is neatly organized, with my computer on one side and nearly nothing on the other, so someone couldsit in front of me, and we wouldn’t be blocked by anything. That’s where she sits down to take her laptop out. My eyes remain on her as she prepares everything with efficient moves, and then she looks up at me for the first time since she came in.
Today, she’s wearing a T-shirt with the logo of the Hello World Convention on it, which piques my interest. “Have you ever attended?” I ask, pointing at the graphic.
She looks down and understands what I mean. “Oh, no. This is some merch I got from their website. I’ve always wanted to go, but it’s for professionals only, and the small company I worked for didn’t have the budget for the trip.”
“I see.”
We have been attending the prestigious convention every year since Kev and I created Kelex, and this year, he even wants us to have our own presentation there. I don’t say that, though, because I fear it’ll sidetrack whatever she’s here for.
She hesitates on how to start, her eyes tracing over my shirt for a moment, halting around my collar. I’m reminded that I opened a couple of buttons right after the video call because it was smothering me. The pressure she’s putting on herself to show me whatever she’s here for has her tense and flushed.
When she meets my eyes again, she almost seems flustered by it.
“You have something you want to show me?” I ask, using my most amiable voice.
“Yes, sorry. Um… I have been working on an app to help my brother because dating is hard for him. Oh, he’s deaf, by the way,” she adds, even though I remember that detail from her cover letter. “So, I thought I would create an app to help him. It turned out to be a little more arduous than I thought. It was supposed to take me a couple of months, and I’m over two years in now, with a lot of things still to improve.”
Rambling is not something I’m used to from her. She’s usually so determined and confident that I wonder what she’s about to show me. It must be something close to her heart since it has her twisting her hands before her, fingers picking at her chipped blue nail polish.
“The idea was to turn any phone into an ASL Rosetta Stone,” she explains, turning her laptop around so it faces me.
The screen is divided into three parts: the webcam filming her in the top left corner, an empty text box in the lower left, and lines of code taking the whole right side.
Dismissing her anxiousness, she signs something for the camera.
Perplexed, I see the code get into action, and in the empty box, text appears. At first, it’s the literal translation of the signs she just did, but it then turns into a proper sentence.
Hi, I’m Andrea. It’s Friday evening, and I want to go home.
The shock of it has me freezing all over. There’s no way. She can’t have done it.
“Sign something else,” I command, bending forward to see better as I adjust my glasses.
I’m focused on the screen, so I don’t see what she signs. But another sentence appears, perfectly translated.Polite people say please.
I gaze at her from over my glasses. “Sorry.”
She did it. She actually did it. She cracked sign language recognition, which is something I’ve been trying to do for years.
Dazzled, I lean back in my chair and remove my glasses to pinch the bridge of my nose with closed eyes. All that information is hard to process at once. After a few seconds like this, I return to my original position.
“Andrea, this is incredible.”
The utter delight on her face reminds me that I don’t compliment people enough. She should know just how amazing what she did is. She shouldn’t be this surprised that I’d find it extraordinary.
“Thank you,” she says, flustered once more. “And I did it all on my own. My brother didn’t even help me,” she adds, reminding me of the misunderstanding when she started here. I probably shouldn’t have implied she had help for the test, but my rational mind refused to accept the truth.
“Can I see some of the code you came up with?” I ask, pointing at her computer.
“Sure.”
