Whisper by Chrissie Keighery

bounces the ball and it’s game on.
    Keisha and I walk back to the seats. Although most of the rows are empty, our bags have been dumped on the ground.Sitting in the seat where my bag used to be is Horse Girl.She is with another girl, but I don’t think it’s one from my tram.
    She stares at me as I approach. I can feel her eyes scanning me, from top to toe. I don’t like it. I don’t like her. It’s as though we are two animals with opposing scents. I reach down and pull my bag from next to her feet. She doesn’t move. She doesn’t make it easy.
    Keisha hasn’t registered anything. She just pulls her bag out from under the other girl’s feet. Her eyes are locked on the oval, following Luke even when he’s nowhere near the football. She walks to the end of the row and sits down.I throw my bag over one shoulder and meet her there.
    â€˜Did you see that mark?’ Keisha signs. ‘That was Luke. Did you see it? He’s really good. How high did he jump?’
    Her questions are rhetorical. I nod, because that’s all that’s required. I sneak a look towards the girls. Horse Girl points two handed, as though one isn’t enough, in the direction of our school. Our DEAF school.
    Then, she keeps her hands in the air. She is mimicking Keisha. Her hands are flapping about in the air, hitting each other and doing air circles. The gestures are ridiculous.They are nothing like sign. They mean nothing. They mean nothing except that she thinks that’s how sign language looks. Retarded.
    The girl with her shakes her head, but she is struggling to control her giggles. I can tell she is finding Horse Girl’s antics guiltily amusing.
    I feel sick. Keisha hasn’t noticed anything. She’s deep in a Luke-trance.
    I look at the ground. I breathe. There is nothing I can do about her. Nothing.
    If I went up and tried to talk to her, what would I say?‘Don’t be mean to us poor deaf kids’? Besides, even if I did that, she would hear me speak, which would be a bonus for her. She’d find that extra funny. Something else to mimic for everyone’s enjoyment.
    There’s no point in making myself – us – a bigger target.
    There’s nothing I can do except to breathe my humiliation right down to the pit of my stomach.
    Now Keisha looks in the direction of Horse Girl and her friend. The two of them are walking away.
    For a second, I wonder whether Keisha has seen it.Her eye-roll tells me she has. But it’s an eye-roll that says ‘how annoying,’ not ‘how humiliating, I want to die’. She has seen Horse Girl imitating her signing, and it’s hardly had any effect.
    Maybe that’s how you get if you’ve been deaf forever? Maybe she’s put up with rudeness so many times that now it’s no big deal? Maybe I’ll get used to stuff like that one day?
    I doubt it. I don’t think I even want to, although it would probably be less painful.
    I’m thinking about all this when Keisha suddenly waves her hand in my face. It’s so close I can feel the breeze she makes.
    â€˜Luke’s been hurt!’ she signs. Now she is upset. Her hand flies to her mouth.
    I look out at the players on the oval. ‘What happened? ’I ask.
    â€˜Luke took a mark, and that other guy tried to stop him, and gave him a blood nose!’
    The match has stopped. Luke is heading back to the sidelines holding his nose. He’s walking over with another player from his team.
    â€˜That’s him! The guy who hurt Luke! Bastard!’ Her hands are fists, the little finger edges bumping each other violently, twice, to make the ‘bastard’ sign.
    I look around to see if anyone is watching us. It doesn’t seem like it, but I turn towards Keisha, blocking out the people in the stands, just in case.
    â€˜It must have been an accident,’ I sign. ‘They’re on the same team.’
    I can see Keisha