True Biz

The beginning of the chapter explains how to use ASL classifiers.

Charlie goes on a pizza outing with some friends from school. After some convincing, she manages to get Kayla to tag along. On the trip, she catches up with Austin, who invited her. They talk about their favorite pizza toppings, which prompts Kayla to reveal that her favorite topping is chicken. Austin makes fun of her for the way she signs chicken, which annoys Kayla, who leaves the conversation. Charlie and Austin later discover that Kayla’s sign for ‘chicken’ was the one she knows from BASL (Black ASL), and Austin is mortified. For the rest of the night, Charlie has a hard time concentrating on her friends because she is distracted by the revelation that the Deaf community is just as fraught as the hearing world. In the middle of dinner, Gabriella appears in the front store window, beckoning for Austin. When he looks up, she kisses the boy she showed up with, much to Austin’s horror.

Kayla knows that Austin did not intend to offend her, but she is still hurt by his racism. She decides to enlist Austin for a TikTok about racism within the Deaf community to make up for his mistake.