Whisper (6 page)

When I went back to school, he was there with me three days a week. He would stand beside the teacher, making sure I understood. I can still see him now, if I try. I can see Jules standing next to Dr Tolley, my chem teacher. He is wearing white volleys, jeans and a yellow Che Guevara T-shirt. He is signing instructions for an experiment. Dr Tolley has a well-earned reputation for being long winded. He goes on and on, but I'm saved from the droning. He keeps looking over at Jules, as though he can check that he's being interpreted correctly, though of course he has no idea about signing.

It's funny, because Jules's signing takes a fraction of Tolley's droning time. My friends get the joke. There are lots of smiles in my direction. I feel good.

The other kids liked him. There was nothing not to like.

He was young and cool.

And he was mine.

At least, that's what I started to think. Stupid girl.

Stupid deaf girl.

chapter 8

‘L-u-k-e thinks you're hot.' Keisha is signing to me under her jumper. I'm the only one who can see her signing, so I guess she's telling me a secret. I'm not fussed about Luke gossip, but it's nice to have someone telling me something private, after all this time of feeling like I am missing out on secrets.

We are out in the school garden, doing hands-on plant identification for biology.

‘He thinks green eyes and brown hair are the best,' she continues.

I look closely at Keisha. Her eyes are so puppy dog sad that she looks like a cartoon version of herself. Even without Erica's comment yesterday, it's not hard to figure out that she likes Luke.

‘You are hot,' she signs, before she pulls her hands out of her jumper.

I am so not interested. In Luke, or in anyone. Not since Jules.

‘Tell him I'm gay,' I sign to Keisha, making an ‘O' with my middle finger and thumb under my own jumper.

‘Are you?' Keisha asks, her hands out in the open now.Her eyebrows are raised as she bites her bottom lip. I can tell she's hoping I'm serious.

‘No,' I say with a shake of my head, and Keisha laughs.It's an unguarded laugh. Even though I can't hear it, I can tell by the wide smile and the way she throws back her head.

I try not to laugh out loud anymore, because it's harder to control the volume of a laugh and I don't want to sound goofy and deaf. But I do smile at her. She's nice, Keisha or Chatter or whatever I should call her. And she's actually quite normal-looking too, when she's not doing some overthe-top laugh or face. She is about the same height and build as me. She has shoulder-length chocolatey hair that's dead straight so that the layers work properly. Mine will only be straight until lunchtime, when my morning hairstraightening session always loses out to nature.

‘Sorry to interrupt,' our teacher Morris signs right in front of our faces. ‘Can you repeat what I said about this tree?

What is it?'

‘B-a-n-k-s-i-a,' Keisha signs. I didn't know that.

‘Yes!' Morris is clearly excited that Keisha knew the answer. ‘What kingdom?' he asks.

There are four people in our biology class. Keisha, Erica, Cam – the blond guy who sits next to Luke, and me.We all gather around the tree. Keisha shakes her head and Morris repeats the question, but this time he opens it up to the group. When he scratches his head, I swear I can see dandruff flakes flying into the garden.

‘C-a-m?' Morris asks, finger spelling the three letters.

Now Cam is beside me, I can see the combo of his cochlear implant and hearing aids. It's weird, but I don't think they look so bad today. Maybe they're only really ugly if you zoom in on them. Or maybe I'm just getting used to them.

‘Plantae,' Cam says.

Even though I can't hear him, I can see from the shape his mouth makes that he has mispronounced the word.He said plantee. I wonder if Morris will correct him. I wonder if it matters, here.

‘-ay,' Morris says, making the distinctive shape with his mouth, giving me my answer. ‘Plant-ae.'

I'm glad. I want to be corrected if I make a mistake.

I want to be pushed to pronounce things properly, and I want people to tell me if I'm speaking too loudly or too quietly. Even when it makes me feel like a fool.

Mum would approve of Morris correcting Cam. I tuck the info away. I'm sure I'll be pulling it out sometime soon.

Cam repeats the word, correctly this time. He glances at me, Keisha and Erica and grins. When Morris turns away, Cam scratches his own head and mimes a whole load of stuff flying out. Then, he mimes a plant growing extra-quick, as though the dandruff is a magic fertiliser.

When Morris turns back, Cam's hands freeze midway through some serious plant growth. It's pretty funny.

Morris taps his watch, then points up to the roof of the school building. The red light is flashing. I'm surprised it's lunchtime already.

‘Meet you back here with food?' Cam asks us, and it seems I'm being included without a thought. And even though they're just a bunch of deaf students, it feels nice.

Luke is with Cam when they join us for lunch. I am sitting on one side of the bench, and Erica and Keisha are on the other. When Luke sits right next to me, I move up a bit.So does he. I feel squirmy.

‘You are beautiful,' he signs, a muesli bar taking the place of a finger. Now I feel squirmier. ‘I love you!'

I get a flush of embarrassment, as much for Luke as for me.He's too old to be acting like this, and I'm too old to have to handle it. It's so
obvious.
So immature. It's like he's not just deaf, but also simple or something. I can hardly believe that he's still staring at me, waiting for a reaction.

‘I'm not available,' I sign, feeling ridiculous. Especially since the sign for ‘available' should have my right hand doing a rotation clockwise. I've gone anticlockwise. The others are all grinning, but I can tell it's only Keisha who's paying any real attention.

‘You're breaking my heart!' Luke signs, pumping his hands over his heart and throwing his head back, and I feel a sense of relief now that he's being deliberately over the top.It's some kind of show, or maybe just a joke. ‘You've got to love me. Check out my eyelashes!' He splays the fingers of both hands above his eyes dramatically.

‘It's best to ignore him.' Erica interrupts Luke's signing of eyelashes by waving her own hands over the top of them.‘He falls in love all the time. He'll get over it.'

Keisha is frowning. She grabs Erica's hand, and pulls her away from the table. The two of them walk to the far end of the garden. It feels awkward, being left here with just the boys. When they start up a conversation about footy, I try to act interested, but I'm not. They're going too fast for me anyway.

I can't help looking down to the end of the garden at Keisha and Erica. Keisha has her back to me, so I can't see what she's saying. Maybe she'll hate me because Luke likes me when she so obviously likes him. Maybe she's talking to Erica about me right now. Will Erica go off me too, if Keisha does? The thing is, I don't know for sure what they're talking about. But I know I'm missing out. Again.

It makes me think of that day I lost it with Nadia.

It was lunchtime, and Nadia and Shae were on the other side of the oval. I could see Nadia rubbing Shae's back, and I could tell that Shae was sobbing. Her shoulders rose up and down with the sobs.

I was worried. Shae was tough. She hardly ever cried, so whatever had happened must have been pretty full-on.

I started to walk across the oval to them.

I was about halfway there when a football slammed into my back. It hurt. I turned to see two year seven boys running towards me. They were too far away for me to lipread everything, but they were clearly saying sorry.

‘I'm OK,' I said, through clenched teeth when they got closer. I wasn't OK. I was sure there would be a bruise on my back by morning. But I gritted my teeth and kept walking.

‘What? What is it?' I asked Nadia when I got closer.My back was throbbing as I squatted down beside my friends.

Shae said something to Nadia that I couldn't see.

‘It's OK, Demi,' Nadia said. ‘Shae's OK. Don't worry about it.'

I'm good at lip-reading that phrase. I get it all the time.When I ask people to repeat what they said, something I've missed, I often get that phrase. When I miss the punch line to a joke that others have since decided wasn't very funny, I get that phrase.

But I want to decide what's funny or important or worth worrying about for myself.

‘Just tell me what happened!' I said. I was frustrated, and probably speaking too loudly.

‘Jesus, Demi,' Nadia said, and she rolled her eyes and shook her head like I was just being annoying.

Nadia's hand was still on Shae's back. It hurt, looking at it – a reminder that she was able to comfort Shae because she knew what was wrong.

‘You … it's always about you all the time,' continued Nadia. She looked angry, and I could tell she was speaking loudly, maybe even yelling, by the way her face was moving and her mouth was forming the words. ‘… went deaf. But it's not all about you, OK?'

I felt sick. I felt shaky with the sickness of not knowing anything, of not being told and of not understanding. I felt sick because of my throbbing back and my aching heart and my useless ears. I was sick of people glaring at me because they'd said hello and I hadn't answered. Or because they'd asked me a question then looked at me like I was the rudest person alive when I didn't reply.

It was
not
always about me! It was hardly
ever
about me, because
nobody
really understood!

‘You are a massive bitch,' I said, and spat out the words like I had no control over what I was saying.

Nadia and Shae looked shocked. They looked shocked
together
, just like they sang
together
when the lights were switched off and I didn't even know what the song was.

They looked at each other like I was some kind of freak.Then Nadia stood up, her hands on her hips as she glared at me.

I took off then, angrily brushing away the tears. I ran back across the oval, away from my so-called friends.

Luke's hand moves in front of my face.

‘Are you daydreaming about me?' He mouths it as well as signing.

‘Sorry,' I sign. ‘You're going too fast for me. It's better when you sign and speak together. That way I can lip-read as well.'

‘Don't get too used to it,' Erica signs as she and Keisha sit back down on the bench. Keisha responds to my ‘I hope we're OK' smile with a big, full one. She seems fine, as though her chat with Erica has helped. Anyway, she doesn't seem to be holding any grudges against me. ‘S-t-e-l-l-a is back next week.'

I'm confused. It must show on my face, because Erica explains.

‘When Stella is around, we mostly sign,' she says. ‘She doesn't speak or mouth at all.'

‘Oh,' I respond, but I don't really understand.

‘Her parents are both deaf, so she's never needed to learn to speak,' says Keisha.

‘Yeah right,' says Cam. ‘As if Star would use her voice even if she could!'

I raise my eyebrows at him, asking wordlessly what he means.

‘When Star is around we do things her way. We bow and scrape,' Cam explains. I gather that Star must be Stella's deaf name.

I still don't really know what Cam's on about but it seems that Stella has some serious power around here.

‘I can't wait to see her,' Erica says. ‘She's very cool,' she says to me.

‘Icy even,' Luke adds with a grin. His broken heart seems to have mended.

The teacher on yard duty signs to us that lunchtime is over. When Luke gets up, Keisha hurries over to join him.

I can see what she's signing, even from a distance, because she's half-facing me, walking backwards in front of Luke. It's public, even though she probably doesn't want it to be. All I have to do is look, and I guess that's worth remembering for the future, in case I ever want to say something private.

But I'm glad I can see this. I'm glad I'm not locked out.

It's so cute.

‘I like your eyelashes,' she signs.

chapter 9

It's Friday afternoon. I've had an OK week. In fact, it's been better than OK. I'm starting to feel settled.

Erica and Keisha are loading books into their bags for weekend homework. I do the same.

‘What are you doing now?' Erica asks.

‘Why don't you come with us?' Keisha adds.

I heave my laden school bag onto my back so I can sign.

‘Come where?' I ask.

‘We're going to have a Coke and a look around – ' ‘I wish I had money,' Erica interrupts. ‘I can't buy anything.

You're lucky, Chatter.'

‘I'm not lucky,' Keisha argues, rolling her eyes. ‘I earn my money by working. You know that.'