Louder Than Words Read online

  Her face crumpled and she began to cry properly. Not pretty crying as people do when they’re doing it for effect but full-on red-eyed face, streaming and snotty.

  As I listened to her, I felt what she did. Felt it through the emotion leaking out of her words. Felt the betrayal, the humiliation and, behind that, the impotent anger that someone she cared about had done – appeared to still be doing – this to her. This is a thing about being silent that I don’t think people realise for they spend so much time talking and so little time really listening. You can hear so much, come to know so much from the way words are spoken, as much as from the words themselves. Sometimes more, actually, because people can hide what they really mean inside their choice of words, but they’re not as good at hiding it in their faces, their voices, their body language.

  Josie’s words didn’t say nearly as much as her weeping eyes and the way she shook all over.

  It was hard for me, faced with her like that, to know what to do. I’d be better at dealing with it now, but then I was so unsure of myself, so clueless about the basics of friendship. I bit my lip as I watched her and half wished Silas would rescue me.

  What a coward. How many times had I sat in my room and dreamed of a moment like this? For friendship to be dangled in front of me, waiting to be grabbed at. And now it was here, my mind was whining for Silas to help me. Then again, wasn’t cowardice a big part of why I didn’t speak?

  Josie grabbed the wet paper towel again and rubbed her face. It didn’t do much good – you could still see all too well she’d been crying. ‘I wish you could tell me what you’re thinking,’ she said. ‘Don’t you ever get frustrated that you can’t say stuff like that to people?’

  Yes. Yes. A thousand times yes.

  But never enough to beat the fear. If that’s what it was – fear. Even I didn’t really know.

  ‘Do you have a phone?’ she asked, tears suddenly forgotten as inspiration flashed over her face. ‘A mobile I mean, not a house phone.’

  A mobile?

  Ah, that. I shook my head. Not vehemently, though I wanted to. But that would seem strange to her so I managed to shake it normally. Like it was just any old casual question I was answering. I saw Silas’s head come up and he spun round on the stool to face us.

  ‘Why not? I could text you if you did and you could text back and –’

  Yes – and . . .

  . . . and we could communicate. I started to feel a bit weird.

  ‘She’s never had one,’ Silas said, coming over quickly.

  Josie grinned at us. ‘Then it’s about time she got one, isn’t it?’

  Silas opened his mouth to protest. He did try, I knew that, I recognised that and I loved him for it. But he had just come up against the tornado that was Josie and he was unprepared.

  She stood up and pushed her chair back, rummaging in her bag until she found her purse. She pulled out a bank card with satisfaction. ‘Come on!’

  Come on where? my face said.

  ‘We’re going to buy you a phone!’

  CHAPTER 3

  We had to go into the city to buy the phone, which meant a long bus ride, but our town didn’t have much of a high street left any more. It was what they call a dormitory town now, full of people who worked elsewhere but preferred to live somewhere less busy. Silas came along with us.

  ‘So why exactly can’t Rafi talk?’ Josie asked him as the bus jolted to a halt at another set of traffic lights. ‘Is there something wrong with her throat?’

  ‘No, she’s what’s called a selective mute. Or she was. Now it’s progressed further; she’s got progressive mutism, which is much rarer.’

  ‘You’ve lost me.’

  Silas cast me an anxious glance. He knew I hated being talked about like this. ‘She stopped talking when she was little, not completely, but in certain places and with certain people. It was around when our dad left and when she started school.’

  ‘So she can talk?’

  ‘Yes and no. They used to think that kids did it because they wanted to stop, like it was a choice. Now they think it’s maybe that they want to talk, but just can’t, like a phobia.’

  ‘Wow, that’s . . . horrible. Like she wants to speak to you, but she just can’t?’

  ‘Yeah, maybe, but in her case it got worse. Most kids with it will talk to family or one-to-one, but Rafi even stopped doing that. That’s progressive mutism. She hasn’t spoken at all since she was six.’

  He glanced at me again and Josie picked up on it this time. She changed the subject. ‘So what kind of phone shall we get you?’ she asked me and she got her own mobile out, flicked open the browser and showed me some models. ‘Which do you like best?’

  The answer: none of them. I didn’t want a phone. But how could I, or Silas by proxy, explain that without making me look like an even bigger freak?

  Why have a phone when you can’t talk? It just sits there laughing at your inadequacy. And text? Who did I have to text? I had no friends, except my brother, and I didn’t want to text him badly enough to accept the mockery of that little electronic device sitting in my pocket reminding me every minute how abnormal I was.

  Phones are designed for talking. Period.

  Not for fruitloops who can’t speak.

  Silas had tried to talk me round before, showed me games I could play etc. But there was still that big fundamental block. Phones equal talking and Rafi doesn’t talk. So just no.

  And now Josie had breezed in and turned everything upside down because she just didn’t know – and I was too scared to tell her.

  I had butterflies fluttering in the pit of my stomach. COMMUNICATION. Text words were still words after all and this was a big step.

  It could be a big step towards a better place, part of me said. And it was only writing, and didn’t I want to be a writer?

  But the coward part still shied away. Which was funny because the coward part of me was exactly why I was sitting on that bus seat letting Josie railroad me into getting a phone. I didn’t have the courage to say no.

  The shopping area was busy. Lots of people our age in groups hanging out, window-shopping, having a laugh. If they could read my thoughts on how freaked I felt at something so simple as having a phone, they’d have an even bigger laugh. Maybe Mum was right that day when she lost her temper with me and told me I needed an army of shrinks to sort my brain out and she didn’t know what she’d done to deserve such a screwed-up kid. In my head, I screamed back at her: You wouldn’t care how screwed-up I was if I could paint like Gideon, or play music like Carys, or basically if I was more like the others!

  ‘So you go to the same school?’ Josie asked me as we made our way down the main street and Silas waved to a couple of friends from school who were sitting in the window of McDonald’s. I started to nod, but Silas beat me to it.

  ‘Yeah, Rafi’s in Year 10 and I’m in the sixth form.’

  ‘That must be expensive, both of you there at once.’

  ‘I’m on a scholarship so I get my fees paid.’ Like my other brother and sisters had. ‘Our dad stumps up for Rafi.’

  About the only thing he did do for us, Mum said, and it was because I didn’t get high enough marks in the entrance exam or have some redeeming talent, so they wouldn’t take me otherwise. In fact, they weren’t keen on taking me even with the fees being paid, but as I said, my mother is a force of nature and the thought of the bad publicity that could follow if they turned me down clearly left the Head in a cold sweat. My mother was quite capable of phoning every press office in the country and ranting at length about discrimination and injustice to the . . . disabled.

  Josie carefully avoided the eyes of a girl we passed who stared at us in shock. My brother nodded slightly to her, as if he knew her, but not very well. I’d never seen her before. I nudged Josie.

  ‘She’s from my school,’ she whispered, as if the girl could still hear us even though she was some way behind now. ‘Didn’t they try to make you go to a . . . um, special
school?’

  ‘Oh, they tried,’ Silas cut in, and for the first time in my life I almost didn’t want him to speak for me. ‘They recommended some really good schools: one for the deaf, one for school phobics, one for kids with behavioural problems. None for kids who are mute – there just aren’t any. But our mother wanted her to go to a normal school.’

  ‘What did Rafi want though?’

  And that was the question my mother never asked. She always knew better than me of course.

  ‘To go to the same place as me,’ Silas replied as if that should be obvious.

  He was right. That’s what I had wanted. Had he asked me or had he just known? I couldn’t remember now. But the loneliest time of my life was when he went to upper school and I was left alone in the prep and didn’t see him all day except for the bus. At least now I didn’t have to have lunch alone. I didn’t want to think about how it would be when he left after next year.

  I never thought about the future at all if I could help it. I suppose then I didn’t believe I had one worth thinking about. I mean, I knew I wanted to be a writer, but that was a dream – I never saw myself as any older than I was at that moment. There’d be nobody to speak for me when I grew up so I didn’t allow growing up to be real to me.

  I hadn’t noticed the group of boys coming round the corner, but they certainly noticed us. A burst of male laughter made me turn my head in their direction. There were five of them. I recognised Lloyd immediately from the photo. Josie went rigid beside me as she spotted him.

  Lloyd raised an eyebrow at her and gave a mocking wave.

  ‘Just ignore him,’ she muttered.

  We kept walking.

  ‘Hey, Josieee,’ he called, ‘the boys were wondering when they get to see it all for real.’

  She couldn’t help herself. She stopped, her hands shaking with rage, embarrassment or both. ‘Go to hell, Lloyd.’

  He clapped a hand to his chest, faking a wound, while his mates laughed. ‘Damaged goods, babe, that’s what you are.’ I could have imagined it, but I thought he cast a sly glance at Silas when he said it. ‘And the whole world knows it now!’

  ‘You’re sick in the head,’ she shouted, but her eyes were filling with tears again and I willed her not to cry in front of him.

  I looked at Silas, uncertain what to do. I wanted to shout hurtful things at Lloyd myself, but a) I couldn’t think of anything and b) well, b was obvious, wasn’t it? Silas’s face was utterly blank. He was staring straight at Lloyd, but with no discernible expression.

  One of Lloyd’s mates lifted his T-shirt up. ‘I’ll show you mine if you show me yours,’ he called as they all burst out laughing again.

  Silas’s face didn’t even flicker so I jumped when he actually spoke. ‘You want me to get back at him for you?’ he said quietly, in a conversational tone.

  From Josie’s expression, she wondered if he was winding her up. I tugged her sleeve to say, Let’s go. We weren’t going to win anything here.

  ‘I’m serious,’ Silas said as she walked off quickly in response, followed by a load of jeering, and veered off into the first of the phone shops.

  She stopped in front of one of the displays. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Just what I said.’

  ‘Why would you do that?’

  Silas wore what I called his ‘on a high horse’ expression and I knew he wasn’t going to let go of this. ‘I don’t like him.’

  ‘I didn’t think you knew Lloyd,’ Josie said, puzzled.

  ‘I don’t, and I don’t need to. I don’t like him. End of.’ He smiled coldly, a far remove from his normal half-lazy grin. ‘And I can make him sorry he ever started this.’

  CHAPTER 4

  I chose a white phone in the end and Josie dragged me into Starbucks to set it up and show me how to text. It wasn’t difficult because it wasn’t as if I hadn’t seen everyone else in the known universe texting.

  Josie sent me my first text message.

 

 

 

 

  Silas watched me with anxious eyes, but said nothing. I loved him in that second for letting me try without interference. Unfair, he would tell me later, because before I’d always wanted him to interfere. Unfair, but also kind of great – he’d bolted a grin on the end as he added that last part.

  Josie added.

  I felt a lump in my throat. I stared at the device in my hand with its pretty screensaver that Josie had just loaded for me and now it was here and I was holding it, it didn’t seem so awful. It didn’t seem to be laughing at me at all. It felt friendly . . . like Josie.

  How had I been so scared of this?

  I asked.

  I just started a conversation.

  I. Started. A. Conversation.

  Me.

  I felt like I was flying through clouds on a magic carpet or some craziness like that. Euphoric. That was the word. I’d never had any use for it before now. I felt like the bravest, cleverest person in the world for a moment.

  ‘I’ll go and buy a muffin and then I’ll tell you, I promise.’ She avoided Silas’s eyes as if she’d rather he wasn’t there. ‘I just need chocolate to get through this. You want one?’

  ‘I’ll get them.’ Silas got up hastily, still guilting from having to let Josie buy my phone as she wouldn’t take no for an answer. He’d argued with her in the shop to let him pay or go halves, but she wasn’t having any of it. She hadn’t spent her allowance for two months, she said, and she was flush and we were going to be friends with this, so it was for her as much as me. Silas looked over towards the counter and screwed his face up. ‘How can there be like ten types of chocolate muffin? Which one do you want?’

  ‘Triple choc,’ she said feelingly. ‘For this, the more chocolate the better.’

  ‘Rafi?’

  I got up and pointed to the white choc and raspberry. I’d never had one before, but it sounded good. I didn’t come into the city very often. Silas was no fun to shop with and there really wasn’t anyone else for me to go with. I certainly wasn’t brave enough to go on my own.

  Josie took a big, chocolaty bite of the muffin before she went on with the story. ‘It was the little things that broke us up and it started after he took those photos. I’d notice he’d be mean to me in front of his friends or that he wouldn’t call or text, like he wanted me to do all the work or his ego wouldn’t let him make an effort. And he’d put me down all the time. And you know, I thought I loved him, but I’m not a doormat. I’m not being treated like that by any guy.’

  Silas’s eyebrows quirked upwards and he hid a slight grin. He hadn’t expected that. Actually, me neither. There was more to Josie than met the eye.

  She sighed. ‘I tried talking to him about it, to let him know how I felt. But every time I did he brushed me off like I was some cheap dumb-ass who was lucky to have got him in the first place.’

  I could imagine the Lloyd I’d seen behaving just like that.

  But what she said next shocked me and Silas into open-mouthed mirror images of each other.

  ‘And when I thought carefully about it, I understood he didn’t love me at all. That was why he treated me badly. Not because he couldn’t express his true feelings or it was just the way he and his friends acted around each other, or any of the other stuff he tried to blag me with when I told him we were over.’

  She. Told. Him.

  So it was Josie who broke them up.

  Of course. That was why her ex had gone nuclear with the pictures online. She ditched him.

  Why had we assumed it was the other way round?

  ‘That’s when he got really nasty. He put those pictures I told you about up online and he linked them on Facebook, on all the sites he uses. He made a special website to put them on: www.josieisaho.com. Everyone knows about it.
’ She fixed us with a look. ‘I bet you guys even heard about it, didn’t you? I keep getting bitchy messages left on my Facebook page and some of them are from your school.’

  I nodded, shamefaced. Silas shrugged. ‘People say a lot of stuff. It doesn’t mean we believe it.’

  ‘Have you ever been in love?’ Josie demanded.

  Silas looked frankly uncomfortable. ‘Er, no.’

  ‘You’re lucky,’ she said. ‘Because it isn’t always like it is in books. Sometimes it sucks. In fact, I’m beginning to think it’s never like it is in books. I learned something important from Lloyd though – what you want isn’t always good for you.’

  ‘Um, yes. I guess so,’ Silas replied. It was funny how out of his depth he looked discussing love with her. My brother was seldom uncomfortable and, let’s face it, that was my default condition, so I enjoyed the moment. Mean, yes, but hey, I’d spent my life being the poor, damaged one of the family so I don’t think Silas would have begrudged me a tiny moment of glee. He’s got more empathy in his little finger than the rest of my family put together.

  I sucked in my breath and typed

  Josie waited for the second it took for my message to come through on her phone, smiling despite her watery eyes giving away how hard she was finding this.

  ‘Yes. I asked him. And he laughed in my face and told me I was getting everything I deserved. And then made out that he’s such a name online that he’d get the pictures to go viral and then I’d see if any boy would touch me again.’

  Silas made a noise of disgust. ‘Yeah, well, I’ve never heard of him so he can’t be that big.’ He fixed Josie with a stern, big-brother look. ‘So do you want me to get him to stop?’