A Quiet Kind of Thunder(7)
‘A jog,’ Tem promises. ‘You’ll barely even sweat.’
‘As tempting as that is,’ I say (I am not a runner), ‘I can’t. I’m at Dad’s.’
‘Oh,’ she says. ‘That came around fast.’
I smile. ‘The summer’s over for me. I moved my stuff in last night.’
Even though they are divorced and have both remarried since, my parents live in the same town, for my sake. This was an agreement they made years back so I could alternate living with them both but also not have to do anything annoying like move school or get three buses in the morning. They live on opposite sides of town – Windham is pretty much in the middle, which is useful – and I move between them. Since I started secondary school, I’ve stayed with Dad during term time and Mum during the holidays.
The main downside to all this, at least during term time, is that Tem lives a two-minute walk from my mother and a ten-minute drive from my dad, so it’s less easy for us to see each other.
‘I can still come over to you,’ Tem suggests. ‘I don’t mind.’
I shake my head. ‘Maybe this weekend, but not tonight. I’m pretty tired and I promised Dad I’d make dinner.’
She sighs. ‘Fine. But you’re just missing out on my company.’
‘Call me tonight, OK?’ I say. ‘It’ll be just like I’m there.’
She smirks. ‘Hearing your voice is weird enough, let alone if I can’t see you at the same time.’
I glare at her. ‘No mute jokes on my first day back! You promised!’
‘No, I didn’t. You asked and I made a joke about penguins.’
I roll my eyes. ‘You’re impossible.’
‘I’m wonderful.’ Tem throws open her arms and beams at me. She looks so ridiculous I have to laugh.
What I mean to say through all this is that however hard it is to be the girl who doesn’t talk, the girl who dithers in the corner then shrugs a reply, I have Tem. And if there’s only one person in the world I can talk to I’ll choose her every time.
The top five worst times to be mute
5) When you need the toilet
I am six years old and Tem is off school with suspected mumps (it will turn out to be the flu). I navigate my silent day alone, without my trusty interpreter, who pays as much attention to my needs as she does her own. Everything is fine until I realize I need to pee. I cannot say so. I can’t even lift my hand to gesture at the door. I sit, rigid, staring at my worksheet. I wet myself. ‘Ewwwwww!’ the class screams in delight.
4) When you’re bleeding
I’m eight years old. We’re on a school trip at a family farm. We’ve been divided into smaller groups – I’m a Giggly Goat, Tem is a Happy Hen. I catch my hand on a barbed-wire fence and rip an impressive hole from the pad of my thumb all the way across my palm. I try to figure out how to tell the staff member looking after us – Julie – without making too much of a fuss, and end up cradling my hand to my chest for the next twenty minutes until Julie cheerfully asks me what I’m hiding. I show her my hand – now a bloody, fleshy mess – and she screams, backs away and faints.
3) When you need a new pencil
Eleven years old. SATs. We are ten minutes into Maths Paper 1 and the end of my pencil snaps clean off and goes skittering across the floor. I know I am supposed to put my hand up and ask for a spare; I know my teacher, Miss Kapsalis, will give me another if I just ask. But it is not only my mouth that has frozen shut – my limbs have gone rigid, my wrists scratching the splintered ridge of my exam desk, the pencil in my clenched fist. I can’t even move. I sit, panicking, for twenty minutes until Miss Kapsalis, who is walking up and down the aisles of our desks to check for cheating, finally notices. She lets out a noise that is groan, gasp and horror all in one and drops to my side.
‘Steffi!’ she whispers, even though she’s not supposed to talk to us during the exam. ‘You need to answer the questions.’
I uncurl my fingers and the broken pencil drops on to the table. I’m given a new pencil with fifteen minutes to go. Needless to say, I don’t exactly come top of the class.
2) When you look a bit suspicious
Twelve years old. Tem and I are spending a Saturday afternoon together mooching around town. We’re in one of those bit-of-everything shops that sells clothes, twee gifts and cushions. Tem is trying on a vintage prom dress and I am standing in the corner, gazing at a shelf full of candles. The woman who owns the shop is suddenly at my side, asking me in a threateningly gentle voice what I think I am doing. I stare at her, confused and panicked in equal measure. What could have been a polite ‘I’m just browsing, thanks’ exchange turns into her getting increasingly irate and me getting more and more frozen. No amount of ardent head-shaking is enough for me to convince her I’m not stealing anything. She is threatening to call the police when Tem comes parading out of the changing room wearing a black-and-white polka dot dress, announcing, ‘Just tell me how beautiful I am!’ before she sees us both, clocks the situation in less than a second and hurries across the shop floor to smooth things over.
1) When your best friend needs you
Thirteen years old. I am in a stadium, watching Tem run the 800m final of the County Championships. She wins the race and is crackling with electricity and endorphins, leaping all over the track, hugging me, letting go, bouncing, cartwheeling. It’s the first county race she’s ever won. She’s just collected her medal and is standing in the crowd, beaming down at it. And that’s when a woman, the mother of one of Tem’s competitors, says to someone – to this day I don’t know who exactly she was talking to – ‘They shouldn’t let those ones compete; everyone knows their bodies make them faster. It’s not fair on our girls.’