It’s not that I don’t like Gabby. I mean, she’s my best friend. It’s just… I hardly know. Something in me doesn’t want to talk to her. I’ve ignored her texts since I got home from camp.
It’s like the garden.
My plants have been sitting in a corner of the lawn for a few weeks now, since the move. But I haven’t done anything about them. It’s not that I don’t like them. It’s not even that I don’t want to set up a new garden. It’s just that something’s changed.
I don’t feel like Jazmine the gardener anymore.
I don’t feel like Jazmine who wants to giggle with Gabby any more.
And I don’t know why.
In three weeks it’s the holidays and once again, I’m going to Grandma’s house. I asked if I could go and Mum and Geoff said a very fast yes, probably out of desperation to get me out of here. I can imagine them talking to each other:
“We need a break from her.”
“She’s getting worse.”
“We just need time to ourselves.”
I scratch my nose and realise, when a leather strap hits against my cheek, that I’m still wearing Mum’s bracelet. I haven’t taken it off since I got it out of the packing box. I look at it for a moment. It has so many memories of just Mum and me, and our years when it was just the two of us. Instead of feeling sad or wistful, I just feel annoyed.
Why didn’t she take me to deaf camps?
Why didn’t she keep doing Auslan courses with me?
Why didn’t she show me there were people like me out there?
What was she thinking?
I take off the bracelet and fling it towards my closet. It lands on a pile of jumpers and falls off, towards the wall. I narrow my eyes at it, and check my phone for messages but there’s nothing new.
Except a notification from Gabby. Again.
I open it.
JAZMINE!!! WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO CALL ME??? ARE YOU COMING FOR THE HOLIDAYS? TEXT ME. WHAT IS GOING ON?????
I close it.
There are four more messages from her, just from this morning, and at least 13 others that I haven’t opened in the last week.
I have a brief twinge of feeling bad - guilty, I guess, so I open her message again and press reply.
Hey, Gab.
Yes, coming for the holidays.
I pause for a moment on the delete button, but then I don’t delete it.
We should catch up.
Something in my finger presses ‘send’ super quickly before I can even argue with myself about whether to send it or not, and I sit, feeling a little bit dumb, waiting for the reply I know is coming in five seconds.
Okay, so three seconds.
My phone vibrates in my hand and the message pops up.
Ohmigosh, yay. So much yay. The whole two weeks? I have SO MUCH STUFF we can do. I’ll start making plans, ‘kay?
There’s a smile on my face, and then a distorted, confused feeling in my brain. I take the smile down and close the message without even replying to it. Later, I tell myself. There’s plenty of time.
And there is.
Honestly? I don’t think three weeks have ever gone more slowly. School is still not right for me. Miss Fraser hasn’t been able to organise the captioning for in class and Mia keeps messaging me to go back and insist.
You have to stand up for your rights, she texts. Otherwise, how can you get the same access as the other kids? If they don’t get you what you need, they’re deliberately pushing you down. You need to go in there and fight.
I’m still wearing my hearing aids at school because it would be impossible otherwise, but I’m tired, and no one really seems to understand what my new mission for help in the classroom is all about anyway.
“But you can hear,” says Olivia.
“Can’t you?” adds in Caitlin. “We always thought you could.”
They look at me like they’re trying to get it, but nothing I can say seems to make it clear for them.
“You’d have to be deaf to understand,” I end up saying, but it’s unsatisfying, because they don’t understand, and then I realise that’s the reason I don’t really want to see Gabby, either. Because she won’t understand. She can’t possibly. She’s hearing, from a hearing family, living in a hearing world. And I’m her token deaf friend, cute with my little hearing aids stuck in my ears. The sympathy friend. The one you take pity on.
I don’t want to be that friend.
But it looks like I’m not going to be able to get out of it.
Because Gabby has rung Grandma.
She tells me in the car trip down the coast to her place. I’ve put in my hearing aids, much to Mum’s relief - and annoyance.
PLEASE, wear them with Grandma, she wrote on the notepad yesterday, and I shrugged my shoulders like, maybe I would, maybe I wouldn’t. Mum’s nose twitched and she turned her face away from me. I thought about it overnight, but there was never really any question about whether or not I’d wear them. I put them in just before Grandma came, and when Mum kissed me goodbye before I got in the car, I saw her eyes move to my ears, checking, and I could see the half smile on her face, but also the anger in her eyes.
“Have a good time,” she said, and she emphasised the ‘good’, before turning away. Geoff waved at me. “See ya, Jaz.”
I wound down the window and waved back. “Two weeks.”
At the sound of my voice, Mum blinked hard and did something with her face which kind of looked like she was frustrated but couldn’t show it. I put the window up again and grinned at Grandma.
“This will be great.”
She smiled back at me. “Your friend called me.”
“Which friend?”
“Which friend?” She sounded half-teasing. “Gabby, of course. All keen to know when you were coming. She’s organised to do something with you… I wrote it down. Wednesday of next week, I think. She’s very keen. I can’t remember what it is, but she’s already bought the tickets. You’re to call her back as soon as possible.”
“What did you say?”
She glances at me, half-surprised. “What do you mean? I said Wednesday shouldn’t be a problem. We can make our plans around it, so we don’t clash.”
“Oh,” I say. “Okay, I guess.”
“Are you and Gabby having a fight?”
I shake my head. “No.”
“Has she done something wrong?”
“Uh uh.”
Grandma shrugs her shoulders. “Well, give her a call, okay?”
I call her. She’s all, “Yay, Jaz, you finally called me, hooray hooray,” and I’m all, “Yeah, cool, great,” trying to be enthusiastic so that Gabby won’t have her feelings hurt.
“So, Wednesday?” she says.
“What is it?” I ask.
“So exciting,” she says. “I can’t even tell you, it has to be a surprise, okay? You are going to love it, and I am going to love it.”
I laugh, despite myself. “Are you going to give me a clue?”
“Gosh dang you, Jazmine Crawford,” she says in mock exasperation. “Always looking for a clue. Okay. Just one though. Ready?”
“Ready.”
“My life is going to be complete,” she says. “That’s all. No more clues. My lips are sealed. Forever. I mean, until Wednesday, obvs. Oh, and I’ll get Mum to bring me around tomorrow morning as well.”
“Oh,” I say. “Okay.” Because I can’t really say anything else.
She arrives in the morning, bouncing and chortling her way into my room while Grandma stands at front door being polite to her mum. I follow her through the house because I always follow her, and then we sit on the bed together.
“So, how are things? And like, what is with you and not answering your messages anymore? Did your mum make you throw your phone away? You didn’t even reply when I told you about Leighton the Dreamboat who I’m like totally in love with.” She lies down on my bed like she’s lost in a dream, and then sits straight up again. “Plus, anyway, you didn’t tell me how that camp thing was.”
I take a breath, and open my mouth, but I’m so used to not talking now, to her or to anyone, that it’s hard to really get started.
“It was great,” I say. And then I get brave, and I use Auslan as well. “Really great. Maybe the best weekend of my life.”
She’s transfixed by my hands. “That’s so cute. It looks like you’re one of those deaf people on TV.”
I swallow and put my hands down. “We all used Auslan at camp.”
Her face gives me a confused Gabby look. “What, all the time?”
“All the time.” I smile, remembering it. “It was actually amazing.”
“But wouldn’t it just be weird?”
I look away from her for a second, and then I look back. “You know, you could learn it too. That camp was the best weekend of my life. If you learned Auslan, we could speak it together.”
“Why would I?” Gabby says, and gives me a blank look. “But anyway, Wednesday. I’ll come pick you up at 1, okay? It’s in the afternoon. It’s gonna be heaps cool.” She hugs herself with glee. “Like, really cool.”
I agree, because it’s tiring not to agree with Gabby.
But later that afternoon, I cancel.
Freya texts me to tell me that she and Mia will be in town in a couple of days’ time; they want to go shopping, and can I meet up with them to just hang out?
What day? I ask.
Wednesday, she texts back. In the afternoon.
I have a moment of hesitation, but it’s not a long moment, and I text back, Sure.
Immediately, there’s a rush of something in my chest. Guilt, I think. Or excitement. Or maybe both. Whatever it is, it makes my body unable to move. I sit paralyzed on my bed.
I have to tell Gabby, I think.
And it’s not going to be good.
It’s not good.
A storm of messages hits my phone, Gabby-style, one after the other.
Why can’t you come?
What are you doing?
You said you would.
I can’t believe it.
Can’t you meet them on another day?
Seriously, this is going to be the best thing ever. You are crazy to miss it.
I text her back because I’m too scared to call. I’m sorry, Gabby. It’s the only day they’ll be here. And I won’t see them again, maybe not until camp next year, if I don’t go.
She tries another tack. Get them to come earlier. I’ll come shopping with you all too and meet them. Then we can go to the surprise.
I wait a minute before I reply. I go to the bathroom, wash my hands in the sink and look at myself in the mirror. My hearing aids are poking out behind my hair, so I take them out and put them in my pocket. Now I’m myself. Now I can tell her what I need to say.
Gabby, my friends are deaf. You’re not. It’s too hard to have you both around together. It’s too different. You don’t get them, and they have to work too hard to understand you. I’m sorry. They can’t come another time. It just has to be this way.
I take a big breath in and click ‘send’.
There’s a wait. A long period of time.
I sit on my bed and hold my phone.
Inside, my heart is beating. My stomach feels tight.
And then there’s a message.
A long one.
For reals, Jaz, you’re dumping me for people you only just met? I wasn’t going to tell you because I knew it would be a huge surprise for you, but we were going to see the Beat Boys. On tour. I bought tickets for you and everything. Now I’m going to have to go on my own or find someone else. Great. Thanks so much! I should have figured it out: you’ve been ignoring me ever since you went on that stupid camp. I can’t believe I mean less to you than some people you just met.
Then there’s one more message.
I can’t believe you would do that to me.
And another.
I thought we were friends.
And then it’s done.
After that, she doesn’t call again.