Being Jazmine (Invisible Series Book 3) Read online

  “But, tell me more about the wedding.” Gabby sounds impatient. “Did you like your dress that you wore? Did you get the white one in the end?”

  I put the grass down and smile. I’d messaged Gabby a photo of each of the three dresses I’d tried on, the day Mum and I had been shopping for mine. “She liked the tan one, but I went for the white.” I put my hands back and breathe in the salt air. “It didn’t really match hers, and I was a bit worried, but she said I should just get the one I liked best.” I shift position. “So I did. And it looked good. At least, I think it did.” I pull my phone out of my pocket, and swipe to open it up. “See?” I scroll through the pictures until I find the one Mum and I took together.

  “Nice,” said Gabby. She sounds admiring. “Your mum’s really pretty.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you too, of course.”

  I play-slap her on the head. “Gee, thanks.”

  “So, it was a good wedding.” She sounds like she needs me to agree.

  “Uh huh.” I make the noise with my mouth and then close it again quickly, because the words I want to say are hiding just underneath, waiting to come out.

  It was a good wedding. Of course it was a good wedding. But I’m tired. And I’m lost. And my roots are floundering and spinning, out of the ground.

  Chapter 4

  At Grandma’s place, for three days, I find out that I only want to sleep.

  And sleep.

  And sleep some more.

  When she puts her head around the door, on the third morning, I hardly know what time it is but the cracks of light around the window blind are bright, and the room seems warm. She’s saying something, but I can’t hear it, so I rummage for my hearing aid and turn it on.

  “Sorry, what?” I hold my head up, so I can see her face.

  “I said, are you getting up today?”

  “Did I sleep in again?”

  “It’s past 12.” She looks at her watch. “Gabby came by with her mum about 10-ish, but I told them to come back later.”

  I drop back onto my pillow. “Sorry. I just couldn’t open my eyes. I tried a few times, but my eyelids were too strong for me.”

  “Do you want lunch?”

  My brain tosses it up. Lunch or sleep? Sleep or lunch? But when I look at Grandma’s face, I realise it’s not a choice. I’ll be getting up.

  We eat at the kitchen bench, just the two of us, quietly. Me and Grandma, and the best ham and salad sandwich I’ve ever had.

  “It’s good,” I say.

  She looks at me, in her Grandma way. “Are you alright? I mean, with all the not getting out of bed until the crack of noon.”

  I take a second to think about it. “I’m just tired.” As if they’re on automatic, my shoulders drop. “Like, really tired.”

  “Is it the wedding?”

  I ponder this between chews. Grandma put beetroot in with the salad, which I’ve never really liked before, but today, it seems just right, and it’s even helping me think. Is the tiredness just from the wedding? Maybe a bit. But not all of it. I’ve been tired since, I don’t know. Maybe even since Year 8 began?

  “It’s more than just the wedding.”

  She takes a bite of her sandwich, swallows and then has a sip of water.

  “Are you sick?”

  I shake my head, and then I realise something. “It’s people, I think.”

  “Sick of people?”

  “No, I mean, I get tired around people.” It’s hard to explain, but I’m suddenly aware that the house is so quiet, and we’re sitting so comfortably, just the two of us, and the fatigue that has hung over my head for the last six months seems to be less.

  A lot less.

  Grandma makes a face. “It’s hard to be a hermit, just run away and avoid people forever.” She nibbles at a bit of grated carrot that’s fallen out of her sandwich and onto the plate. “What is it that’s tiring about people?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. And I’m telling the truth. I really don’t know. All I know is that at school, in class, with friends, even at home, everything feels harder than it used to. I’m straining, and trying as hard as I can — but trying to do what, I’m not sure.

  “What time did Gabby say she’d come back?”

  Grandma looks at her watch. “About half past one.” She starts collecting plates. “You’d better get ready.”

  We head down to the beach again, Gabby and I, pulling the hoods of our jackets up over our ears, and digging our hands into our pockets. It’s the wind, mostly, although even without it, the air would probably still feel cold.

  She turns her head towards me and says something that looks like, “I’m freezing,” but I laugh at her. “We’re not even there yet.”

  She goes to answer me, but I shake my head at her and point at my ears. “I can’t hear a word. You’ll have to wait until we sit down.” When we find our spot and sit down again, I have to make sure I’m right next to her, looking at her face, so her words don’t get snatched out of her mouth and whisked away in the gusts of salt air.

  “This is weird,” she says.

  “I can’t hear you, otherwise,” I say.

  “We should have stayed inside.”

  “Maybe,” I say. “But the beach is so beautiful.” I gesture out at the sand and the surf and Gabby makes a face.

  “Still freezing.”

  “Just five more minutes.” I shut my eyes and stick my nose in the air, sniffing and breathing it all in, and then out again. I can feel the salt sweeping through my lungs, cleaning everything out. “Bleached at the beach,” Dad said once, and I didn’t understand what he meant until I did an experiment in Science last year, with a shirt that looked white, until we bleached it and I realised just how not white it was. Dad meant, you get scrubbed at the beach. Cleaned out. Totally brought back to basics.

  I need it today. I need the wind to sweep over and around me, and lift the tiredness off me, blow my energy back.

  There’s a tug at my jacket. Gabby is pulling my shoulder.

  I look back at her, to see her words. “Check them out. Crazy.”

  She nods forward, at a group of kids who have appeared on the sand. There are about five of them, two boys and three girls, it looks like. Teenagers, like us.

  “What do you mean—?” I start to say, and then I know what Gabby is talking about. I stop talking, lean forward and watch, with everything I have.

  They are normal kids, at least, as far as I can see. Jeans, hoodies, a jacket here and there. The girls have long hair, like Gabby and me. The tallest boy has a beanie on. But there is something very different about them as well.

  Every single one of them is using sign language.

  As they walk along, one of the girls taps on her friend’s shoulder. The friend turns to her, and she uses her hands to say something. Then her friend replies to her, again with signs. The boys are galloping wildly over the sand, wrestling and joking like I’ve seen so many boys do at school, but instead of yelling at each other, they sign back and forth.

  Gabby pulls at my sleeve again. “It looks so weird, don’t you think?”

  I make a face at her. “I know how to speak Auslan, too, you know.”

  “I know, but it’s not really speaking, is it? They’re just doing stuff with their hands. No words. It’s really different.”

  I don’t reply because the kids are close enough now that I can start to see what they’re signing to each other. I can get one or two signs, like pretty and then dumb but they’re going way too fast for me. I can sign, but it’s slow. These kids’ hands are flying.

  “Do you understand it?” Gabby’s voice cracks into my ear. I look at her to pick up her words. “Can you tell me what they’re saying? Maybe we can sit here and work out their whole conversation. That would be funny!”

  I shake my head and look back to the beach. “Not really.” My eyes are glued to the group of kids. They’re sitting down now, in a circle on the sand, still pushing each other and signi
ng crazy-fast and just being… happy.

  “Are you ready to go yet?” says Gabby. “I’m seriously getting freezing now. Like, my nose is going to fall off soon.” She shifts her bottom on the grass. “And my butt is getting numb.”

  “Not yet.” I shift forward a little. I’m still focusing everything I have on the five people in front of me, their smiles, their laughing and their friendship. Yes, they’re happy, but there’s something else about them. Something I recognise, but I can’t quite name. Something I definitely don’t have.

  “Numb butt,” says Gabby. “Must move,” but I brush her away. She gets up stiffly, making exaggerated old-person movements, and then I realise what the group of kids has that I don’t have. It’s not a word I ever use, but it pops into my head, and then out through my mouth, before I even know what it is I’m thinking.

  “Ease.”

  “What did you say?” says Gabby. “You have ears?”

  I turn to her in wonder. “Not ears. Ease. They have ease.”

  She looks at me like I’m crazy. “Wind’s getting inside your brain and making you rattle, I reckon. Let’s go. Mum made cake this morning and it’s not finished yet.”

  She pulls at my wrist, and I follow her, but it’s an unwilling follow, and my eyes are still caught on the group on the beach, as I walk up the path and until the bushes push their way into my vision.

  Even a piece of Gabby’s mum’s carrot cake, with walnut chunks and cream cheese icing doesn’t stop me thinking about what I’ve just seen. Gabby makes me bring my cake with me, up to her room, despite warnings from her mum about crumbs and bringing down plates when we’re finished, to which Gabby growls a ‘yes’ that sounds more like ‘stop bossing me’. We lie on her bed and look at her magazines and a few funny vines on her phone, but all I can see is five kids, happy together, with ease.

  The word doesn’t leave me. It means lightness and brightness rather than shadows and dark. It means quick dance steps, rather than lumbering awkwardness. It means a gentle, air-borne floating, rather than the relentless, crushing press of gravity and weight.

  They talk easily.

  “They talked easily,” I tell Grandma, almost as soon as I am home from Gabby’s, after sunset with three pieces of cake in me and no appetite for dinner. “They just knew how to speak to each other. They knew what to say. And it was so easy.” The word is back again.

  Grandma looks at me like she hasn’t quite seen me before. “Are you alright?”

  “Of course.” I shrug my shoulders.

  “Do you want tea?”

  “Of course.” I smile and shrug again.

  “You just seem so much more…” She lets her voice trail off a bit while she turns around to get the tea out of the cupboard. When she turns back, she says, “…enthusiastic. You’re alive, telling me about all this. You haven’t stopped talking about it since you got in. I haven’t seen you like this for ages.”

  I step over to the window and look out. The lights below are twinkling, but this time they seem hopeful. “I just never thought it could be like that,” I say. “Not for, you know —” I look back at Grandma, a bit embarrassed. “— People like me.”

  And then, right then, I know where the tiredness comes from, what it is, what it means.

  It’s not easy for me.

  Because I’m deaf.

  Chapter 5

  I’m tired because I’m deaf.

  The words come to me almost as if they are being signed to me, so clearly and slowly that I can just watch and understand. No straining, no trying, no guessing.

  It’s clear.

  Things have almost never been clear for me.

  My early years, I hardly remember. Dad told me once it was as if I was in my own world. I do remember the huge difference when I got my hearing aids. Suddenly I didn’t feel alone in a room of people any more. Everything was more alive. More intense.

  But I always preferred signing, and we did it at home, for some things, but not as much once I started school. “You need to get used to people talking to you,” Mum said. “At school, no one will sign. And I’m not that good at it anyway.”

  It was true. Dad was always more interested in learning Auslan. He took me to a class once, up in Sydney (“There’s not much in our area,” he told me) and sometimes helped me look up signs on the internet. We learned the sign for ‘poop’ pretty early on. He used it inappropriately and with a secret wink to me, whenever he could.

  “Did you ever learn any signs?” I ask Grandma. “I can’t remember it.”

  She shakes her head. “I tried, a little, when you were small. But I’d learn something and then forget it as quickly as I learned it. And then, well…” Her words stop, but I know what she means. She’s talking about the four years after my Dad died, when she didn’t see us anymore. “I didn’t really try after that,” she says.

  “I know,” I say. And I sign it too. I know. I understand. I wish…

  I wish.

  I wish, so much, that I had friends who signed.

  I wish, so much, that it had been me on the beach.

  “I wish it was easier.” The words pop out of my mouth, before I can stop them.

  Grandma perks her head up.

  “Easier?”

  I drop my head. This isn’t where I meant to go.

  “Easier where?” says Grandma. She’s not going to let up. She’s got that look in her eyes. She’s going to find out what I’m talking about, and I’m going to have to tell her.

  “At school,” I say, and then, “There’s so much talking now.”

  I hadn’t realised it until just now. But it’s true. Being put up to the top class in Year 8 has been hard. Harder than I thought it would be, when the Head of Academics called me in and asked me if I was up for it.

  “Yes, okay,” I’d said, nervous at being called into an office, even though I wasn’t in trouble. “If you think so, sure.”

  But it is hard. There’s more talking out the front, and more group work, and more, well, everything. All the time, I have to ask people to repeat what they say. I have to guess what the joke or the point is. I watch hard to read people’s lips, so I’m not mistaken about what’s going on.

  It’s nothing new, I think. It’s just there’s more of it now.

  “Talking?” asks Grandma. “Do you mean with your friends?”

  I move my shoulders around, trying to get comfortable. There’s a weight sitting on me; it’s awkward, and heavy.

  “In class, mostly,” I say, and I think. “But with friends too.

  When Gabby and her big booming voice disappeared from school, and the whole of our group was in tatters after the Liam and Angela incident, I was left with the twins, Olivia and Caitlin. They’re quiet, and they talk quickly and finish each other’s sentences. And now we hang with a different group, with more people around, throwing in their words, as though anybody could catch them.

  I can’t catch them. Not always.

  And it’s exhausting.

  “But is it worse than it used to be?” Grandma’s still on the prowl for information. “What’s changed, really?”

  I put my head up and stare at her, and the last piece of my tiredness puzzle drops into place.

  What’s changed?

  Home has changed.

  If it was just school, I could cope.

  But home has changed too.

  It’s not just me and Mum, doing what we’ve always done, in our own space, and our own way. Now there’s Geoff, too. Another person in the mix. Another person who knows I’m hard of hearing, but doesn’t know, really, what that means, or how it changes anything. And, with everything new and wonderful in her life, maybe Mum has forgotten, or just never realised, how hard it is for me.

  “I get it,” I tell Grandma, and I smile, a big, ear to ear grin. She stares back at me, with a confused face, like you’re happy?

  I understand, I sign to her, and she looks even more confused. She puts her hands up, like she’s asking a questio
n. What? But I don’t worry about it. I don’t worry about answering. Instead, I pull the screen door wide and step out onto the verandah.

  Behind me, Grandma comes to the door. “Are you alright, Jazmine?” But I don’t answer her. I walk down the steps and onto the driveway, where I can see down the mountain, over the lights below. Far out in the dark sky, the moon is up, lighting the ocean: a deep grey, with silver streaks.

  I’m happy, because I’ve finally understood the problem.

  I’m happy, because I know it could be different. It could be easy.

  I’m happy, because I’ve finally realised: I don’t belong. I’ve never belonged. I’ve never wanted to admit it, because then I’d be saying I don’t have anywhere to go.

  But now I do have somewhere to go. Now I have an alternative. Now I know there are people like me.

  Grandma comes outside. She still has a slight limp from her accident last year; it only really shows up in the cold, though. She puts her arm around me. I reach over and hug her. And then I kiss her on the cheek. “I love you.”

  “I love you, too.” She shivers in the breeze. “Are you going to stay out here? Because you’re going to need a jacket.”

  I squeeze her tighter. “I’ll come in.” And together we walk up the steps, back into the house, where it’s warm, and snug. And easy. At least, a little bit, I think.

  “You could teach me some sign language, you know,” says Grandma.

  “Really?” I turn to her. “Would you?”

  She shrugs. “Sure. I’ll try to remember it.” She laughs. “Maybe if you teach the same thing to me every single day, I’ll get it by the time you’re ready to go home.”

  “Okay,” I say, and then my brain goes blank. I can’t think of any signs, now that I have to. “What do you want to say?”

  Grandma looks blank as well. “Just think of anything. I don’t know… something I say a lot maybe?”