Whisper (8 page)

But I've already established what I think of wishes. And anyway, part of me thinks she's right. A big part of me.It probably is crazy to think I'll get into law. And it's even more mental to think I could handle the courtroom without being able to hear anything that's going on. It wasn't such a crazy dream before I went deaf. But now?

I search for an escape. I look over to the jumping castle and spot Harry. I make my excuses to Maggie and Flawless and head over to him. It's not until I'm close that I see that his painted whiskers are streaked with tears.

‘They won't let me go on,' he says, and I can see that Maggie's fairy and butterfly are blocking the entrance to the jumping castle.

I see Harry ‘raah' at them, and I get the impression he's been through this routine before. It has no effect on the girls. My heart aches for him. They don't budge.

‘Move it,' I say, loudly I think, and the fairy and the butterfly get out of the way.

‘Raah,' says Harry one more time. He obviously needs to believe that it was the ‘Raah' that moved them on.

I know how he feels.

chapter 10

I sleep in on Saturday. It's afternoon by the time Mum's vacuuming serves its purpose. It used to be her lovely way of encouraging me to get out of bed, but it doesn't work too well anymore. I suppose it's one of the few advantages of being deaf. All I get are the thumps from when she bumps the vacuum cleaner against the wall, and it's not enough to wake me fully.

Anyway, there's no rush to start the day. It's not like I have anything on.

I have breakfast in my pyjamas and go back to my room. I sign in to my email. Nadia's name pops up on MSN. I change my status so I look like I'm offline.

I haven't cleared out my inbox for ages. I know what I'm looking for as I delete emails that tell me how to love and live and laugh and have a better sex life with Viagra. Finally I come to Nadia's email. It was written really late at night, after the wobbly I chucked at school.

To:
Demi Valentino ([email protected])

From:
Nadia Altman ([email protected])

Sent: Wednesday March 10, 12.54 am

1 attachment/download attachment

Dem. Couldn't sleep. Feel shitty about 2day. Shae was crying about her brother. He found her pin code & stole money out of her account. Loser. She was really upset & kind of embarrassed & it didn't seem like a great time 2 fill u in. Still i feel shit about what happened with u.

I know it's been sooo hard and i didn't mean to yell at u & say that stuff. I know u get left out of things & that sometimes u can't figure out what's going on. So i guess i should have taken the time to let u know what was up?

Anyway if stuff like that ever happens again i promise i'll try harder. I'll take care of u. Ur still my best friend and i hate feeling like this.

Love ya guts

From

Ms (massive) Bitchface (lol)

PS. Open attachments. V cute!

PPS. like argument quote best. Remember how we used to fight heaps??

I vaguely remember opening the attachment when I first got the email. Nadia is always forwarding on some lame thing that you're supposed to send to a hundred of your closest friends for good luck and prosperity and blah blah blah. But I open it again now.

It takes forever to load. There are lots of pictures of dogs hugging cats, that kind of thing. I scroll through them, and then scan the friendship quotes below.

A simple friend thinks the friendship over when you have an argument. A real friend knows that it's not friendship until you've had a fight – Unknown.

True friendship is never serene – Marquise de Sevigne.

Our most difficult task as a friend is to offer understanding when we don't understand – Robert Brault.

The first quote jumps out at me.

Nadia and I used to argue all the time before I went deaf.We argued about who was the coolest guy in school, who was the hottest actor. We argued over who had the bigger lunch, and who in our group could be trusted with a secret.If we got on separate teams in school debates, we went hard.We thrived on arguing.

After I went deaf, we didn't do it anymore. Nadia was always trying to be nice to me, trying to help me. And I kind of lost the urge, anyway. I lost all my fight.

Going deaf and trying to act like I wasn't deaf when I was struggling just to follow what was going on around me sucked all that extra energy out of me. It sucked my confidence too. I knew I'd probably just sound like a retard if I got too worked up about something.

We might have outgrown the arguing anyway, I guess.Maybe it was just because we were fourteen. But who knows?

We talked about it the next day at school. Nadia said sorry, and so did I. But I left out stuff, because what was the point? Even while we were making up, I kept thinking of the third quote, the one about not understanding.

That quote was ridiculous. It left me cold. How can you understand what you have never been through yourself? How could Nadia ever understand what it was like to be me? She couldn't. Before I went deaf, I would
never
have understood.

Only Jules really understood me. He understood more than anyone else who was hearing what it was like to be deaf, because of his deaf sister. I felt like our signing was a secret language. No-one else in my life signed so well.Sign let us jump into each other's mind so we could really communicate. Jules and I could
relate.
I didn't have that with anyone else.

That's what I was thinking when Nadia and I said our sorries. Jules walked over at the end of our apology fest.He looked super cute that day. He had on a blue Popeye T-shirt. The blue matched his eyes. Those eyes looked closely at me, and only at me – even though Nadia perked up at his approach. Shoulders back, chest out.

Anyway, the sorries were done. But they were like the tip of the iceberg. I'd left out the most important thing.The
most.
In her email Nadia had promised to take care of me. It made me want to scream, that line.

Because I didn't want to be taken care of. I still don't.

I close the lid of my laptop.

I am sixteen years old, and so far my thrilling weekend has consisted of a seven-year-old's birthday party, a trip to the supermarket, four DVDs, three packets of chips (two barbeque and one salt and vinegar) and one outing to the tip with dad.

Cutting edge.

It's Sunday afternoon. I sit on my bed and paint my toenails black. Three coats.

I wonder what Nadia and the gang are doing. I go on Facebook to find out.

It seems they're going to see a movie. They're going to
hear
a movie. It's American so it won't have subtitles.They only ever chose foreign movies with subtitles so I could go with them.

I remember reading about a gadget that some inventor has created – a subtitle screen that clips on to a pair of glasses. But it won't be available for a while yet. I'll probably be old and grey by the time you can get it.

I think about texting Nadia anyway. Just in case they haven't left yet.

I miss Nadia. I miss hanging out at her house. I miss doing our biology homework together, even though it was usually me who did most of it. Nadia's job was to bring me biscuits and hot chocolates to keep me going. I can almost see the two of us sitting on her bed, food and homework between us.

I can visualise her room down to the tiny details.Her doona cover that's spotty on one side, stripy on the other. The cupboard door that's always open because of the sheer volume of crap inside it – stuff she's had since she was a baby, that Nads refuses to go through and sort out.The two photo-booth pics of us making faces that's stuck on the drawer of her messy bedside table.

I have the third photo in my room.

If I texted her now she'd probably give up going to the movie with the others. She'd come over, for me.

But I don't want that. What I want is our old friendship.The one we had before I went deaf.

I. Don't. Want. To. Be. Taken. Care. Of.

I scroll through the contacts list in my phone. E for Erica.

K for Keisha. I wonder if Keisha found a dress like the one she wanted.

I
could
text them. I could find out what they're doing today. But I haven't known them long. I don't want them to think I'm a desperate loner.

So I spend the whole afternoon studying. Five hours.

And I realise I'm looking forward to going to school tomorrow.

That's how tragic my life has become.

chapter 11

Keisha and Erica wave me over to sit with them in home group. But I still need to be by the door. It's nice that they slide their books along the table and join me.

‘We didn't find anything at Northfield,' Erica signs.

I flinch at the mention of that place. But I remember to breathe. I keep it together.

‘But then we went into town and found two dresses.A red one and a blue one that matches Luke's eyes,' she stirs.She uses Luke's deaf name, and I know it well by now. It's the footy sign and mouthing ‘Luke'.

She's in the middle of the sign when Keisha slaps her hands. I smile, but it also reminds me of Nadia, of how we used to be. She was a slapper. I can still almost feel the metal of her signet ring on my arm as she backhanded me for some comment I'd made. After I went deaf she stopped doing it, as though I was too fragile. It's a weird thing to miss.

‘The dresses were only twenty dollars each,' Keisha continues, post slap.

‘So we had ten dollars left over …' ‘

For KFC.'

They finish each other's sentences too. It sometimes used to annoy me when Nadia did that. It would seem like a gift now.

Helena arrives. Today she is wearing long lace-up boots, and her dance routine is thumpier than it was in the ballet flats. She hands out a permission form for an excursion to the careers expo, and then goes back to the whiteboard to write down extra details. When she's finished, she unrolls a poster and tacks it to the wall.

I recognise the poster from my old school. It was stuck up in the year eleven and twelve common room, above the sandwich press. There are photos of students chatting to people at booths set up by different unis and organisations.I wonder how we're going to get the information. I wonder whether we will take along an interpreter, or whether the expo will provide one for us. Or whether we'll be expected to go it alone.

The biggest booth pictured is for the University of Melbourne. It's where I want to go. I focus on it and I'm
trying
to be positive but the doubts keep seeping in.It's as though that stupid Maggie woman from Harry's party is inside my head.
Oh really? How very brave.

It takes a lot of effort to get her out of my head. To keep my old dream alive. There
might
be someone there who will tell me that of course I can do it. Someone other than my family who can believe in me, who can help me to believe in myself.

I'm staring at the poster as though it will give me the answers. It takes me a moment to realise that Keisha and Erica are out of their seats, pushing past me to get to the door. Everyone else in the room is looking over at the door too.

I turn to see what's going on. Keisha and Erica are hugging someone, and the someone is eclipsed by them. When they finally step aside, I see the hug-ee.

Her hair is white blonde with dark roots. It's spiky at the top, and then snakes into a long plait. It must be a hair extension, because the plait doesn't quite match the texture of the hair at the top. But it definitely looks like it's been designed that way. Nothing about this girl looks accidental.

She is small and thin and about my age, but she's not wearing a uniform. Her white T-shirt is tight, with the words ‘Rage against Audism' in black across her chest.

I've never seen that word before. I don't know what it means, but the first part of the word is probably from ‘audio' and the second seems a bit like ‘racism', so I'm guessing that it's something to do with discrimination against deaf people.