When it gets to seven and I’m not out of bed, Mum comes into my room. ‘Time to get up, sleepyhead.’
I pull my blanket over me. ‘I’m feeling a bit sick. I don’t know if I can go to school today.’
She looks at me with narrowed eyes, as if she is scanning my body for evidence of the alleged sickness. It’s a skill she has developed after many years of me being the girl who cries sick when I want to avoid school. She doesn’t know anything about what happened with Mr Hill but she’ll probably figure it out.
‘Where are you feeling sick?’
‘My stomach.’
‘High or low?’
‘High.’
Mum walks over and places a hand on my forehead. ‘You don’t have a fever.’
‘I’ve been up half the night, feeling sick.’ Sleep deprivation alone usually wins Mum over. She’s a firm believer in ten hours of sleep.
‘I’m sick too,’ says Evie, appearing in the doorway.
‘No, you’re not,’ says Mum, pretending to be calm.
‘Yes, I am,’ says Evie, running into my room and jumping onto my bed. ‘If Piper doesn’t go to school, then I’m not going either.’
‘You’re going to school and that’s that.’
I’m not sure who Mum is talking to but I know that if Evie is staying home, there will be no Pretty Little Liars, only Frozen over and over. I’m better off taking my chances at school and saving Mum the headache.
I sit up and put on my healthiest expression. ‘You know what, I think I’m feeling better. Perhaps I’ll go to school. We all will.’
‘Are you sure?’ asks Mum.
I nod. Evie gives me her best impression of a cranky face. I tickle her until she collapses on her back, kicking her legs in the air. When she recovers from her laughter, she gets up and skips out of my room.
‘Are you sure?’ asks Mum again.
‘Yeah, I’ll be fine. It’s probably just nerves. Each day is still like the first day.’
‘You’re doing great, Piper. We’re so proud of you.’
I look away from her. This would be the perfect time to tell her about yesterday. I hate when my parents are proud of me when they shouldn’t be. But what’s worse is disappointing them. I’m surprised they didn’t get a phone call from the school.
‘Is it all right if I catch the bus?’ I say casually. It’s easier to catch the bus than sit in the car next to Mum and pretend I’m fine. I don’t mind catching the bus. Buses are one of the places you’re not expected to talk. Most people listen to their music or play on their phones or read a book. I’m going to have to start catching it eventually; it’s too much for Mum to drive to three different schools every morning.
‘Will you be all right?’ she says. ‘I can drive you for a few more days. It’s no problem.’
‘It’s okay, I want to catch the bus,’ I say.
‘I’ll drop you at the bus stop at least. Be ready in fifteen minutes.’
I spend most of the time choosing a book to read on the bus. I settle on The Great Gatsby. It’s my grandma’s copy. She brings me a book every time she visits from Victoria.
Just as I’m about to head downstairs, my laptop beeps with a Facebook notification. A girl from the UK, who is an active contributor to the group, has left a comment on my post.
I can’t see Mr Hill becoming my favourite teacher, but the comment does give me some hope.
The bus is supposed to arrive at 7.36, but it’s not on time. I’m already up to chapter three when the 799 finally pulls up. I close my book and show the bus driver my pass. I don’t need him to think I’m rude because I don’t speak and I’ve got my nose in a book. All he does is glance at it quickly and grunt. The irony.
My stop is one of the first along the route so the bus is pretty much empty. I take a seat near the front because the seats towards the back are always where the Royals sit, no matter which bus or which school. I can still picture Liam and the other Royals sitting on the back row. The image chills me.
We’re about halfway to school and I’m almost to the end of chapter five when a girl sits down next to me. ‘Hi,’ she says.
I give her a quick smile and go back to reading.
‘Hey, you’re the girl in my modern history class,’ she says, turning her whole body to face me. ‘I saw what happened yesterday with Mr Hill. He stepped way out of line. If it’s any consolation, he looked pretty guilty after you left.’
I nod.
‘I love your hair,’ she says. ‘You’re really pretty.’
I smile and feel myself blush. I wish I could return a compliment. Dr Rankmore suggested giving a compliment as a way to find something to say. The thing he never realised was that I always have plenty to say but the words just don’t come out. I can think of at least three things to compliment this girl on: her gold necklace, her glossy dark hair, her long eyelashes. I concentrate on the words, but there’s a knot in my throat. The harder I try, the tighter the knot gets. I feel my frustration building too.
‘My name is Tanvi,’ she says.
This is always the hard part. Sometimes I think it would be easier to wear a name tag. I open The Great Gatsby to the first page and point to an inscription written by my grandma. ‘Piper,’ she reads. ‘You don’t speak, do you?’
I shake my head.
‘I have a cousin who is five and doesn’t speak. He can speak but not to many people. Are you the same?’
I nod, suddenly feeling so much calmer now the truth is out of the way. She goes on to tell me all about her cousin and how he’s really good at playing the piano. Maybe I should pass on Dr Hayes’s contact to Tanvi. If her cousin gets the right help early, hopefully he won’t end up like me. When the bus arrives at school, I’m kind of disappointed the trip is over. I expect Tanvi to be gone when I get off the bus, but she is waiting for me on the footpath.
‘Come on, I’ll introduce you to my friends.’
There’s still at least thirty minutes until the homeroom bell. I consider my options. I could go to the library and read another couple of chapters or I could accept Tanvi’s offer. She’s not Cassie, but I don’t want another Cassie. I don’t want to have another best friend that I can disappoint or hurt, but maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to have a friend.
I nod. Yes, I can do this. I follow Tanvi to a quiet grassed area behind the science rooms. Her three friends are sitting on the ground. ‘Everyone, this is Piper,’ says Tanvi. ‘This is Jessica, Celia and Wai.’
I lift my hand and wave as they each say hi. We sit there and they talk about last night’s episode of The Bachelor, their English text, the formal at the end of the year. I listen and smile. They all talk so much that I wouldn’t be able to get a word in even if I could. They do occasionally ask me a question, like who do I think will win, but I get by answering with gestures. I’m sure Tanvi will fill them in later.
It’s when they start to talk about the university courses they are applying for that I start to feel uncomfortable. It’s not because I don’t know what I want to do. I’ve always wanted to be a journalist for some magazine like National Geographic.
I used to make my own magazines when I was eleven and twelve. I’d write articles and take photos to go with them and use up entire ink cartridges printing copies. I’d give them out to everyone in my class. It was my way of having a voice at a time when I still didn’t know what was wrong with me.
I’d love to study journalism at UTS and I’ll probably get the ATAR I need for the course, but none of that matters if I can’t speak to my lecturers or complete presentations. There probably are special provisions at uni for people like me, but the point is, I can’t go through life like this, always needing special provisions.
‘There’s still plenty of time,’ says Tanvi to Wai, who is stressing about whether she’s done enough extracurricular activities to apply for a scholarship.
I repeat her words in my head: there’s still plenty of time. A lot can happen.
The bell rings for homeroom and everyon
e grabs their stuff. ‘We’re here at lunch and recess,’ Tanvi says. ‘You can sit with us anytime, Piper.’
I smile at her gratefully and nod.
As I walk to my locker, I brace myself for the stares and whispers, but no one seems to notice me, other than one guy near my locker who smiles at me and says, ‘hey’. No one is talking about the incident in history or looking at me strangely. Maybe Dr Hayes was right. Maybe things seem bigger in my head.
Later that morning, my year coordinator pulls me out of maths. ‘Piper, I’m Mrs Diaz. It’s nice to meet you,’ she says in the hallway. ‘Let’s talk in my office.’ She doesn’t even flinch at her poor choice of words.
Her office is a bit like her appearance, neat and bland. There’s no crazy-shaped paperclip holder or even a pot plant. We sit down.
‘I heard about the incident in history yesterday,’ she begins, adjusting the front of her grey blazer. ‘Mr Hill passes on his deepest apologies. As a casual, he was unaware of your disorder.’
I nod and look down into my lap. I gathered that much myself.
‘Let’s first address your truanting. I don’t know how things were done at your old school, but here you cannot walk out of class when you feel like it.’
Did I hear her right? How am I in trouble? If the school had done its job right, Mr Hill would’ve been informed and the whole incident would’ve been avoided. I wish I could speak up and straighten the facts. I didn’t walk out of class, I ran out. And I only skipped one period, three-quarters of a lesson, really. And I stayed on the school grounds, so that’s hardly truanting.
‘This is a large school and we often have casuals replacing teachers who are off for whatever reason,’ continues Mrs Diaz. ‘Let’s talk about some strategies to help you deal with the problem better if it arises again in the future.’
I sigh. I want to say, please, go ahead and enlighten me.
‘Perhaps you could make a friend in each class who could act as your voice, someone to speak to teachers and explain the situation to prevent misunderstandings,’ she says. ‘You could also try non-verbal communication like basic sign language or you could write the teacher a note.’
I’m surprised she doesn’t tell me to ask the sea witch for my voice back. I can tell that she is quite proud of what she thinks are solutions. I wonder if she consulted a psychology textbook or if she came up with them herself.
‘Do you think you could manage some of those things?’ she asks with her arms folded across her chest.
I feel like rolling my eyes.
‘Piper?’
I nod.
‘Wonderful. Thank you for your time. You can go back to class now.’
I stand up.
‘Oh, I almost forgot. I’ve also made an appointment for you to speak to the school counsellor next week.’
Great. School counsellors usually know nothing about Selective Mutism. Their opening line is: ‘You can talk to me about anything.’ They almost always think I’m hiding something. Maybe this once I will pretend that I was abducted by aliens.
‘Guten Morgen, Piper,’ says Frau Fortunat when I walk into the classroom on Tuesday morning. There’s something about her voice that is so soothing, I find myself smiling. All the tables in the second row are free. No West. As much as I want to sit at the table closest to the window again, I choose the table on the opposite side of the room, far away from West’s table. A minute later, he walks into the classroom. Take the window table, take the window table, I chant in my head. But he doesn’t. He walks directly over to the table where I’m sitting.
‘Hey, cronut girl,’ he says, as he sits down.
I can’t help but blush.
I’ve never been the cronut girl, only the mute girl. This new label is surely a lot better but it’s not who I am. That’s when I decide that I have to tell him about my condition. He already has an idea and when he learns the whole truth, I’m sure he’ll go back to the window table.
Frau Fortunat starts the lesson, but I don’t really pay attention. I’ve no idea how to tell him. I could be conversational: you know how you’ve noticed I’m quiet, well, it’s more than that.
In the end, I go for the clinical definition and write:
I push my note across the desk until it’s in front of West, then quickly glue my eyes to the front of the room. I don’t want to watch his reaction. Even though I’m not looking, I can sense West is reading my note. A minute passes and then the note slides back onto my side of the table. I lower my eyes. Beneath what I’d written, it says:
I don’t understand. He’s not meant to be so accepting. He’s not meant to have his own issues. He’s a Royal. I’m still trying to process the meaning of his words when West reaches his arm over and writes something else on the paper.
‘Herr Kennedy,’ says Frau Fortunat, ‘can you please turn your attention to the front?’
‘Sorry, Miss,’ says West. I also want to say sorry but I can’t, so instead concentrate on what she’s written on the board, just after I grab the note and shove it into my German textbook.
Frau Fortunat introduces directional vocabulary then gives us each a map and asks us to write directions on how to get from the bakery to the train station. It takes me five minutes, but Frau Fortunat gives the class thirty.
‘Who would like to read theirs out?’ she says, finally stopping the class. Several hands in the front row go up. They take turns reading. None of their instructions are perfect but they would get you to the train station in the end.
Frau Fortunat turns her gaze to the second row. ‘Could we hear yours, Herr Kennedy?’
West looks as uncomfortable as I do when teachers call my name. He reads his instructions out. It’s painful to listen to. His pronunciation is wrong and his instructions actually make you end up at the library, which is nowhere near the train station. Frau Fortunat looks like she doesn’t know what to say. ‘Danke, West. Let’s have another look at that together afterwards.’
‘That was wrong, wasn’t it?’ he whispers to me.
I nod and give him a sympathetic smile.
We’re given a worksheet to take us to the end of the lesson. After Frau Fortunat comes over and helps West fix his directions, I position my sheet in a way that he can subtly look at my answers.
I wonder why he doesn’t sleep and realise I’m doing exactly what other people do when they learn I have SM.
I start packing up before the bell rings, so that the moment we’re dismissed I can make a run for it and avoid another awkward moment with West. I almost make it to the end of the hallway before I hear my name. ‘Piper, wait up!’ he calls.
I turn around slowly. He jogs over to me. ‘You’ve probably noticed that I suck at German and you’re this German genius. Do you think you could tutor me?’
I thought I’d heard all the stupid jokes before: you should join the school choir; you should find a support group to talk to; pipe up, Piper. But this is a new one. Maybe one of the Royals put him up to it. I look at West. There’s no amused smile on his face, no laughter in his eyes. He looks sincere.
I flick to the back of my German book and scribble a note.
‘I have,’ he says, when he finishes reading. ‘They say they don’t have time. I really need your help. If my grades in German are as bad as last year, I won’t get into law, and then my parents will kill me.’
‘I’ve tried that too but she was hopeless. She spoke so fast I couldn’t understand her and she had whiskers on her chin. I gave it a few weeks then stopped. My parents still think she comes over every Tuesday afternoon while they’re at work. They even leave money for the tutoring, so I use it to buy food and make dinner. They haven’t caught on yet. But they will if my grades don’t improve.’
My pen moves quickly as I write.
He looks at the note. ‘I don’t know. I had a proper tutor and still sucked so maybe I need a different approach. I’m not stupid. I’m at the top of all my other classes. I just can’t seem to pick up German.’
I look at him. A different approach would involve listening to podcasts or watching German films, but not asking a girl who doesn’t speak to tutor you.
‘Please, Piper. Just give it a try. If it doesn’t work out, we’ll stop.’
He sounds genuinely in need of help. But even if I could help him, which I don’t see how without speaking, spending time with West is a bad idea. I don’t ever want to end up in the same place as I was with Liam. When he kissed me, I thought it was because he liked me. It felt genuine but it wasn’t. I’m not going to trust another Royal. There has to be someone else who can help West.
He watches me as I write my answer.
‘Okay,’ West says with a nod. ‘I get it. See you around.’ Then he turns and walks away.
On Friday afternoon, I sit under a tree, reading as I wait for my bus. Technically, anyone waiting for a bus is supposed to stand under the covered area outside the office. Even though I’ve only been here three weeks, it’s pretty clear that no one really does that. The teacher on duty is more concerned with the group of boys who are playing piggy in the middle with an aerosol deodorant can, than the silent girl keeping out of everyone’s way.
Tanvi doesn’t catch the bus in the afternoon and when I eventually look up from my book, I realise that I’m one of the last students still around. I look at the time on my phone. It’s almost 3.30. I jump up, leaving my things where they are, and run over to the board where the teacher writes the bus numbers as they arrive.
Shit. I missed it. According to the board, 799 was one of the first buses to arrive. I can’t believe I didn’t hear the announcement. I send Mum a text, asking her to pick me up. I know she has to take Evie and Tilly to ballet, so I tell her not to rush. The school library is open until five and I’ve got homework to do. It’s probably quieter doing it there than at home anyway. The grounds are mostly deserted as I make my way to the library.
Before stepping inside, I put on my headphones but I don’t turn on my music. It’s all for show. People don’t expect you to talk when you’re listening to music. Every day I become better at avoiding having to speak. I should be trying harder, pushing myself to get better. That was the plan for this year, but now never seems like the right time.
The Things I Didn't Say Page 4