Freak City (20 page)

“It’s your turn!” Cindy handed me the cards.

This time I would do everything I could to make sure she lost!

“Thanks for the movie, by the way. It was really good,” Leah said when we were finally alone in her room. She had pushed aside the curtains around her bed, and we were sitting on it talking. The situation made me nervous. I was constantly listening for steps out in the hall, even though we weren’t doing anything forbidden.

“Why didn’t you get in touch with me?” In the past few weeks, I had made huge progress in Sabine’s course. But it would still be years before I even came close to mastering the language. In the meantime, I had understood that much. For Leah, my amateurish signs were probably a big mishmash from which she had to puzzle together what I meant, just like with reading lips.

“I had to think,” Leah replied. Our shoulders were touching. I had an urgent need to kiss her. I wanted to touch her, stroke her curly hair. I wanted to lay my head on that place between her throat and her shoulder. Breathe in her scent. I wanted . . .

“I didn’t want to cut you off,” Leah continued. “But you have to admit, the whole story is complicated somehow!”

“Love is always complicated!” I said. My heart was pounding. I had finally talked about love and not pretended that it wasn’t exactly about that.

“But this is even more complicated,” she said. “Our lives are completely different, don’t you see that?”

I glanced at the fax machine and videophone. “Did you know that most deaf people marry people who are also deaf?” she asked.

I shook my head. Iris’s wedding Barbie came to mind. And the horse that played the wedding waltz. Were there deaf Barbies, too? It was definitely possible; after all, you couldn’t tell if someone was deaf just by looking at them.

“There are travel agencies just for deaf people. We have our own discos and clubs. We have our own jokes, our own language, our own culture. And we have our own problems, fears, and difficulties. We live in our own, special world, and it has precious little to do with the hearing world!”

I nodded. “But there are still a lot of things people can do together,” I reminded her. “The Signmark concert—that was fantastic!”

We both got lost in our thoughts. The disagreement about kids occurred to me again. Leah and a deaf baby? Before that she’d have to get pregnant. And the thought of that led me seamlessly to my favorite fantasy. Even when I was thinking seriously about us, I inevitably ended up thinking about sex. Was there deaf sex? No, that couldn’t be. Sex was something that happened between two people. Okay, you’d probably have to do without dirty talk, but I wasn’t very good at it anyway.

“But there are some things that are the same,” I muttered. I hadn’t spoken in sign language, but Leah had read the key word from my lips. We looked right at each other, and for a moment, I lost myself in her green eyes.

“What’s the same?” Leah asked aloud. This time she had spoken very clearly; I understood every word.

“This, for example,” I said. I leaned over and kissed her. It felt so damn sexy, our lips softly touching each other. Our tongues sought each other, first gently, then more and more passionately. My hands wandered under her shirt. Leah was so soft, I thought for a minute I might just die.

“Not here.” Leah pushed my hand away. Her face looked flushed, and I buried my head in her hair. When I freed myself from our embrace again, Leah had a big smile on her face.

“Okay, that was the intersection of our two worlds,” she spelled. I liked the idea of an intersection, even though I sucked at math.

“Do you want to go see the outdoor movie at Freak City next week?” Leah looked at me hopefully.

I nodded, in a daze. My brain was mush, my body a single adrenaline pump. In the future, I would do everything with Leah. Anything and everything that would give me a chance to see her and continue our kiss.

“Tommek is showing
Cinema Paradiso
. It’s a fantastic movie!”

The title didn’t mean anything to me. “When is that?”

“A week from today. Next Sunday, August thirty-first.”

Shit. Sandra’s concert. The Colored Pieces playing on the outdoor stage in the park. The talent scout who wanted to hear Sandra. I had promised her I would go. If I didn’t show up, it would be over. Absolutely, definitely, and forever.

“I have . . .” I looked at Leah awkwardly. “I promised my ex-girlfriend to go to one of her concerts. She’s singing with a new band for the first time. This concert is important.”

Leah nodded like that was perfectly okay. “Sure, no problem. I go to the movies alone all the time. I’m used to it.”

“Do you want to come with me?” I looked at her pleadingly. “I mean, to the concert?”

“Concerts are hard for me,” she answered seriously. “I just can’t get into it.” Sometimes she was just the sweetest thing.

She put her hand on my shoulder. “Hey, is it possible that your ex wants you back?”

I tilted my head. How had she managed to figure that out? “Maybe,” I replied.

“And you? Do you want that, too?” Leah’s cheeks had finally returned to their normal color. I could still feel her kiss on my lips. How did you say “continue” in sign language? I didn’t want to talk, I wanted to make out. For hours.

I shrugged my shoulders. “I have no idea what I want. Right now, I’m just really confused. Do you know what I mean?”

“Sure.” Leah nodded.

Later, when I was back at home, she sent me a text message. “Did you know that Bulgarians shake their head when they mean yes?”

I nodded to myself. No, I hadn’t known that.

I sat with Iris on the floor of my bedroom, surrounded by countless CD cases, when there was a knock at the door. We looked up. A sun-browned Claudio came through the door, grinning.

At the sight of him, all my anger vanished. To be honest, I was grateful to him for taking the first step and finally coming over. The time without him had seemed like an eternity to me.

“
Hola amigos!
” He emptied a plastic bag next to Iris, and a wild assortment of Spanish candy tumbled out onto the floor. And a kitschy plastic tango dancer and two blank postcards with naked girls on them.

“I wanted to send the postcards to you and Tobias, but never got around to it.”

Iris snatched up the ugly plastic figure. “Is this for me?”

“Actually more for Mika.” Claudio looked at me. “The inflatable version was out of my price range.”

“You idiot!” I stood up and hugged him.

“You can have it,” I said to Iris, who was already on her way to getting worked up. Pleased, she pressed the doll to her chest and started rummaging through the CD cases again.

“What are you two doing here, anyway?” Claudio threw himself onto my bed and observed the chaos from above.

“Iris wants to make a mix CD. She’s . . . she has a crush on someone.”

Iris nodded seriously. “This song should be on it, too. It sounds funny!” she said, pointing to a title on a sampler CD.

“That’s ‘Claudia has a German Shepherd’ by the Ärzte. That song is definitely not going to be on your CD. It’s nothing for kids.”

Claudio laughed. For a while, we had been crazy about the Ärzte, especially their older songs.

“So, who’s the lucky guy?” Claudio asked Iris.

“Amira,” Iris answered. “But I might give the CD to Kevin instead if Amira doesn’t like it.”

Claudio stared at my sister. Then he turned his gaze to me. “Change of programming while I was away? Did I hear that right? Amira? Sounds kind of . . . feminine.”

I rolled my eyes and nodded.

Iris held out the next CD. It belonged to Mom. “The song with the kiss from a rose sounds nice.” Seal. Amira would probably like that a lot better than the song about Claudia, who had an affair with a German shepherd.

“Okay, I’ll copy it for you. But that’s all for now. Ten songs are enough.” I thought about Tobias, who had made a mix for Ellen at some point. Just before they had started going out with each other, he had spent hours putting together just the right songs for her. Songs to cuddle to, sad songs, love songs. I’ve always thought it was crazy romantic to give each other music. Sandra and I did that all the time, practically every day. But one time, she gave me a CD with the worst love songs of all time. The songs were incredibly bad, but I thought the idea was funny and cool.

Sandra . . . I felt a pang of nostalgia.

But then I remembered the CD for Claudio. “You get a CD, too!” I said, jumping up.

“From you? Oh, darling, you shouldn’t have . . .”

“Oh, shut up!” I went over to my desk and threw the case at him. “Signmark. He’s a deaf rapper!”

“A deaf rapper? You gotta be kidding me, dude.”

“I’m serious! Check it out.”

Claudio went over to my stereo and put the disc in. “Cool, dude. I like it. I like it a lot.”

“We’re going to be all alone, for three whole weeks!” Iris blurted out the news proudly. “Mika’s going to take me places and take care of everything. And I get to listen to my stories in his room every day!”

“Next year,” I reminded Iris. “Next summer vacation. Not this year.”

“Three weeks? Why that?” Claudio was lying on my bed again. There was something unusually edgy about him. I just hadn’t figured out yet what it was. It had to do with the grin he had had plastered across his face ever since he came into my room. Apparently, something had happened during the time we hadn’t seen each other.

“Our parents are taking a trip to Finland. They’re renting an RV and driving all over the place. They wanted to do that like ten thousand years ago.”

“Really?” Claudio furrowed his brow. “Second honeymoon, or what?”

I shrugged. The atmosphere at home was a little strange since my dad’s crash last Sunday. There had been a big fight with lots of shouting. I hadn’t been home, but Iris told me about it. Just that morning, the two of them had told us about their decision not to redo the kitchen after all, but just to buy a new stove. They were going to use the rest of the money to take a trip together.

Mom and Tanya hadn’t been getting along lately, either. They hadn’t been talking to each other, and Tanya had sent Mom flowers.

Iris stood up, gathered up all the Spanish candy, and disappeared into her room. I heard her open her closet to stash the goods in there.

“So what’s her name?” I asked, scrutinizing Claudio.

“Who?” There it was again—he was grinning so widely it looked like he had shoved a whole banana in his mouth lengthwise.

“The girl who took your virginity. You can practically see it written on your forehead.”

“What do you mean ‘took my virginity’? That sounds crass, as if
I
were the girl and not the other way around!”

“You
are
the girl, Claudio. Always have been. So just deal with it.”

He groaned and folded his arms behind his head. “Okay, I admit it. It happened in Madrid. Her name is Barbara, and she is the ultimate hottie.”

“Barbara? That doesn’t sound much like a Spanish name.” It didn’t sound very hot to me either, but I kept that to myself.

“Nah, she’s from Munich, too. I met her in the hotel, at the breakfast buffet. All you can eat. I didn’t know
that
was included in the price, too.”

“And? Was it good?”

Claudio’s face took on a dreamy expression. “Yeah, pretty good. I think I’m a natural. But is it always over in two and a half minutes? Kind of a short thrill.”

I rolled my eyes. Iris came back in the room, and we quickly changed the subject. “There’s a party tonight at the quarry. Huge bonfire, guitar players and all that. Do you want to come?” Claudio looked at me.

I thought about it.

“Barbara’s coming, too.” My best friend’s voice became insistent. Now that he had finally joined the party, naturally, he wanted to present his conquest. He wanted to see the envy on my face when he introduced me to Barbara. His late revenge for my night with Sandra.

“Can I come, too?” Iris looked at me with puppy-dog eyes.

“That’s just what I need!” I answered. “Great idea! There’s nothing I want more than to take my little sister along.”

“Really?” Iris rejoiced. “I’ll go ask Mom right now!” And quick as a flash she had disappeared into the hallway. Oh, great. Sarcasm wasn’t really her thing.

“Super, man!” Claudio threw a pillow at my head. “It’ll be great with all of us there. Tobias and Ellen are coming, too. Maybe we’ll meet up with Sandra! It would be so awesome, just like the old days.”

But the old days were gone. Now was now, and I still didn’t understand what the big director in the sky wanted from me. Was I supposed to get back together with Sandra after all? My buddy seemed to be strongly in favor of it.

I was still ticked off at Claudio for that phone call with Sandra. Just thinking about how the two of them had talked about me and Leah made me sick. And what about Leah? He hadn’t so much as mentioned her the entire time.

“Sandra and I will see each other the day after tomorrow, at the concert. She wants me to make a decision by then!”

Claudio nodded. “What are you waiting for? You can just as well tell her tonight.”

“What?”