Freak City (8 page)

“Every politician, movie star, or athlete has their own name sign.” Tommek furrowed his brow. “What was the sign name for Chancellor Angela Merkel again? I can’t remember it.” I looked at Franzi with anticipation. “Angela Merkel,” Tommek repeated slowly. Franzi’s eyes were locked on Tommek’s face. She was reading his lips.

Leah also immediately understood what Tommek wanted. With her flat hand, she traced the corner of her mouth, which she suddenly tugged alarmingly downward.

I laughed. Down at the mouth! That name sign for the chancellor was harsh. But it fit her, too. Angela Merkel often looked rather frustrated.

“Most of the time you take something visible or a character trait and make the sign name out of that,” Tommek explained. “Deaf people are kind of ruthless that way. If you’re overweight, they’ll give you the sign for ‘fat guy,’ if you have buck teeth, you’ll find you’re called ‘rabbit tooth.’ But they aren’t being impolite. It’s just really important for them to know exactly who they’re talking about. Sign language is much more direct than any other language in the world. Things are called much more clearly by their names. At least, that’s the way I see it!”

“Have you taken a sign language class, too?” I asked Tommek.

Tommek tilted his head to one side, and he looked frustrated. He wasn’t wearing the Superman T-shirt today, but an old, torn shirt with a yellow tie. “I wanted to for a while. Went to Sabine’s class three or four times. But then it was just too much for me. All day long I work here at Freak City! Then I’m in a film club and have to take care of my senile grandfather all the time. And then the hours in class at night on top of everything else! All those words and the complicated grammar. So I gave it up. Unfortunately. But I can still do a few things.”

He looked at Leah. If it hadn’t been clear before, it was crystal clear then that Tommek had started learning sign language because of Leah.

“The microwave!” he blurted. “I better heat up your food or you’ll starve out here.” He disappeared into the nearby kitchen, and I could hear him puttering around in there.

What Tommek had said made me nervous. Grammar? I hadn’t even considered that sign language had its own grammar. That was always incredibly hard for me in English and in French class. Different tenses, parts of speech, the subjective. Suddenly, I realized what I had gotten myself into.

And just like that my courage was gone. I would call Sabine and have her take me off the registration list. There was no point. It was just too complicated. Even if I could manage to put together a few sentences in sign language at some point . . . who could promise me that Leah had the slightest interest in getting to know me?

The two girls had started to sign again. They seemed to be in a great mood. They seemed to switch from one topic to another, one after the other. Feeling somewhat lost, I observed them. Leah had her wild curls pulled back today. It suited her; she looked great. Unlike Sandra, she hardly wore any makeup. Just a little glitter on her eyelids. Glitter . . . could my sister ever warm up to Leah? Iris, who was so incredibly infatuated with Sandra? Who leaped into the air every time Sandra stepped into our house?

The situation was much too complicated for Iris. She would never be able to have a conversation with Leah. I could just picture her defiant face in front of me: “But I want Sandra back!”

I did, too, actually. Yet, Leah had definitely caught my attention . . .

I was still watching the two girls. While Leah talked with her hands, an astonishing transformation took over her face. She seemed to give every word additional emphasis with her eyes. Sometimes she almost drew her forehead into furrows in indignation—some words she formed soundlessly with her lips. It almost seemed like her expressions were part of the language!

At some point, she smiled and tapped two fingers on her chin. The sign for sweet! I recognized it immediately.

“Sweet,” I said slowly. Leah nodded at me and grinned. My enthusiasm returned.

Tommek came out of the kitchen with three plates full of spaghetti. “Delicious canned food!” he said, and went back behind the bar. The two girls knocked on the table. Apparently, that was some sign. Franzi grinned and said aloud, “Guten Appetit!”

I nervously shoveled the food into my mouth. Now I felt uncomfortable at the table with Leah and Franzi. With two girls who talked constantly, but I didn’t have the vaguest idea what it was all about.

Leah and Franzi had also started eating. Now it wasn’t possible to keep signing. They ate their meal in silence, their eyes lowered to their plates. Now that the two of them had stopped communicating, I felt even more out of place.

When I ate with my friends, the conversation never stopped for a minute. We just continued talking while we ate. With our mouths full. All of that was possible. But for deaf people, that was clearly a problem. They could talk or eat. Doing both at the same time was difficult. I kept my eyes lowered and shoveled the food into my mouth.

I noticed the silence. That calmness at our table. As if we were all at a loss for words! I found the quiet incredibly unnerving. I started to sweat, and I had the urge to just get out of there.

I was glad when I finished my plate. “Can I pay?” I called out, agitated. Tommek came over to me with his shabby brown money pouch.

“In a hurry all of a sudden?” He put a pad of paper on the table and wrote down the two amounts. Apple juice. Spaghetti. A thick line underneath. “With a drink that’ll be six twenty-five,” Tommek said, handing me the slip.

I shoved the money toward him. “I’m outta here,” I said, standing up much too quickly.

Franzi looked at me uncomprehendingly. “I’m outta here,” she definitely couldn’t read that from my lips. I should have spoken slowly and without slang.

“I’m going now,” I repeated slowly and felt like an idiot. Now I had caught the two girls off guard, and they looked at me uncertainly.

Then Leah grabbed Tommek’s pad of paper. She scribbled something on it, tore off the top page, and gave it to me.

A cell phone number and an e-mail address. Her phone number and her e-mail address. I blushed.

Tommek’s expression became hard. He had glanced at the paper and then his eyes locked onto it. So he wasn’t such a good loser, after all. Self-consciously, I stuck the paper into my pocket. Franzi grinned. She bit her lips like she wanted to bite back some commentary. Her hands lay unusually calm on the table. She would bombard Leah with a flood of questions the second I was outside!

I hurried out of the café. The paper was burning a hole in my pocket.

Outside, the big city welcomed me. Cars, bicycle bells, and the barking of dogs. It was a wave of sounds that received me like an old friend. I had never thought about how comforting noise could be. The anxiety disappeared immediately. I slipped back into my old groove.

I didn’t know if I would get in touch with Leah or not.

“All right, buddy, take it easy! The missing person just returned!” I hadn’t even pulled the front door closed behind me yet. My dad stood in the foyer and held the phone out toward me.

Buddy.
I absolutely hated it when my dad did that, when he acted like he was a teenager himself and always in a good mood. Disgusted, I reached for the phone, and my dad disappeared into the kitchen, whistling.

“Hey, Claudio.”

“Your dad is the best!” Claudio promptly fell for Dad’s slimy attempts to get on his good side. “He asked me about going climbing again, just the three of us, like in the good old days!” Claudio used to go to the climbing park with us sometimes.

“I don’t have time right now,” I whispered quietly so that my dad couldn’t hear me.

“No time, or you don’t feel like it?” Claudio persisted. “Man, Mika. Your dad is cooler than you. You can’t spend your entire life in your room waiting for something exciting to happen!”

He was one to talk. He was the one who was always bent over his computer games. And I was doing some things. I had been to Freak City and then the city library. I spent an hour on the computer there looking for books on deafness. There wasn’t exactly a huge selection, but I found a few novels. Still, I wasn’t about to volunteer that information to my best friend. Me, of all people, in the library! That would be about as bizarre for Claudio as if I were secretly the head of some Weight Watchers group.

“You’re spending way too much time still thinking about Sandra,” Claudio declared. “Look for another girl. There are enough good-looking chicks running around. You can’t let the most potent years of your life slip away because of Sandra.”

I fished around in my pocket for the paper with Leah’s cell phone number and e-mail address.

Claudio was right. It was ridiculous to wait until Sandra had finally made up her mind. It couldn’t hurt for me to look around elsewhere in the meantime. I’d get in touch with Leah. I would take that class, if only because I didn’t dare to cancel on Sabine. She had sent me the course information an hour ago by text.

“I met this other girl,” I mumbled into the phone as casually as possible. The door to the kitchen wasn’t closed all the way, and I tried to talk even more quietly.

Claudio let out a raspy tone that sounded like a vacuum cleaner running down. “I knew it. Man, I know you like a brother. I
knew
something was up. Is she a lot older than you?”

I was puzzled. “Older? What makes you think that?”

“Because you’re making such a big secret out of it. Either she’s butt ugly, or older, or married. Otherwise you would have told me and Tobias about it a long time ago.” Claudio’s logic was hard to follow.

“She’s famous and doesn’t want the paparazzi to find out she’s going out with me,” I answered.

“Really?” Claudio almost flipped out. “Who is it? Come on, tell me, I’ll keep it to myself, I swear! One of those soccer stars? I read somewhere that lots of them don’t get enough sex.”

“Bullshit.” I already regretted bringing up Leah at all. “That was a joke. She’s not famous at all, just completely average. About as old as me. And she’s not ugly as a slug, she’s actually really beautiful. I think you might like her, too.”

I was getting nervous. Why was I beating around the bush like that? I had to just come out and tell him. Claudio had called me his brother. It wouldn’t be so bad. “Do you remember that girl we were following in town? Exactly a week ago?”

There was silence on the other end of the line. I could practically hear Claudio’s thoughts churning. He wasn’t bad looking and was a funny guy. But when it came to women, he just didn’t have the right touch.

First, he had been smitten with Ellen for the longest time, but Tobias had moved in on her right under his nose. Another girl he had mooned over for months, Anna, turned out to be a lesbian and only hung out with a bunch of older girls now. That was probably the real reason Claudio was constantly making fun of gays. The thing with Anna had wounded him.

Claudio had been in love with Sandra, too—Tobias had admitted it to me once in a drunken state. And now I was dealing Claudio the next blow: I had secretly met Leah, who was exactly his type, at least in terms of looks. Wild curls, a proud, upright walk. Exotic eyes. My bad conscience tugged at me. Brothers. Brothers. Cain and Abel were a good example of how that could turn sour in a hurry.

“Hey, congratulations, dude!” Claudio swallowed dryly. You could hear that he was hurt. “The chicks seem to just fall at your feet. The next time one catches my eye, you can be sure I won’t tell you about it.”

“Nothing’s actually going on, man,” I added in a hurry. “I just happened to meet her, in town. We just talked for a little while . . .”

“Yeah, right. Listen, I have to go.” Claudio suddenly had nothing to say.

“Come on, you’re not mad, are you?” This was going great. Claudio hated me, and I hadn’t even gotten around to telling him the most important detail. That Leah was deaf.

“My mom’s planning a feast on Friday. Just bring your little girlfriend along. Mom will cook enough for seven anyway.”

“She isn’t my little girlfriend!” I tried not to sound too annoyed.

“Whatever. Think about me, man, when you’re making out with her. She was my bride. I hope you keep that in mind every second.” Claudio hung up without saying good-bye.

I stared at the telephone. This was completely absurd. So far, I wasn’t even capable of exchanging a normal sentence with Leah. Making out with her was something far in the unattainable distance.

Once again, I was struck by how complicated this story truly was. If Leah were a normal girl, I would probably have called and asked her out long before now. And I probably would have bought condoms today, just in case.

But Leah was different. I hadn’t even thought about having sex with her so far.

Why not, actually?

“Trouble?” My father came out of the kitchen wearing an untied apron. He held a meat cleaver in one hand and pointed it toward me like he wanted to chop me into fillets.

I shook my head. I could hardly tell my dad that I was about to steal a girl away from my best friend. And it would be even more idiotic to tell him I was pondering whether it was possible for someone to score in the sack with a girl that you couldn’t even talk about the weather with.

I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it yet. Normally, at the first sight of a woman I only thought of one thing. Why wasn’t that true with Leah?

It was probably Sandra. She was just taking up too much space in my brain.

“Where’s Mom?” I quickly changed the subject.

My dad looked disappointed. He had probably been excited about a man talk, father and son sitting on the patio together with a couple of sodas. “Out with Tanya.” Now Dad was just as short with me as Claudio.

No matter what I did lately, it was all wrong.

“What are those books you’re lugging around there?” My dad gestured toward the bulging bag.

“For school,” I lied. I lied so badly that it was embarrassing even to me. Of course, my father saw through it immediately. Disappointed, he just stared at me. Then he went back in the kitchen.