My plan nearly makes me feel ill whenever I stop to think about it. Which, of course, I do, pretty much most of the next three days.
Mia, Gabby, Gabby, Mia. It all just swirls through my head.
I decide I’ll tell them.
Then I decide I won’t.
I think the better of it and start a text, but then I delete it again.
My brain is dizzy with the possibilities. My heart is in my mouth.
“Maybe do some deep breathing,” suggests Grandma. “You seem very stressed about it all. Can you let it go?”
I breathe in and out, like she shows me, and I practice visualising tight fists slowly opening up, and me blowing the tiny seed of worry out into the world, like I’d blow a dandelion, and it works for about four seconds before it all just comes back again.
“I’m just scared,” I tell her on the day, as we eat our breakfast on the deck, overlooking the view down the mountain.
“What’s the worst thing that could happen?” she asks. I smile at her. It’s one of her favourite questions; it’s called ‘imagining your worst-case scenario’, she told me last year when I was worried about Mum and Geoff getting married.
“The worst thing that could happen?” I repeat slowly. “The worst thing that could happen is I’m left with no friends at all.”
She ponders it for a moment. She’s eating a buttered crumpet with honey and drinking some kind of new tea that smells like cinnamon. “No friends at all would be bad - at least for a while.”
“What do you mean, for a while?”
“Well, I’m ninety-nine per cent sure that you aren’t going to be friendless for the rest of your life.”
“Why?” I ask, almost accusing.
“Because you’re a pretty nice person,” she says. She grins at me. “Maybe even as nice as me. And I’ve got friends. So I’m fairly confident you’ll find more friends if you lose these ones, even if it takes a couple of months.”
I make a face at her. But it’s an amused face. Because I haven’t thought of it like that before.
She keeps talking. “Anyway, to be honest? If these kids don’t want to be friends with you because of this, they probably aren’t the right people to be friends with anyway.” She sips her tea and I get a waft of cinnamon. “Would you dump someone if they did what you’re planning?”
“No,” I say. “Of course not.”
She shrugs. “So, pay them the compliment of assuming that they’re going to be at least as nice as you.”
I think of Charlotte and her implant, and I feel nervous inside. “It’s a bit more complicated than that,” I say.
“Is it?” says Grandma, and she looks out to the ocean. “Maybe you’re overthinking it.”
“Maybe,” I say, but I don’t think I am. Grownups think everything’s simpler than it really is, especially when it comes to friendships and fitting in. But it’s not simple. I don’t fit in to the hearing world very well, even though I’ve tried and tried, and pretended and pretended. Now I want to fit in to the deaf world. But if I can’t be myself, a girl who’s hard of hearing, with a best friend who’s hearing, then it’s just like pretending all over again.
My biggest fear is that I won’t fit anywhere. With anyone.
All I can do is wait, and hope, and try to calm my nerves.
And then turn up.
Grandma drops me off at the oval about half an hour before everything starts. I want to be there before anyone else arrives, so things don’t go too wrong. Or at least, more wrong.
The weather is overcast. After the bright, glorious days we’ve had all week, it almost looks like it’s going to rain, with clouds above us, and the sun a dim lightbulb pushing its way through the grey. I’m dressed for touch footy, in runners, shorts, and a purple t-shirt I bought with Grandma at the sports store two days ago. “It’ll make you go faster,” she said, and I laughed, then. Now I don’t feel like laughing.
I’m hardly worried about the game. It’s what could happen when everyone gets here, that I’m concerned about, and soon my countdown begins. I take off my hearing aids and put them away. One in my bag, one in my pocket, so I’m prepared.
Freya arrives first. I give her a hug and she bounces up and down. “Yay, you’re here already,” she signs. “Ready to play footy? I can’t wait.”
Truck and Nick turn up soon after, dropped off by Truck’s dad in a van. Truck grins at me and doesn’t stop. It’s like there’s a switch for his smile that he can’t turn off. ‘Hey, Jazmine,’ he signs, and then he kind of runs out of things to say. I smile back at him and I have to remember to turn off my own switch.
Nick waves a hello at me between texts. If I wanted more than that I’d probably have to message him to get him to respond. I’m certain his mum has to use social media to him to tell him dinner’s ready.
‘Mia’s coming, right?’ Freya asks.
‘She’d better be,’ says Nick. ‘Our team needs her.’
‘Charlotte coming?’ I ask, and Freya gives me a look.
‘Can you imagine if she did?’
I start a response but her attention is gone. ‘Oh, here’s Mia. Awesome.’
Mia makes her way through the group of milling kids. She’s carrying a water bottle and wearing things I’ve never seen her wear before: runners instead of her black lace up boots, shorts instead of her black skinny jeans, and a t-shirt which is totally awesome. I can hardly take my eyes off it. It has a whole bunch of hands making Auslan signs on the front.
‘That’s such a cool shirt,’ I sign. And I mean it. I seriously want one, although probably not in black. ‘Where did you get it?’
‘Internet,’ signs Mia. ‘I think I’m going to make some myself, start a website and sell them.’
‘You totally should,’ signs Freya. ‘That is such a cool idea.’ She gives Mia a hug, and so do the boys. I wait until Mia comes to me to hug me; I’m still not quite sure if we’re at the hugging stage of our friendship, but she comes over and gives me one. I feel so happy to be included as part of everything that my smile switch goes back on. I hug her back and my stomach takes a twist. Maybe we won’t be on hugging terms any more after today is over.
I feel suddenly sick. I want to get to my phone, and send a text that can stop everything that’s going to happen right now, but it’s too late.
Because Gabby is already here.
I see her car arrive, and the passenger side door open, and Gabby get out, and my heart sinks. I can almost feel my face go white. I’m regretting this before it’s even begun. But I’m going to have to go through with it now.
Gabby’s standing on the footpath, eyes searching through the group of kids. I can tell she’s nervous; she’s doing a twisting thing with her hair that she only does when she’s feeling a bit strange. She catches my eye and gives a great big wave, and I see relief in her face. I smile, even though I’m terrified, because I can’t help smiling when I see Gabby.
‘Who’s that?’ signs Freya. ‘Do you know her?’
I nod, and walk over towards Gabby, who hops the fence and comes jogging over to me.
“Hey, Jaz,” she says, and she starts to talk. I catch the word ‘earplug’ and I can see she’s asking a question, but I shake my head quickly, like don’t even talk about that. Then I dig in my pocket, pull out a hearing aid and put it in.
“I was saying, should I use the earplugs?” says Gabby, and I give her a quick no. She shrugs. “Okay. You know best.”
I take her over to my friends. My heart is pounding, and my stomach’s doing twirls.
“This is my friend, Gabby,” I sign. “She lives in town, so I invited her to be on our team.”
I look at Gabby, and she smiles cheerfully and raises her hand like in a wave.
There’s no great, terrible reaction.
The sky doesn’t break apart. The rain doesn’t start. I don’t fall into an abyss that opens up at my feet.
Basically, Mia looks okay about it.
‘Deaf?’ she asks me.
“Hi,” says Gabby, and Mia’s face turns into stone.
The cracks for the abyss start to form.
I have to explain myself, despite wanting to vomit with fear, so I do. I take a deep breath, and smile nicely.
‘Gabby’s hearing, but she wants to find out what it’s like to be deaf, so she understands me better,’ I sign. I add, a little lamely, ‘We’ve been friends for a long time.’
There’s a sudden, total, stillness in front of me. A little like everyone has frozen in time and I’m the only one left moving and conscious. For a whole second it feels like I might be the only one left alive, all on my own, for the rest of my life. And then things click back into life, and Mia turns to Truck, her back to me, and totally starts a whole other conversation. As if what just happened, didn’t really happen at all.
On the back of her t-shirt, it says ‘I speak Auslan. What’s your superpower?’
Gabby raises her eyebrows, and I’m mortified. For a second I look at Mia’s back, and the way she’s moved Truck and Nick away with her, and then I’m brought back to the moment by Freya who taps me on the arm.
‘Don’t worry,’ she signs to me. Then she speaks to Gabby, and signs at the same time. “Hello.”
To my absolute surprise, Gabby signs back to her. ‘Hello.’
Freya turns to me with a grin, like, I didn’t expect that, and I grin at Gabby, like, I didn’t expect that either.
“Did you think I’d turn up not knowing how to say anything?” she says. “Sorry,” she says to Freya. “I don’t know the signs for that. My superpower is still in the beginning stages.” She says to me: “Can you interpret?”
I interpret it for Freya, and she smiles at me and shrugs. ‘She’s cool.’ She looks over to Mia. ‘Don’t worry about her,’ she says. ‘She’ll come around.’
‘Do you think she will?’ I sign.
“What?” says Gabby. “I don’t understand.”
“Sorry,” I say to Gabby, and I sign for Freya at the same time. ‘Just talking about Mia. She’s nice. She just takes time.’ I nod at her, like, please believe me, and she shrugs.
“I guess I’m a bit unexpected.”
“I guess so,” I say. “I’m sorry.”
In reply she hangs her arm around my shoulder. “So, we gonna win this game?”
I translate it for Freya and she laughs. “Are you any good?” she says to Gabby.
In reply, Gabby makes a big thumbs-up. “I know that one,” she says. “I can do two signs. ‘Hello’ and ‘good’. Just the whole of the rest of the English language to go.”
And inside, I feel warm.