Freak City (6 page)

We joined the others outside on the patio. Sandra stood with Iris next to the table where all the presents were stacked and gave lengthy comments about each one. “This sticker album is the best!” she said. “I used to have something just like it. But mine wasn’t nearly this nice. If you want, I can find you some stickers to put in it.”

My mother had red spots on her cheeks. She looked back and forth between Sandra and me sheepishly. Apparently, the encounter had been coordinated. “It’s great to have you here again!” she said to Sandra.

Tanya smiled. “Sandra was excited when she heard that Iris wanted her to come to her birthday party,” she emphasized.

“Time to get wet!” My dad tossed the garden hose into the wading pool, and Iris and her friends ran away screeching toward the water.

Aunt Vera wedged herself between my dad and my grandma. My dad and Aunt Vera were both gigantic, but their proportions were completely different. My dad was athletic and trim, while Aunt Vera was fat. Ever since her divorce, she had developed some kind of eating disorder and stuffed herself with everything she could get her hands on. Outwardly, she always claimed to be on a diet.

“Can I cut the cake for you?” she asked, taking the knife in her hand.

“Sure.” My mother moved a chair for Tanya. “Mika and Sandra, you two probably want to sit next to each other, right?” I didn’t respond.

“Sure, we’ll sit next to each other,” Sandra said all chummy. She smiled at me and scooted her chair so close to mine that our legs touched.

“Have you two kissed and made up?” Aunt Vera asked with a sour face.

“No,” I said.

“Of course,” Sandra said. “We never had a fight. We’re still best friends. We’re just not going out anymore. Otherwise everything is just like it was before.”

“Uh huh.” Aunt Vera looked at us unhappily. She didn’t have any contact with Uncle Carl anymore. Instead, she was in counseling and told everyone that the time with him had been wasted years.

Was the year I spent with Sandra wasted time?

“When you’re still so young it’s not half so bad,” Aunt Vera pronounced, slapping a piece of cake on a plate for me. “Relationships aren’t really so serious yet, so it’s easier to get over a breakup. I’m right, aren’t I?”

“Yup,” Sandra agreed.

Screw you
, I thought.

“Enjoy the cake,” Aunt Vera said, looking longingly at our pieces. “You can afford to eat it. I’m on a fruit diet.”

“Oh, you poor thing,” Tanya said. “To have that much self-discipline is so admirable! Aren’t you ever tempted?”

“Vera has an iron will,” my mom said quickly, giving her sister-in-law a friendly look. “Calorie charts, grams of fat, the whole program.”

“And how are things at work?” Aunt Vera turned away from my mom, embarrassed, toward Tanya. I knew that she couldn’t stand Tanya. She had said it clearly more than once at some dinner.

Tanya shrugged her shoulders. “It’s okay. I’m missing some sense of balance, actually. Some exercise. Sitting in front of the computer all day long isn’t healthy in the long run.”

At the word “exercise,” Aunt Vera felt a pang of conscience and started to peel her orange. She always had fruit with her and a bottle of mineral water from the health food store that she was constantly sipping from.

I thought of the Dark Café. It was strange to eat cake without having any idea what it looked like. If I were blind, it would always be like that. I would just be sitting here now and not see a thing.

Not Aunt Vera chewing on her orange as if it were made of Styrofoam. Not my dad, who kept glancing at his watch in boredom. He hated family parties. He preferred to be outside and doing something. Not Sandra, sitting just inches from me in her Shakira T-shirt, her old favorite jeans, and wearing the ankle bracelet she had gotten from me for our one-year anniversary.

I would only hear them. And if I were deaf? Like Leah? Then I wouldn’t catch anything of these conversations. I would just sit here, eat my birthday cake, and unleash my fantasy for all it was worth.

“You can go climbing with Sam sometime!” Mom suggested to Tanya. “He’s always desperate to find climbing partners. Mika used to go with him all the time. That was great, a real father-son hobby. But since Mika hit the teen years . . .” She noticed my irritated look and quit her moaning.

The topic of climbing was a constant point of contention between us. We’d already gotten into arguments about it a thousand times.

“I just don’t have the slightest desire to exercise,” my mom continued. “But if you want to do something, Sam can take you with once in a while. To the indoor climbing place, or out in the mountains. Didn’t you want to head out again next weekend?” My mom looked pleadingly at my dad.

Dad startled out of his daydream. “Sure,” he murmured. “Tanya, have you ever been climbing before?” Tanya shook her head.

“Oh, and Victoria is supposed to be marrying that fitness trainer!” my mother crowed. “Resting or Wrestling or something, he’s called.”

“Who are you talking about?” My aunt gave my mom a condescending look.

“Victoria of Sweden. The crown princess. The latest issue of
Gala
wrote all about it.” My mother knew more about the European royal families than she did about her own. In addition to
Gala
, she also had subscriptions to two other gossip rags.

“So how’s the sign language course going?” Sandra asked. Immediately, all conversation ceased. Sandra balanced her cake fork between her fingers and looked at me challengingly.

Embarrassed, I raised my glass. “It starts soon,” I said. I was annoyed that everyone around the table had heard the question. Sandra scooted even closer to me. Our knees were pressed up against each other.

“A what?” my dad asked, as if he had misunderstood. My mom also seemed confused.

“So, I’m going to take a sign language class,” I said a little too fast. I wanted the subject to be dropped just as fast as possible. It was bad enough that I had signed up in the first place. But if everyone in my family knew about it, I would never be able to get out of it.

“Sign language class?” Dad repeated slowly, as if I had lost my mind. I sipped at my coffee. It was too hot, and I burned my lips.

“That’s the way people who are deaf and mute communicate,” Sandra explained, as if my dad were slow on the uptake.

“They aren’t mute,” I said, and seemed ridiculous to myself. “They can talk, it just sounds unusual.” I avoided meeting my dad’s gaze.

“Who are you, young man?” Mom asked in my direction, horrified. “What have you done with my son, Mika?”

Tanya laughed, and Sandra joined in with a snort. I didn’t find all of this funny in the least. I wanted to learn a new language, what of it? Everyone was acting like it was completely absurd that I might want to do something meaningful for a change.

“Okay, let me get this straight . . .” My dad’s facial expression changed from moment to moment between confusion and amusement. “You are going to learn sign language? None of us is deaf! Who do you want to talk with? With the hard-of-hearing rhododendrons?”

None of you is deaf,
I thought.
But fortunately, there are just a few other people out there in the world.

“That’s actually a good idea!” Mom said, trying to smooth things over. “It might be useful later, like professionally. It’s never a bad idea to learn languages.”

“That’s not a language, it’s just a bunch of gestures that get the most important things across,” Dad interrupted her. I wondered why he was getting so worked up about it. For the last six months, he had been complaining that all I did was hang out in my room and never did anything. Now I was doing something, and it still wasn’t what he wanted.

Sandra looked at me with a thoughtful expression. By now, she had realized that I hadn’t told anyone at home anything about Leah. I didn’t intend to either. My parents didn’t need to know everything.

“Good,” my dad said. “Now at least I know why you don’t have time for the caving trip this summer.” Offended, he stirred his coffee around in circles. The sign language course had wedged itself between us.

Back in January, he had started raving to me about a caving trek. Two weeks in France, exploring caves with a well-known adventure team. I had put off saying yes or no for the longest time and finally last night had said no. Not because of the class. For a while now, my dad and I hadn’t been getting along very well. The thought of spending two weeks in a cave with him was unimaginable.

“These young people do the strangest things!” Aunt Vera had finally choked down her orange. After the table was cleared, she would secretly pack up a huge chunk of cake to take home and stuff into herself in front of the television. It happened every time, everyone knew it, but no one said it aloud.

“It’s not only young people who are interested in it,” I reported. “My teacher, Sabine, is mom’s age.”

“Sabine. Aha. So there’s even a real teacher for this? I can see that you’re thoroughly informed.” Dad had stood up. “It’s an honor that our son has let us in on his summer vacation plans.” He disappeared into the house and turned on the TV.

“A cousin of mine was deaf, too.” It was the first sentence my grandmother had spoken all afternoon.

“Really?”

She nodded. “Bad ear infection as a baby. He was deaf as a doorpost. You couldn’t communicate with him at all.”

“Then do you know a little sign language?”

She looked at me with an amused expression. “Nonsense. Where would we have learned such a thing back then? He didn’t learn it either. We just made do somehow and got our point across in any way we could. That was all right for my cousin. He wasn’t terribly bright in the first place.”

“Deaf people are often bitter,” Tanya inserted herself in the conversation. “They experience so much frustration. Blind people are much more grateful when other people interact with them. But the deaf? They’d rather stick to themselves, at least that’s what I’ve always heard.”

I thought about Leah. She hadn’t made the impression that she didn’t want to connect with anyone, not at all. Just the opposite, in fact.

“I’m going to my room,” I said.

Sandra stood up at the same time, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. “I’m going with,” she said. Our mothers threw each other joyful glances.

My heart made a desperate leap as I climbed the stairs, Sandra close behind me. She smelled like the perfume I liked so much. The ankle bracelet made a bright, jangling sound, a familiar melody.

“I thought you would have painted that over by now,” she said when she saw the graffiti on the wall in my room. I looked at the floor awkwardly. “So what’s up with you and that deaf girl?” Sandra looked at me eagerly.

“Nothing,” I said quickly. “We just know each other, that’s all.”

“She’s pretty,” Sandra said. She came a step closer to me. “If she wasn’t handicapped, I’d be totally jealous of her.”

I hadn’t even thought of Leah as handicapped before. Besides, why would Sandra be jealous when she was the one who wanted to get rid of
me
? Women didn’t make any sense to me.

“Nadine thinks we should get back together again,” she leaned against me and gave me a hug.

“Nadine?” I asked, disappointed.

“Well, I kind of think so, too.” Sandra’s head rested on my shoulder, and her arms were around me. I could distinctly feel her breasts against my body.

Again, I thought of the red tent. Sandra’s fast, hot breathing. How could she do all of this to me after a night like that?

“Are you getting a hard-on?” Sandra giggled.

I let go of her and took a step away from her, embarrassed. No doubt she’d tell her friends about it, a new story about a boner to add to the story about the ant invasion.

“Do you want to try it again?” I looked at Sandra longingly. I wanted to sleep with her. Right here and now. I couldn’t have cared less that half my family was sitting on the patio outside waiting for us to return.

I wasn’t a child anymore. It was time for them to understand that.

Sandra’s cell phone chimed. She had gotten a text.

“Maybe . . .” She seemed agitated. Her gaze wandered over to my alarm clock on the nightstand. It was quarter past five.

Then I remembered the party at the quarry. It was supposed to start at six thirty.

“I need more time to think about it. A break. But as soon as I figure it out, I’ll let you know.” Sandra smiled at me noncommittally. “I have to go now, wanted to go to a party with the girls.”

I thought of Daniel. In that moment, he was probably putting up a tent for her. She hadn’t mentioned him even once. “Don’t do anything stupid!” she said to me teasingly. “We’ll call each other soon, okay?”

Then she left my room. I took a deep breath, and her perfume filled my lungs. For a moment, I was dizzy.

“Hey, man, you look like shit!” Claudio caught me at the school gate and whacked my shoulder, hard. “Why didn’t you come to the party at the quarry? Sandra was there. I kept an eye on her the whole time. You owe me. She’s still untouched, if you know what I mean.”

Claudio shoved his white rapper hat down over his face. For years now, I hadn’t seen him without it. He even kept it on during class. As far as I knew, he was the only one in school who was allowed to get away with that.

“Didn’t feel like it,” I said. A question about Daniel was on the tip of my tongue, but Claudio spoke first.

“Sandra was
pissed
,” he said. “She had arranged to meet this Daniel, the DJ from the Waikiki. But when he got there, he was already completely hammered. His buddies had a drinking contest in the park. Daniel won, and that killed his last four and a half brain cells.”

We laughed. Our new teacher walked past us in her high heels. She was a student teacher, and we knew her only as Ms. Hot Bod. “Why, oh why, is sex with minors against the law?” Claudio sighed.

I gave him a shove. “Even if it were legal, you wouldn’t stand a chance with Ms. Hot Bod. Look for a girl your own age.” I thought of Leah. She was my age. So far, I hadn’t told Claudio or Tobias about her.