For a while, everything goes back to normal.
I’m back at school. Up in the morning, getting dressed, packing my lunch, out the door with a kiss to Mum and a wave to Geoff, who are on their way to work. I’m on the bus, in the playground, working in class. Then back on the bus, back through the door, back in my room. Dinner, homework, out in the garden. Bed. Wake. And around it goes again.
And then, Miss Fraser turns up.
It’s been a whole year since I’ve seen her, since the play. Since she changed everything about me. And then she went on leave, and I’ve missed her every single day.
I see her first in the drama room, through a classroom window. My heart does a front flip of joy, but I have to hold it down. Olivia and Caitlin, on their way with me to the canteen to get a sandwich, might think I’m weird. Excited about seeing a teacher again. Really?
But then, I’m not really normal, right?
I run into Miss Fraser again in the H block corridor, leaving maths and heading to English.
“Jazmine.” She taps me on the shoulder. I swing around in surprise.
“Hello?”
“Hello,” she laughs. “How are you?”
I’m a mixture of confused and delighted, but I’m not telling her that. “Good, thanks.” I look down at her stomach. I thought maternity leave was supposed to make people fatter. She looks exactly the same as she did before. “Did you have the…?” I begin. “I mean, where’s the…” I stop in confusion and grin, because I know she won’t mind what I say. “Did you have a baby?”
“I did.” She digs in her bag and pulls out a phone. “A little boy. See?”
The picture of him is so gorgeous it makes me feel all gooey and melty. “So cute,” I tell her.
“I’m only back part-time,” she says. “Doing Year 7 and Year 10 drama. So I won’t have you in my class, unfortunately.” She makes a pretend sad face, but I know she actually is sad, so I feel warm inside.
“Are you doing any more plays?” If she is, I’ll try out for a part. I’ll even just turn up to practice and move boxes around if that’s what’s needed. Apart from my mum, Grandma and Gabby, Miss Fraser may just be my favourite person in the whole world.
“No time,” she says. “Plays take up all the extra hours on your weekend, and babies need time. I just can’t do it right now.” Around us the crowd of kids is thinning out. I need to be going to English, but I don’t want to go.
“Things all good with you?” Miss Fraser asks. “Going well?”
“My mum got married.” I blurt it out, like I’ve been holding it in for far too long. “And there were kids speaking Auslan on the beach.” I stop, confused. “I have to go, sorry. English. I’m going to be late.” And then I hoist my backpack up on my shoulder and walk away quickly. I’m embarrassed, with a sick feeling in my stomach. Not because of what I said, but because of the way I said it. Like I couldn’t stop, I just had to say those things. Like I would have burst if I didn’t.
In English, I quietly turn off my hearing aid. I sit at the back, write in my book, and pretend to look busy so the teacher won’t call on me. I’m missing class, even though I’m there, but I can’t help it. I just need to be quiet for a little while, before I turn everything on and have to start pretending to be me again.
At home, that afternoon, Mum has news.
“The date for settlement has come through,” she says, with a massive smile right across her face.
I look at her like she’s crazy. “Settlement?”
“The house!” She makes a face at me, like I’m the crazy one. “You know? The date we get to move into the new house.”
“Oh.” I try to smile. “That’s good, right?”
“It’s not good, it’s great.” She’s smiling so hard, it’s like she’s trying to make the corners of my mouth turn up just by sheer force of will. “We get to move. Finally.” She gestures around her, like she’s showing me our kitchen for the first time. “So much nicer than this.”
My eyes follow her hand. Our little green kitchen, with its simple white curtains at the window, paint scratched off the cupboard doors, lino coming up at the corners. I like this kitchen. It’s plain. It’s simple. It’s not… trying to be what it’s not.
The kitchen at the new house is bigger, that’s true. It has tiles. It has a bench top that’s cold, and hard, maybe some kind of stone? I don’t know. Mum loved it when we first had a look at the place. She gasped and cooed and held Geoff’s hand super tight. I smiled too, because I knew she’d want me to. And yes, it was beautiful. Of course it was.
It just wasn’t my kitchen.
“It’ll be lovely,” I said.
“I know, won’t it?” Mum buzzed around, finding things for tea and a piece of toast. “I’m so excited. So much more room. Your bedroom will be twice the size. And more storage! I might even get to set up the spare bedroom to do yoga.”
My mum has never done yoga in her life. Not that I’ve ever seen, anyway.
“And the garden! You’re going to love it.” She’s so enthusiastic. Words are pouring out of her mouth and her eyes are all bright. Almost as bright as when she looks at Geoff. “No need to try and make things grow out of concrete any more. And the space! So much room.” She stops and looks at me. “You could have anything you like. Vegetables. Shrubs. The whole nursery, if you want.”
I breathe in heavily and smile. “Great.”
Mum puts a piece of honey toast in front of me. “You must be hungry. Here.”
I put it up to my mouth, and I bite and chew, but I can’t really taste anything. The thought of moving is filling my stomach, coating my mouth.
More change.
More things to get used to.
All over again.
I eat half the toast, and then hold the plate out to Mum. “I’ll take it with me and finish it, okay?”
She nods. Fine. So I go to my room, and then out to my garden, where I pull sixty three separate weeds out, with more energy than the task really deserves. An hour later, I notice the half piece of toast still unfinished on my desk, next to my phone. And it’s then that I realise that I didn’t even find out about the main thing that Mum was so excited about.
I didn’t ask her the date of settlement.
I have no idea when we’re moving.
Out in the kitchen, I can hear the grumble of Geoff’s loud voice and deep muffled scrapes: chairs moving around. There are smells of deliciousness seeping in through the cracks around my door. Dinner time. I put my phone in my pocket and go to open the door, but something stops me.
A buzz, by my hip.
My phone.
I pull it out and look at it. A text. From Grandma.
A smile comes over my face, and I go back to my bed, to sit down and read it.
But I don’t sit. When I read her words, I jump up, and I keep jumping up and down while I read. And then I stand very still, nervous. Hardly daring to breathe, with terror and delight fighting each other in my chest.
I carefully put my hand on the door knob and open it. And then I go out to talk to Mum and Geoff.
Dinner is butter chicken, but not the kind that Mum used to make, straight out of a packet into the oven, with heated up frozen vegetables on the side, easy and quick. Butter chicken, the way Geoff makes it, is something different entirely. It fills the house with amazing smells, sizzles its way onto our plates, and makes our mouths happier than they’ve ever been before. Geoff makes salads, he makes dressings, he pours wine for Mum and sparkling water for me.
My appetite is back.
I wait until we’ve started eating before I talk about Grandma’s text. No point ruining the mood before I need to. Not that the mood has to be ruined, and not that I think it will be definitely ruined, but I feel nervous about what their reactions might be. Not just Geoff’s reaction either. It’s Mum’s reaction too.
I take a deep breath.
“So Grandma sent me a text just now.”
“That’s nice,” says Geoff. He gives me a big smile. Trying hard to be nice, I find myself thinking. Keeping things pleasant in the new family. I kick myself. That was mean. He is nice. And I appreciate that he’s trying.
“She told me about a camp, near her.”
Mum turned her head to me, eyebrows up. Interested. “Who’s it for? Is it like, an outdoors kind of thing?”
I keep my head low, face to my plate. “Teenagers. That’s all I know, really. I’d like to go.”
Mum shrugs, like, why not? She looks at Geoff with that adult question-answer face they do.
Do you think so?
I don’t see why it would be a problem.
“I think it would be great, sweetheart,” she says. “You know I’m always happy for you to get out and meet people. It’s nice to see you interested in things.” She wipes her mouth with her napkin. “Is there a website with the information? What are the dates?”
This is one of the parts I don’t want to tell her. I put my head down again, trying to avoid her eyes. “From a Thursday to Saturday. The fourteenth, I think.”
There’s a pause. I can’t see them, but I know Mum and Geoff are looking at each other again.
“The fourteenth of next month?”
“Uh huh.” I swallow. Mum doesn’t seem to be focusing on the part I was worried about: the fact that the camp means I have to take two days off school.
“But the fourteenth is the settlement date. That’s the day we move. We were just talking about it.” Mum’s voice is rising, with a tone of frustration.
I raise my head and see Geoff making calm down signs at her. Trying to keep the peace.
“It could still work,” he says. He shrugs, like it’s not as big a deal as Mum thinks. “I mean, we could move the week after, if we have to.”
Mum looks tight in the face, stressed out. She looks around her with despair. “I just want to get out of here. I don’t think I can stay here any longer than I have to.” Geoff reaches his hand out for hers, and she meets his eyes.
“We can move on the fourteenth,” he says. “And Jaz can go to her camp if you think it will be good. It’s no big deal. We’re getting removalists in anyway. She can just unpack her stuff when she’s back from the camp.”
Mum shoots him a thank you look, and then turns back to me, suspicious. She’s noticed the two days off school, I think.
“Why is it on two week days, in term time? You’d have to miss school.” she asks. “What kind of camp is this anyway?”
This is it. The second thing I didn’t want to have to say is going to come out.
Right here, right now.
“It’s over two days of school, because it’s run by the Department of Education,” I say. I pick up my glass and sip my mineral water. It fizzes in my nose. “It’s a school thing.”
Mum’s confused. At least, her face doesn’t look like my explanation has helped her at all. “So why isn’t it being organised through school? We haven’t had a note or anything. And how does Grandma have anything to do with it?” She picks up her fork. “It sounds like there’s something you’re leaving out of all of this?”
I put down my drink. “It’s a camp for teenagers,” I say. “Deaf teenagers.” I take a deep breath. “It’s an Auslan camp.”