مهمانی

CHAPTER FOUR

The party

Later I was looking at all my clothes when Mum came into my bedroom. I had a green dress in one hand and a short black skirt in the other hand. I wasn’t happy with the dress or the skirt.

Mum took a blue jumper from the bed and gave it to me. ‘The weatherman on the television says that it will snow,’ she said. Then she smiled and kissed me, and I felt bad that she didn’t know about Jim. I decided to tell her as soon as there was anything to tell. If there was anything to tell.

It was almost spring, but it was still very cold. Ron and I stopped to buy some drinks on the way to the party and by the time we got to Pete’s house, it was beginning to snow.

Ron looked at me as he waited at the door. ‘OK?’ he asked.

I smiled at him. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m OK.’

A girl opened the door and said hello to Ron. I didn’t know her. She was very pretty and she was wearing a nice red dress. I smiled at her and followed Ron into the house.

Inside, we went into the kitchen. It was full of people. All the girls were wearing short dresses or skirts. I was the only one wearing a jumper and jeans.

Ron and I took our drinks into the living room. This room was full of people too. And it was hot - very hot -but I couldn’t take my jumper off because I wasn’t wearing a T-shirt under it. The jumper was a mistake, but I tried to forget about it.

‘The music’s very loud,’ I said to Ron.

‘How do you know that?’ he asked and smiled.

‘Because I can feel it in my legs,’ I told him, and it was true. It was like my hand on Mum’s guitar. The vibration of the music was travelling from the floor into my feet. Then it was going right up my legs and into my body.

A man came up to us. It was Pete. He said something to Ron, then looked right at me. Pete knows I’m deaf of course. ‘Hello, Sam’ I saw his mouth saying.

‘Where’s Jim?’ I wanted to ask, but I didn’t. I just said hello and smiled. Pete talked to us for a while, then he went to change the music. Ron talked to me. People in the room watched us talking with our hands. People often watch when I use sign language. It’s interesting for them, I think.

Ron told me about the fun he was having with his new friends in London. He talked a lot about a girl called Mary.

‘Is Mary your girlfriend?’ I asked him, and his face went a bit red.

‘At the moment she’s just a friend,’ he said. ‘But I want her to be my girlfriend.’

I thought about Jim. Where was he? Why wasn’t he here? The party was in his house!

Ron often knows what I’m thinking. ‘He’ll come soon,’ he told me.

Around ten o’clock, Ron was talking to some other friends across the room. I felt very hot in my jumper, so I decided to go into the garden for a short time.

Outside, everything was white. There was snow everywhere, and it was beautiful. The garden looked like a big white cake, and I was the first person to walk on it.

Or, I thought I was the first person to walk on it. But after a few moments, I saw that I wasn’t. I could see empty places in the snow made by shoes - footprints. But I couldn’t see anyone.

But I knew someone was there because just then something very cold hit the side of my face. Snow!