Being Jazmine (Invisible Series Book 3)

by Cecily Anne Paterson

  “Ooh, yes please,” says Gabby, turning around and giving Grandma one of her best dazzling smiles.

  “Fried, boiled or scrambled?”

  Gabby thinks for a moment putting her head to one side. “Scrambled, please. Thanks so much.”

  “Jaz?” says Grandma.

  I’m so confused I can hardly answer. “Um, I don’t know. Sorry.”

  “You should have scrambled eggs, like me,” says Gabby.

  “She can choose,” says Grandma. “Eggs, Jaz?”

  “No eggs, thanks,” I say. I’m grateful to her. “But toast would be great.”

  “Come out when you’re ready.” Grandma pulls her head back and closes the door.

  Gabby bounces twice and looks expectantly at me.

  My head’s clear now, and I give her a glare. I feel annoyed. Annoyed at being woken up, annoyed at feeling dishevelled and confused and bad-breathed, and annoyed that Gabby is sitting here, on my bed, looking at me like she wants something. “What are you doing here anyway?” I ask.

  She shrugs, and keeps looking at me.

  “So you’ve turned up, and now you’re not going to talk?”

  She grins. “You’re probably going to want to brush your teeth,” she says again.

  I make a frown at her, then tear back the doona, get out of bed and stomp into the ensuite bathroom. I smack some toothpaste on the brush, wrestle it around my mouth, and spit and rinse so hard it makes spots on the mirror. Then I look in the mirror, straighten my hair, which is looking a bit weird, and stalk back to the bedroom. I don’t get back into bed. Instead, I stay standing, near the door. I cross my arms. “What are you doing here, Gabby?”

  She lifts her head slightly and purses her lips. She’s trying to be tough, but there is a small twinkle in her eye. I ignore it. I don’t want her to make me laugh.

  “It’s called an intervention,” she says.

  “An inter-what?”

  “An intervention,” she says. “You’ve heard of that, right? It’s where your friends come and tell you you’ve got to get off drugs, or whatever.”

  “I am not on drugs,” I say. My arms stay crossed.

  “Well, duh, obviously not,” says Gabby. She laughs. “Like, of course I know that.”

  “Well then, what?”

  “It’s a friendship intervention.”

  “And what is that?”

  Gabby grins at me. “It’s where one best friend comes to tell the other best friend that they’re being stupid, and they need to fix things up. They talk. They listen. You know how it’s done.”

  A wave of something - I’m not sure what - flies through my chest. The word ‘listen’ makes me feel… I don’t know, angry. I unfold my arms. “You know I don’t wear my hearing aids any more at home. I’m taking them out. I prefer to use sign language.”

  “Fine,” says Gabby. She smiles. And it’s not a cheeky smile. It’s a genuine one. “But I don’t know Auslan so I brought paper. I’ll write what I want to say.”

  It takes me by surprise. Even though my feet are steady, I feel slightly off balance inside. I take out the hearing aids slightly slower than I had planned, and place them on the dressing table. Gabby digs around in her bag, and quickly comes out with a notebook and two pens. She opens the book up to the first page and presents it to me with a flourish.

  There’s already something written on it.

  “You planned this?” I say to her. My voice is indistinct without my hearing aids. “You already knew what you’d write?”

  She shrugs and grins, slightly guilty, like I’ve caught her out, but not so guilty that she’s not enjoying my reaction. She grabs her pen and writes, I wanted to be prepared.

  “How did you know I’d take out the aids?” I feel like I’m accusing her, but really, I’m more curious than angry.

  She rolls her eyes and makes a face, like, come ON, Jazmine, and writes again. Just read the message, okay?

  I make my eyes wide, like, okay, whatever. I sit on the bed, opposite her, and pick up the notebook.

  It’s a long message. Two or three paragraphs, written in Gabby’s big round handwriting, in purple, with writing on every second line so it fills the page. There are underlines, capitals and heaps of exclamation marks. I can almost hear her voice in my head as I read it.

  Dear Jaz,

  This is what I want to say: we have to be friends!!!!! We are friends. We can’t NOT be friends.

  I’ll tell you why I know this: because back last year, YOU came to find ME, after I dumped you. I was stupid and I stuffed up when I moved away. I ignored you because I thought my life was changing, but you came and said it didn’t matter where you lived, we were still friends, even if everything changed.

  The pen changes to green at this point.

  Sooooo… basically I’m saying, it doesn’t matter if you’re Deaf or not deaf, we’re still the same people, aren’t we? Because it’s kind of the same thing as someone moving away. Instead of talking every day, we now have to text and message each other, and catch up in holidays. Change of communication, that’s all!!!! And if you’re deaf and don’t want to wear your hearing aids, instead of talking and listening, we can write messages when we’re hanging out. Or I can learn Auslan and then we’ll both know it. Change of communication!!!!!! Right?

  I stop reading and put my head down.

  Everything Gabby has said is right.

  We are still the same people.

  We did stay friends after everything changed last year.

  We could still stay friends again.

  I’ve been wrong.

  A tear sneaks its way out of my eye and sits, wet, on the side of my nose. I try to wipe it away so Gabby doesn’t notice, but she pounces, pulling the notebook back towards her.

  Ha! You’re crying. You know it’s true, she writes and pushes the notebook back towards me. She puts a smiley face next to it. I look up at her, and smile too.

  “You’re right,” I say. “I’m sorry.”

  I reach out to the dressing table for my hearing aids, but she scribbles something quickly. Don’t put them in unless you want to. I’m happy to write notes.

  I shake my head. “I want to. At least for now.”

  She makes an appreciative face at me. “Thank you.”

  “I’ve been stupid,” I say. “I’ll admit it.”

  “That’s okay,” she says. “I get it.”

  “But I’m not kidding you. That camp changed everything for me. It is really different now.”

  “So let me understand it. Help me out.” She settles back on the bed in a listening position, and immediately I feel unsure.

  “You really want to know what I’m talking about?”

  “Sure, why not?” she says. “If we’re best friends, then I have to understand what you’re going through.”

  I’m almost paralyzed for a moment. All I’ve wanted is for someone to listen to me about this, and now that they are, I hardly know what to say. I stammer, and try, but my explanation seems lame.

  “It’s like, I’ve always thought of myself as being ‘not okay’. You know, these things make me seem weird.” I gesture to my hearing aids. “I have to try harder. I don’t fit in.” I look down at my hands and twist them. “Not the same as you.”

  “Okay,” says Gabby. “I didn’t know that.”

  I look up at her. “I think the thing was, I just didn’t realise there was any other way. At camp, it was like this whole other world opened up to me. I was the same as them. There was finally somewhere that I fitted.”

  She shifts on the bed. “I think I get it.”

  I make a face and consider things. “But here’s the thing. I don’t know if you can understand it. No offense, but I can’t imagine how I would have understood it if I hadn’t experienced it. You have to be deaf to get it, I think.”

  Gabby sits up. She looks happy. “Okay, so I’ll be deaf for a while.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll be deaf.”

 
; I shake my head at her. “You can’t be. Your mum will kill me if I punch you in the head so hard you lose your hearing.”

  “Ever heard of earplugs? Noise reducing headphones?”

  “Um…” I say.

  She shrugs and grins. “I’ll wear them. We’ll go out. Somewhere, like a cafe or something. I’ll wear them, and then I’ll see how it feels.”

  “You’ll wear noise reducing headphones in public?” I shudder.

  “Okay, then, just the earplugs,” she says. She stands up. “Do you think your Grandma will have any? I’ll put them in right now.”

  “That’s really going to be embarrassing,” I say.

  “Not really,” says Gabby. “You’re talking to the girl who took a stuffed wombat toy to school on a pretend leash last year.”

  “This is true,” I say. I throw my hands up in the air. If Gabby isn’t going to be embarrassed, I won’t be either. “Let’s do it.”

  Chapter 22

  We eat Grandma’s eggs and toast and then we go out. I wear my hearing aids, and Gabby wears a pair of earplugs Grandma finds in her bathroom cupboard. “For when it’s pouring down rain and I can’t sleep because of the noise of the drops on the tin roof,” she tells us. “I haven’t used these ones yet.”

  Gabby twists them up and squishes them into her ears. “It feels weird,” she says.

  “Can you hear me?” I ask, loudly.

  “A little bit. It’s sort of muffled.”

  “That’s probably about right,” I say.

  Grandma drops us down to the shops. “I’ll meet you back here after I’ve done the groceries, okay? In about an hour.”

  “What?” says Gabby.

  “Grandma will pick us up,” I say, making sure she can see my face.

  “Oh, sure,” she says. She gives me a grin. “This feels so funny. Do I look funny?”

  I shrug and smile and point to my ears. “You’ve got earplugs in. What can I say?”

  “People are going to think we’re crazy.” She gives me a look of satisfaction. “This is super fun. What shall we do? Are you still hungry? I’m kind of still hungry.”

  I’m not really hungry. Breakfast filled me up, but when Gabby’s on the hunt for a chocolate chip muffin, nothing stops her, so we walk down towards the cafes that look out onto the harbour. It’s blue and bright and sunshiny: a perfect day.

  “Here?” I say to Gabby. It’s a cafe that I come to with Grandma a lot. It has plain bricks on the wall, a menu written in chalk and excellent coffee, according to Grandma, although she won’t let me have any yet, even though I’m practically halfway through my teens. I’ve told her that there’s as much caffeine in tea as there is in coffee, but she’s not convinced.

  Gabby keeps walking, and I have to run after her and tap her on the arm.

  “What?” she says.

  “I said, shall we go here?”

  “I didn’t hear you,” she says. “Can you speak up?”

  “No,” I say, and I make an amused face at her. “I’m speaking normally. You just have to concentrate more.”

  “Huh,” she says, like she’s never thought of that before. “Okay.”

  We sit at one of the silver tables and look at the menu, which is in a little stand on the table.

  “There are good muffins here,” I say. She catches that.

  “Chocolate chip?”

  “Uh huh,” I nod. “The best.”

  She shrugs. “Well, that’s easy then.”

  The waitress takes a little bit of time to turn up at our table, and Gabby has gone back to studying the menu by the time she gets there. The girl is maybe seventeen, with white-blond hair all scrunched back, and heaps of makeup on. She looks at us, just a little bit down her nose, and I twist my mouth, waiting for that moment when she sees my hearing aids and Gabby ear plugs.

  It happens.

  Her eyes go wide and she flounders for a moment, but she’s cool enough to recover, and show nothing on her face, even though she can’t stop her eyes flicking from Gabby’s ears to my ears and back again.

  I see it, of course. I always see it. I’ve seen it from the time I was old enough to work out that people had their own thoughts in their heads. They look, they think, they look back, they decide and then they look away, everywhere else but at me. At the deaf girl.

  Gabby doesn’t see it. She’s still got her head down looking at the menu.

  “Are you ready to order?” says the waitress. She says it oddly, like she’s not confident of her own voice. Like she doesn’t know if what she’s saying is going to get through to us.

  Gabby’s head stays down.

  I kick her under the table.

  Her head flies up. “What?”

  “Ready to order?” the girl says again. This time there’s a bit of scorn in her voice. Gabby doesn’t miss that. I can see it in her eyes.

  “Sorry,” she says. Her voice is too loud. “A chocolate chip muffin, please. And a milk shake.”

  “I’ll have a cup of tea,” I say.

  “Nothing to eat?” The girl looks down at me again. She’s looking at my hearing aids, I can tell.

  “No thanks.”

  She goes away, with our order written on her notepad and Gabby looks at me, all fierce. “She was rude,” she whispers, or tries to whisper. It’s still pretty loud to me.

  I shake my head just a tiny bit and shrug. “That’s normal.”

  “What, just staring like that?”

  I make a face like, yeah, you should get used to it, okay? And Gabby crushes her forehead into a frown.

  “That’s not cool,” she says.

  “But it happens,” I say. “You can’t change it. People just look. And then they act a bit weird until they get used to it.”

  “But, it’s…” and Gabby, maybe for the first time in her life, doesn’t finish what she wants to say. She looks around, out to the harbour, and the park, all fidgety. “I think I should take these out. It’s kind of weird.” Her head comes back so that her eyes are looking straight at me. She’s giving me a look a bit like, you’ll understand, won’t you? but I won’t let her off.

  “You can’t do an hour with earplugs in?” I scrunch up my nose at her, and she gives me a guilty face.

  “You’re right.” Underneath the table, I can feel her feet kicking at the floorboards. “Sorry.”

  I shrug. “It’s okay. I get it.”

  The blonde girl comes back with a cup and a saucer, a teapot and a small jug of milk for me. She puts them down, says something and goes away again. Gabby’s eyes follow her as she leaves, concentrating like she’s trying to guess what the words were. She looks at me for help.

  “She’s bringing the muffin soon,” I say. “They’re heating it up for you.”

  “Oh, man,” says Gabby. She hits her forehead with her hand. “I thought she was talking about meat.”

  “Or maybe feet,” I grin.

  “Or treat,” says Gabby.

  “Or sweet.”

  “Ha ha,” Gabby laughs. Then she narrows her eyes at me. “How much can you actually hear? Like for reals?”

  I think for a moment, and then I shrug. “I mean, I don’t really know, because I don’t know how much you can hear. Probably, with hearing aids, it’s a bit more than you can hear with ear plugs. Without my hearing aids, a bit less than you with ear plugs.”

  “But you always act like you get everything. You don’t seem to switch ‘meat’ with ‘feet’ or ‘heat’.”

  I look out to the blue water. The sun is sparkling off it. It all seems so easy and beautiful out there. Unlike in here.

  “I’m always a bit stressed,” I say. “Maybe a lot stressed. I watch people’s faces carefully.” I take a deep breath. “I mean, I know I’m going to miss stuff, so I try to get it before I miss it. If you understand what I mean.”

  The waitress brings back Gabby’s muffin and milk shake. I pour myself some tea. Half a sugar, some milk. Take a sip. It slips down beautifully. Gabby looks just as happ
y with her drink.

  “Do you want some?” She offers me the plate with the muffin on it, but I shake my head at her.

  “Chocolate. I don’t like it.”

  “I forgot.” She grins happily. “More for me.”

  We eat and drink for a bit. Gabby makes faces when she sips her shake through her straw. “Drinking with ear plugs in makes weird sounds in my head.”

  “Does it?” I say.

  “Really loud.”

  “That’s funny.”

  I get two cups of tea out of my pot, and Gabby finishes every crumb on her plate, and, presumably, every drip in her cup, because she slurps it for long enough. When she pushes her dishes out of the way, she looks like she’s thinking.

  “So, like,” she begins. She thinks a little more. “How much do you ‘get’ of what I say?”

  “You?” I half laugh. I’m embarrassed. I don’t know how much I hear. How could I possibly know? I hear what I hear, and I don’t know what I don’t hear. I make a face like, dunno, and look away.

  “No, seriously. Put a figure on it. Sixty per cent? Eighty per cent?” She scrunches up her eyes. “Would it be a hundred per cent with the hearing aids?”

  I get a little frustrated. “I don’t know. How much do you think you can hear me now, with the ear plugs in? It’s probably the same.”

  “So, you’re missing a lot then?”

  “I guess so.”

  “You’re not hearing everything I say, and I’m your best friend, with a big loud voice.”

  “I guess not.”

  Her face is incredulous. “So, why didn’t you ever tell me that?”

  I take a breath in and out. Why didn’t I tell her I missed words? Why didn’t I ask her to repeat things? Why didn’t I make myself incredibly annoying, and weird and different, when I hardly fitted in anyway? Yeah, why not, Jazmine?

  “This is why I liked camp so much,” I said. “I wasn’t the crazy deaf outcast for once.”

  Gabby pulls her phone out of her pocket and puts it on the table in front of her. “I felt the buzz,” she says. She presses a couple of buttons, reads a text and types a quick reply. “Mum’s coming to pick me up. In ten minutes.” She stands up and starts to gather her things. “I’ll pay.”