Knowing Richa’s secret makes me feel special and over the next few days we get even closer. She doesn’t feel temporary anymore, not now she’s trusted in me. It’s amazing to think that I have a real friend, that I have Richa.
Richa doesn’t talk about her secret again, but as we dance, or bounce on trampolines, or go with Brianne on night-time dog walks with Patch, or watch Gaggle Gangs, I’m always thinking about it and how I might help.
I can look right into Richa’s eyes whenever I want now. It’s a big deal for me. Usually I spend a lot of time looking down at people’s shoes. This is not so bad in the winter, but because of the heatwave, I’m seeing a lot of bare feet. Toes are often bulgy or disfigured and sometimes very hairy. They’re not nearly as pretty to look at as eyes are. I suppose toes aren’t as scary as eyes, at least, not in the same way.
Every day either Brianne or Ryan walks us in and out of Just Jive. Tiffany has still not been back, but Scarlett and Maryam have stayed. We pretty much keep out of each other’s way.
Nodding and shaking my head to almost anything Richa asks me is easy now. She has learned to ask me questions that only need a yes or no answer.
Richa comes over most days after Just Jive and today she is looking around at our bookshelves in the kitchen, while I get us an ice-pop each from the freezer. I want to know what colour she likes best, so I show her the strip and she points to the blue one. I smile because I’d guessed she’d pick that one. I snip off the bubble-gum one for Richa and a strawberry one for me.
Richa says, ‘I knew the red ice-pops were your favourite.’
I want to ask why, but I don’t need to because she says, ‘That white T-shirt you wear a lot? The one with Legsie from Gaggle Gangs on the front? It has a big red stain on the chest. Definitely an ice-pop stain, I thought. See, if I don’t make it to becoming DogGirl, I’ve got a back-up plan. I can train as a police detective.’
She’s right, the T-shirt does have a red ice-pop stain on it. This is not how I knew she liked blue best. Mine was a guess, but being right is more proof that we’re good friends.
Richa goes back to looking at the shelves. They’ve just been cleaned and the furniture polish smells nice.
‘You’ve got a lot of books in your house,’ Richa says.
I nod and suck at my lolly, reading the titles as I stand alongside her.
‘Is it you who does all the reading?’
I nod.
‘Anyone else? Not Ryan?’
I shake my head. Ryan only reads magazines about how to make your muscles big. He works in the gym as a fitness instructor. We share a bedroom and I’ve seen him flex his arm muscles in the mirror and kiss them loads of times. He calls them ‘my babies’.
‘Your mum?’
I shake my head again. Mum sometimes takes books out of the library or borrows them from friends. Not many of the books in the house are hers. Mum says she doesn’t have enough time to go to the loo, let alone read a book. She likes singing along to music. Mum has a record player and loads of records. We play records all the time. She sings and Ryan and I dance.
‘Brianne, then?’
I nod. Loads of Brianne’s books are about physics. She’s got a whole shelf about the cosmos, but what she’s really into is forces. It’s why she got excited about the vortex from the revolving door.
Richa runs her finger down the hardback spine of A History of Lise Meitner, Brianne’s heroine, and says, ‘Have you got any easy ones?’
I nod again, very quickly this time, and tug at her arm to follow me. This is what I’ve been waiting for – a way to help with Richa’s secret.
On my side of the bedroom there’s three long shelves. The bottom two are full of books. Almost half of them are picture books.
At Lakeside Primary we have a colour reading scheme. As you get better you move up though the colours and the books get more difficult. Everyone is always keen to get up to silver and gold. They can’t wait to forget that purple or yellow books ever even existed. Everyone that is, except me. It’s another way that I’m different from all the other kids in my class. I passed gold level in year three. I can’t read out loud, because of my SM, but my reading level is tested using comprehension questions. This means I’m a ‘free reader’ and can choose any book from the library I want. Sometimes I choose thick books with small, difficult words, but sometimes I pick an early reader with letters as big as my fingers and bright, colourful pictures. I don’t think of reading as always marching forward. To me, it’s a bit like swimming. Just because you can swim up and down in the deep end, it doesn’t stop you from wanting to jump around in the shallow end too.
With Richa, I scan my books, and find the one I want to share.
Brianne says everyone has a book that turns them into a reader. They may not remember their book, but I remember mine: Bronco.
It’s about a horse: a colt who doesn’t want to do what the other colts are doing – bucking and chasing one another. Bronco wants to graze quietly by himself and think. Richa looks at the yellow cover and the picture of Bronco. She feels the book and turns it over in her hands, then opens it up.
It’s an old book, written a long time ago. It has simple, black-and-white pictures and big words. Not all the words are easy, but it’s a simple story. Brianne got it for me from a charity bookshop when I was very small, saying they’d told her it had come all the way from America and was very rare. Brianne used to read it to me and I followed the words. That’s the way most children learn to read. The words are on one page, the picture on the other.
Richa turns the pages.
We are not most children. Richa can’t ask me to read it out loud to her and she can’t read it herself. Instead, we sit side by side, with Patch, quietly turning the pages and looking at the pictures.
People often rush to fill the quiet with words, but I like it. There’s something gentle about the quiet; it’s like the air is holding me.
As I read the familiar words inside my head I’m thinking and thinking about how we could make it work.
I want so much to help Richa to learn to read. She has given me everything and I want to give her something back. I wish I knew how.