Being Jazmine (Invisible Series Book 3)

by Cecily Anne Paterson

  “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.”

  Chapter 8

  It’s an Auslan camp.

  Like, sign language.

  Mum’s quiet, and Geoff’s making a focused face towards the tablecloth, as if he doesn’t know how to handle this, like he didn’t sign up for this extra complication.

  I can hardly breathe. When I read the text from Grandma I was excited, but now that I’ve said it out loud, the possibility of being with other kids — kids like me — is literally taking my breath away. I have to concentrate to breathe. In, out. In, out. Put air in lungs. No point dying of excitement before I even get to go. Inside my stomach, it feels like there’s a small, bouncy, rubber ball, boinging around, all crazy-fast and manic.

  “So that’s cool, then? About the camp?” I deliberately don’t say the words I know Mum doesn’t want to hear. Deaf. Camp for deaf kids. Hard of hearing. I know, instinctively, that Mum won’t react well to them. She’s always had particular ways of speaking. She’ll talk about my hearing aids, but as far as I can remember, it’s always been ‘Jazmine’s difficulty’, or ‘your little challenge’. She won’t say it straight out: ‘Jazmine’s deaf.’

  “An Auslan camp,” says Mum. She looks up at me. There’s confusion in her face. “Really? But you’re not…”

  “I speak Auslan,” I say, hotly. I sign the words as I say them. “We both do.”

  “Not very much.” Mum’s hands stay on the table. No signing back to me. “I mean, we went to that course when you were little, but we haven’t done any since. It’s just beginner stuff, really. Just for fun.”

  Geoff brings his face into the conversation. “You hear really well, don’t you? At least, it seems like you do. It’s not as if you think of yourself… like that.” There’s a gap before he says the last words. He shifts a little, seeming uncomfortable.

  The bouncy ball in my stomach turns to dried up, perished rubber, and starts to crack and break apart. I can’t breathe, again, but it’s not because of excitement this time.

  “I, just…” I can’t get my words out. “I really want to…” My mouth is dry, but I go on anyway. “I have to go to this camp.” As I say the words, I push my chair out hard, and stand up, my hands clinging to the table. “You have to let me.”

  “Sit down, Jaz,” begins Mum. She throws Geoff a glance, like she’s embarrassed, but he shakes his head at her, like, it’s alright.

  I sit down and try to calm myself. Being reasonable will help my cause. “Sorry,” I say to them both. “I guess, I’m just feeling really keen.” I pull up a smile from somewhere. “I just want to try it out.” I grin at them. “I mean, at the worst, it would be really educational, right? Like learning another language or something.”

  Mum shrugs, like she’s giving up. She throws her hands in the air. “I suppose so. If you want to.”

  “How much is it?” asks Geoff. “Do we pay through the school?”

  I sit up straight, shocked. “Oh no. Grandma said she’d pay for it.”

  “Really?” says Mum. “I don’t think so. That’s too much to ask of your grandmother.”

  “No, definitely. She said it in the text.” I know Mum can’t afford a three-day camp, even if it is through the school, and I don’t want Geoff to pay. “She wants to.”

  Mum’s face isn’t happy, but I ignore it. “I’ll get the forms tomorrow, then. From the office.”

  “Okay,” she says. She’s not smiling.

  “Great,” I say. And I am.

  The forms are more complicated that I expect. First I have to convince the woman behind the desk in the office to search for them. She’s reluctant, but when I don’t move from my spot, leaning over the counter, peering over onto her workspace, eventually she finds them, somewhere on a Department of Education website. Then she has to print them out, and get them filled in.

  “The Inclusion support teacher has to see this,” she tells me, without a smile on her face. “And the Principal has to sign it.”

  “Who’s that?” I ask. “The Inclusion person, I mean.”

  She gives me another look. “I’ll have to look it up.”

  She looks it up.

  It’s Miss Fraser. I breathe a sigh of relief, and then worry. “But she does drama.”

  “Not just drama.” The office woman still isn’t my friend, I can tell, but I don’t mind.

  “I’ll find her, if you like.”

  I take the printouts and head on a quest for Miss Fraser. She’s easy to find, and she’s happy to sign and she even says she’ll apply for some funding for me, if I want.

  “Can you do that?” I ask.

  “I can try,” she says, filling in boxes on the page. “Has no one ever done that for you before?”

  I shrug. “Don’t think so.”

  “What about things like seeing the support teacher? Getting help in class if you need it?”

  I shrug again. “But I don’t need it, do I?” I’ve never thought of this before.

  She looks at me intently. “Not even a little? Maybe sometimes? Do you hear everything?”

  “You never asked me this stuff in year seven,” I say. And then I’m embarrassed, because I think I sound rude. “I mean, sorry.”

  “No, it’s okay.” She puts her pen down. “I didn’t have this job before.”

  “How long do you think it’ll take the Principal to sign?” I ask. “Will I be able to go to the camp?”

  She nods and looks straight at me again. “Absolutely.”

  After that, all I have to do is wait. For the weekend of the fourteenth. For the camp.

  I wait, with impatience, excitement, and a constant feeling of flickering and fluttering in my belly. It’s nerves, I’m sure. Something I didn’t think about when I was begging Mum at the table. It’s a miracle she didn’t bring that up as a reason for me not to go. “But Jaz, you know you hate meeting new people. You know you don’t do social occasions well. You know you nearly threw up with fear before Gabby’s birthday party that time.”

  I forgot about my nerves. And now, while I’m waiting, there are so many of them. It’s like all my nervous terrors got on the phone and invited all their friends and family to come and stay. At night, my head feels cramped and my stomach churns. I can hardly get to sleep, and when I do, it’s dreams, non-stop. Me, going to camp, and everyone laughing and pointing. Me, turning up at camp without any clothes in my bag. Oops. Me, opening my mouth
at camp and having all my teeth fall out of my mouth.

  Just nerves. Nothing else, I tell myself, and I make myself breathe deeply and relax, but they don’t really go. Where else could they go? I feel stupid, but I can’t tell Mum about them, or she’ll go straight into ‘I told you so’ mode. I’m going to have to deal with these fears myself because if I back out now, Mum’ll never take me seriously again.

  She’s certainly not talking to me about the camp, that’s for sure. Our weeks are filled with packing (I truly never believed that the stuff from two people in one tiny house could fill so many boxes), moving stuff around, and cleaning out cupboards. I don’t know if she’s forgotten about the camp, or if she’s just filling up the space between us. “Do you want to take that? Or shall we donate it? Is there anything from this cupboard that needs to go? How are you going to transport the plants from your garden?” Either way, I’m doing what I need to do: cleaning out, and moving on. Staying focused on the task keeps my mind off the fact that I’m also feeling sad about our house.

  “It’s cute, don’t you think?” I say to Geoff, the night before everything happens — they move, and I go to camp, and we all never come back here. I gesture around the lounge room, and out into the hallway, which has a pile of boxes stacked up against the wall. “I mean, the ceiling, right? When I saw that, I thought it was the most adorable house I’d ever lived in.”

  He looks out the door, and up at the hallway ceiling. It’s a plaster design of vines and leaves, all the way along, through to the kitchen. Someone, years ago, spent what must have been hours, hand painting every vine, every grape, every flower in bright greens, pinks and blues. “That’s a lot of work,” he says. “Shame it’s peeling off. The whole thing will probably need to be redone.”

  “Oh,” I say. And I feel sad.

  “I love the open feel of the new place,” says Mum. There’s a smile on her face. A broad one. She hasn’t been able to stop smiling all week. “So much glass and all those windows. No poky little corridors. Don’t you think so, Jaz?”

  “Oh,” I say. “I guess so.” I look around me, at the brown, old carpet, the peeling paint on the walls, and the doors that leave gaps for cold air to get through, when you shut them. It’s an ugly-cute house. Maybe it’s just ugly. Maybe the cute part comes from my own head. Maybe it’s from the times Mum and I laughed — and then cried together. Maybe it’s from the things I’ve learned, and done, and smiled at. Or maybe it is actually cute, in its own way.

  Either way, I’m going to miss it.

  In the morning, there’s no time to think about any of it. I scramble up, pull the sheets off my bed and stuff them in a box so that the removalists can take them in the truck. I check the stuff I’ve packed for camp, according to the list with the cheerful welcome email I was sent last week by a woman called Kathy. I’ve checked and re-checked it all. Toothbrush, deodorant, clean undies, changes of clothes. Mum’s bracelet, shoved into the side pocket of my bag. I’ve never been on camp before. I have no idea what it’s like.

  The final thing I do is go outside. It’s the last time I’m going to see my garden. When I come back, it won’t be to here. It’ll be to the new house, and its massive backyard that’s nothing like this little patch. I know every square centimetre of this area. I’ve dug everything there is to dig out. I’ve planted everything you could plant. Under my toe I can still kick the cracked concrete paths, but you hardly notice them now, with all the green of the growing things.

  “Good bye,” I whisper to it. To my own little garden, that I have made, that I’ve looked after, that I have loved. “I’ll never forget you.”

  And then Grandma arrives: not only did she find out about the camp (“I’ve got internet research skills too,” she said, in a mock-huff, when I asked her how) but she’s also picking me up and driving me there, even though she’s had to get out of bed at 5am to do it. “Thanks so much,” Mum says to her. “I really appreciate it. And the paying for it too…” Her voice drifts off.

  “Yes, thank you,” says Geoff, booming across the table. When he’s finished his coffee, he has energy in the mornings. “We would have brought her down…”

  “You’re moving,” says Grandma. “I’m very happy to come and get her.”

  I pick up my bag, hug Mum, and wave at Geoff. “Hope it goes well.”

  “You too,” says Mum, but her face doesn’t agree with her words. She still looks worried, like she doesn’t know what’s going to happen.

  I don’t know what’s going to happen either. I’m worried too, but I’m mostly happy.

  I have this crazy feeling that somehow I’m meant to be at this camp.

  Chapter 9

  The camp is three hours’ drive away, and when we get close we find out it’s off the main road, down through the bush, towards a river. The road is windy and steep, and made from gravel, and the first time through, Grandma misses the turnoff.

  “I’ve gone too far, I think,” she says, after the road gets more narrow than we think it should. “I’ll turn around.” She makes an awkward u-turn, nearly backing off the road into the ditch. I turn towards the back of the car, nervously looking out for cars coming the other way.

  “It must be somewhere up here,” she says. “The instructions said to turn off five kilometres after the town.”

  “It’s there!” I point. The sign for the campsite is hiding behind an overgrown shrub, easier to see when you’re coming back the other way.

  “Oh, good,” says Grandma. “I knew it seemed wrong.” She smiles over at me. “You’ll be there soon.”

  I’ve been happy the whole trip down here, and now I’m not. Now I’m looking for all the reasons I can find to get Grandma to turn around and take me back. But even if I could find the reasons, I wouldn’t be able to use my voice. There’s a glob of quivering fear stuck inside my chest, and it’s clogging up my throat.

  The heavy bushland turns into wide open green fields, and the road becomes bitumen again. In the distance, a series of buildings emerge, at the top of a hill. There’s a green slope stretching from the biggest building down to a pontoon by the river. My breathing gets faster.

  It looks beautiful. And terrible, too.

  Argh. What am I doing?

  Grandma slows down as we get closer to the site, and pulls in to a parking bay. Down the hill slightly, two big buildings stand side by side, with a big concrete open area between them. The view is incredible, but I can’t focus on that right now. My attention is taken up by one thing: kids.

  There are lots of them. Twenty, maybe thirty? They’re milling around together, looking at the view, standing in groups, chatting. Or, should I say, signing. My stomach feels like it’s trying to nip me. Or gnaw on me.

  I hate fear.

  “Shall I come down with you?” Grandma’s voice sounds in my ear. “Do you want some help?”

  I shake my head. I’ve already decided I want to do all of this on my own. If I can’t handle it from the beginning, I can’t handle it at all, I told myself yesterday. I have to be able to handle it, right?

  I kiss her cheek. “I’ll be okay,” and then I move, quickly, so she can’t take over or try to get out, grabbing my small suitcase and stuffing my pillow and sleeping bag under my arm. “I’ll see you.”

  Grandma looks worried, even though she’s trying to hide it. I can tell. It’s the way she’s gripping the steering wheel, tighter than she needs to. “In three days, okay?”

  “Three days,” I say, back to her, and then I take in a breath, hold up my head, and walk, away from the car, down to the buildings, the concrete, the view, and the kids.

  I’m going to camp.

  I can handle it.

  There’s a table, positioned halfway along the concrete breezeway. It has papers on it, and other official looking stuff: I can see nametags, and there’s a woman sitting behind it. As I walk towards it, the milling kids are turning to look at me - staring at me - which is weird enough to make me take in a breath, hold my chin up,
and ignore them entirely.

  Head for the table, Jaz.

  The woman stands up when she sees me. Her smile is big - like the rest of her. She’s got big, frizzy, red hair, big jewellery, big, bright clothes on a big body. But she looks kind.

  “Jazmine?” She holds out her hand towards me.

  “Yes?” I say. “How do you know?”

  She laughs. A big laugh. “We’ve only got two new kids this year, and you’re the only new girl.” She says the words with her voice, and she signs them at the same time. I’m transfixed. The words I can hear, I can also see. And they’re not just short phrases, here and there stuff, like Mum does when she signs.

  “Auslan?” I ask, with my voice, and my hands. ‘Auslan?’

  ‘I didn’t know what you’d prefer,’ she signs. ‘Sometimes kids want to use both, or just one. It depends.’ She gestures around at the young people around us. ‘With this group, it’s mostly signing. Even if they don’t use it all the time at home, at camp it’s easy.’

  She uses her whole body, and her facial expressions are all part of it. Mum and I have only ever done a more subdued kind of signing. Plus, her hands are fast. Almost too fast for me, with her signs coming so quickly one after the other that my head feels flooded. I screw up my nose just so I can get some thinking space.

  ‘I’m trying…’ I sign, slowly. ‘Practice. It’s not easy. But I want to.’

  “I understand,” she says with her voice, and then with her hands, ‘A bit at a time. You’ll get better quicker than you think. I’m Shannon.’ She points to her badge, and does the finger spelling for her name. ‘If you need anything, come to me, okay? I’m here to help. And now I’ll introduce you to some others. You’re in a good room.’

  I feel safe with Shannon, but still nervous as I follow along in her red and pink and purple wake, towards a blond girl with glasses.

  “This is Freya,” she says, and signs Freya’s name. ‘She’s in your room. Sign slowly, Freya, okay? Look after her.’ She elbows Freya in the ribs and makes her laugh, a nervous laugh, which gets more nervous when her blue and white striped t-shirt falls off her shoulder. She pulls it back on again and adjusts her glasses.