The Dark Days of Hamburger Halpin by Josh Berk

In this book for older readers, Will Halpin has ditched his former "deaf school" and is now trying to merge into the auditory-able mainstream at Carbon High in eastern Pennsylvania. As the new, overweight kid who has to sit off to the side during classes so he can try to read the lips of both his teachers and his classmates, Will downsizes his social expectations and retreats back into the soundless cocoon of his own skull, but he is always observing, He monitors the school bus mirror and pieces together what all the cool kids are talking about. Most, Will discovers, are focused on being invited to an exclusive party being thrown by popular jock Pat. But Pat dies during a field trip to a defunct coal mine, under and Will reluctantly accepts the unsettlingly friendly overtures of a classmate bent on enlisting him as a partner in amateur sleuthing.