It feels so good to have someone to share this with. While I talk, the tension melts off me like wax dripping from a candle. My words come out all garbled but Jada understands me better than anyone. Maybe it’s because I know my bestie understands me, so I relax and words come easier. Jada not only gets what I say, but how I feel, too. She knows how it is to be the freak of the day.
When I get to the part where I dumped my hot lemonade onto Gavin’s lap, Jada laughs so hard she gets hiccups. This cracks me up so we just sit there, giggling over the phone for like, forever.
Finally Jada regains control. “I forgot the new name. What was it?”
“Well,” I answer, hesitating. “It’s May, but maybe I need a better one. One I can’t forget.”
“Come on!” is Jada’s response. I can tell she’s about to say more because of the way she breathes. It takes her effort to talk, too. Way more effort than me, since she can’t even control her laptop with her hands. She has to hit a switch with the side of her head to move the mouse and make it click on the words she wants. This is actually an advantage on my part, because I always have time to think of what I’m going to say next when Jada is getting ready to answer.
“Jerubadissah,” she finally says.
“That’s so mean!” I answer, but I’m laughing. I know Jada said it on purpose. She’s teasing me.
“Gotta go. New name, okay?” Jada says.
“Okay.”
“Bring it, sister,” Jada says. Then she’s gone. “Bring it” is her way of telling me to be strong. To be brave. To stand up for myself.
I stare at the photo of Jada that glows from my cell phone screen. Jada’s mom always calls us the “Opposite Twins.” As far as physical appearance, we’re kind of like Sylvie and émile. Jada’s eyes are green and her short, spiky hair is ash blonde. My eyes are brown, and my dark hair is heavy and long. But on the inside, they all say we’re like twins. Same soul, different bodies.
Whatever.
It’s true that Jada and I are very different in a physical sense, even down to the things that don’t work correctly. Jada’s body doesn’t do what she tells it to do. Her legs and arms don’t obey the signals from her brain. Her mouth doesn’t either. As for me, well, it’s only my tongue that’s broken. That’s all. But my words are so tangled that sometimes I wish I could use something to do the talking for me, like Jada. But Mom says no. She says I don’t need it. It would be a crutch.
Exhaustion is dragging my eyelids closed. Jada’s mom is wrong about us. My bestie and I are as different inside as we are on the outside. Jada never lets anyone make fun of her. She always has a comeback. Not me. I stand there with my heart in my throat, like a wounded animal. I only have good comebacks inside my head.
I snuggle down into my comfy bed and listen to the radio on my cell phone, letting the musical, nasally tones of the French language soothe me to sleep. Like I often do, I pretend that it’s my voice I hear, forming perfect, fluid, silvery words that drop from my lips without any effort. Without even a thought.
Rolling over onto my side, I stare blankly at Ansel’s murals, which are barely visible. What would it be like to be normal? To have a brain that wasn’t wired to make me sound like an idiot every time I opened my mouth?
A new song comes on. I catch some of it, “They killed Spiderman! Nobody knows who did it. Maybe it was the Mafia.” I start to laugh. It’s cool that I can understand words in a different language. I so totally can’t say them, though.
Anyone who knows me would think I was insane to try to learn another language, when I can’t even speak my own.
I would have thought that too, if it weren’t for Jada.
She forced me to take French with her last year.
“Everyone else will sound just as bad,” she insisted.
And the most amazing thing happened.
She was right.
That day, the plan started to form in my brain. Jada came up with part of it. I owe her. Big time.
My bed is so soft. I yawn and stretch out. I don’t remember falling asleep. Usually the nightmares wake me, but I must have been too exhausted to dream. This time, noise tears me from my sleep. The bedside clock tells me it’s three in the morning.
I hear sounds. A soft thump, then sliding noises, like something being moved. Thump . . . bump . . . clump. The noises come from the other side of my wall, the painted wall where light shone through a crack. I’d finally managed to ask Sylvie about it after dinner. I couldn’t figure out how to talk about the crack in the wall that glowed because a light shone behind it, but I asked who lived next door to us. And the answer was, “No one has lived there for fifty years.” There’s nothing but an empty apartment behind the painted wall in this room.
My lungs ache from the strain of holding my breath as I sit up in bed, listening. Then, softly, above my head, I hear more noises. They’re moving upward, to the next floor. More soft bumps, a thud, and a voice murmuring words. A door slamming shut. Finally, silence.