Chapter Eighteen
Deaf.
From somewhere in the back of my mind flashed a picture of Lauren’s sister at the wedding. The way she stared at people, I had thought she was being so rude. Now I realised she had been reading people’s lips, studying their faces. And she hadn’t ignored Erin. She simply hadn’t heard her.
Deaf.
It hadn’t been her sister after all. Couldn’t have been. But who else?
I didn’t get time to think it out. I was suddenly punched in the head. It was Erin. ‘You lying cow! You nearly had me falling for that. I hate you.’
I tried to talk to her, but she spat in my face. ‘You’re worse than them,’ she nodded at Wizzie. ‘At least they’ve got an excuse for being retards.’
I expected Wizzie to leap at her for saying that. But she didn’t. Instead, she settled herself on top of the table and crossed her legs. ‘This is so much fun. The Lip Gloss Girls are fighting amongst themselves.’ Then she laughed. ‘Better hurry, Erin. Those incontinence knickers only hold so much.’
She clapped her hands as Erin turned away from her, but this time Erin wasn’t crying. She was too angry to cry. ‘I’ll get you for that, Wizzie.’ Then her eyes moved to me and there was hate in them. ‘And I’ll get you as well. You wait and see if I don’t.’
I walked through the rest of the day in a dream. No, a nightmare. I couldn’t concentrate on anything. All I wanted to do was cry. How was I going to convince Erin that I would never have betrayed her? She wouldn’t even look at me, and I couldn’t get near her. She was always surrounded, not just by Rose and Heather, but by other girls on the edges of our gang. Geraldine Mooney, always wanting to be one of us, suddenly was. She stood in front of Erin, glaring at me.
I tried texting Erin, but she wouldn’t answer, and I knew when she saw my number coming up on her phone she would just ignore it.
I tried to text her again, at break, and for a moment, just a moment, I thought she was going to answer me. We were in the English corridor, and she stared at my text and then she stared at me, and started walking towards me, holding the phone in her hand. She came so close to me, I thought she must have forgiven me, believed me at last. She stopped inches from my face and held the phone in front of me so I could see my message clearly on the screen. Then, with the press of a button, the text was gone.
‘Erased!’ Erin snapped at me. ‘Your message, and you. Erased from my life, for ever.’
She had erased me from her life. And not just Erin. All of them had erased me. That’s what made it so hard. I had no one to talk to, no one to confide in. And I so wanted someone to talk to. These were my friends, my best friends. Friends for ever. And now, suddenly, I had none of them in my life.
At home that night I didn’t eat any dinner and went straight to my room. Mum came in to see me before she went to bed. She couldn’t fail to see I’d been crying. The soaking pillow and puffy eyes were a dead giveaway. ‘Are you OK? Still not made up with Erin?’
I wished I could tell her, but if I did there was no knowing how she would react.
‘I was watching a sad film on TV,’ I said.
And she believed me. ‘You shouldn’t get yourself into a state about a film on TV.’ She shook her head. ‘Real life’s bad enough.’
I had never agreed with my mum about that till that moment. I’d always thought real life was brilliant. Now I felt like screaming at her, ‘Don’t tell me about real life. I know how bad it is.’
I woke up next morning and prayed it had all been a dream. Of course, it wasn’t. And when I went to school I found it wasn’t just my friends who were avoiding me. Everyone was – as if I had something catching. I had grassed on a friend. You can’t sink any lower than that. Even Wizzie and her scummy mates knew that. Every time I passed them in the corridor they taunted me. Until finally, I couldn’t take it any longer. I rammed Lauren against the wall before any of them could stop me. ‘OK, maybe your sister didn’t hear us, but one of the other waitresses did, and they told her.’
I’d had time to think about it and it was the only possible explanation. Grace and Sonya were on me in a second, dragging me off Lauren.
‘Still can’t admit you’re a grass?’ Grace sniggered. ‘I hate cowards.’
I threw them off me. ‘I’ll find out who it was, don’t you worry.’
‘Who cares?’ Wizzie sniggered. ‘But say another word about Lauren’s sister and you’re in even more trouble, Driscoll.’
Lunchtime was the worst. I waited in the queue, alone, and with my tray in my hand I walked the length of the canteen to our table. We always sat at the same table. It was the Lip Gloss Girls’ table and everyone knew it. No one else ever sat there. Our gang, our table and I automatically headed towards it. They saw me coming, didn’t take their eyes off me. They waited till the last moment when I was right beside them before spreading themselves out, making it impossible for me to sit anywhere. I stood there for ages, like an idiot. I heard the sniggers all around, heard Wizzie’s voice. ‘It’s not a tray she needs, it’s a begging bowl.’