Sarah Lean - 3 Book Collection

“I don’t want to be deaf and blind,” he spelled.

“But you can hear some things.”

He smiled. “Once I heard a mouse.”

I didn’t know if he really meant that he heard it with his ears. I could see him remembering. He opened his palm as if it sat there, quivering. It wasn’t there in his hand, but it was there, in his mind and heart. He lowered his hand to the floor, let it go, let it run and hide.

“What did it sound like?” I spelled.

“Like a tiny bit of fear.”

I imagined it trembling, its heart beating faster and faster. I tried to imagine how Sam heard it. But his hearing was mysterious, buried somewhere deep inside him.

“Its heart beats 500 times a minute,” he spelled.

I sensed the quivering terror of its fragile life.

“Listen,” he said.

He leaned his ear against the wall. I pressed my ear. I heard the crackle of my hair, and then the silence of the still wall. I felt the tiny thumping of the mouse’s anxious heart.

Sam tapped, “Can you feel how brave it is too?”

But he didn’t seem to be talking about the mouse any more.

30.

SAM HAD TO REST FOR A COUPLE OF DAYS, BUT it gave me time to practise the deaf-blind alphabet. It had been raining in bucketloads, but now the sky was clear, the grass still glittering with the fallen rain.

I spelled on Mrs Cooper’s hand, “Can we go to the common?”

“Clever girl,” she said. “You learn fast. Go on then, just for a little while.”

She made us take the puffer and the alarm clock and raincoats. We took snacks and drinks, and I took the alphabet sheet so I could feel-talk to Sam.

I pushed Sam out of the front door across the open grass, up and down the slopes and between the overhanging bushes. We crawled through the crumbled wall at Swan Lake.

“What’s there?” Sam spelled on my hand.

Slowly I spelled what I could see. I told him all the things Dad said as if it was still alive and people were strolling round the lake and a little boy was pulling a boat on a long piece of string and jumping on the back of the train as it whistled through the trees.

“What else?” Sam spelled.

I put my thumb and finger at either end of Sam’s pointing finger, touched his fourth finger, put the side of my fist on his palm. It spells dog. I heard the soft crackles of pine needles as Homeless limped through the trees by the black silent lake. His head was hanging down, his fur mucky, dried blood around a big scratch across his nose. Then I saw the harsh graffiti words sprayed on the ticket office door, the splinters in the wood where someone had tried to scratch it off. I saw the charred black sheets and ash left from Jed’s burnt newspaper bed. I was worried Jed might be hurt too and that Homeless had been left all alone.

I smoothed Homeless down, rubbed him gently; I washed his face with water from the lake and kissed his sad face. I let Sam know Homeless was hurt, spelled, “I promised your mum,” and made him wait at the edge while I waded into the lake with Homeless and he swam for a while as if the water was healing him. We held Homeless in our arms by the side of the lake with his damp head across our laps and covered him in a blanket of ferns.

I stroked Homeless, felt his warmth through the wet fur. His tail swished gently against the bracken. I kept Sam’s hand in mine and spelled everything I could see. Almost everything.

She was sitting further along, high up on the clay bank, bright and real. Mum turned and looked at me. “Mum,” I said in my mind, “Homeless needs to come and live with us.”

Her eyes glittered.

I don’t know why I didn’t go over. I don’t know why I didn’t reach out to touch her. Instead I wrapped my arms round Homeless, felt how strong he was. In my full heart I said, “You know what, Mum? This dog reminds me of you.”

Her warm breathy laugh caught in the breeze, scattered in the clearing above the lake. A heron took off from its craggy perch on the broken trees at the centre of the lake; its wide wings soared above the trees and it was gone.

Sam spelled gently on my hand, “You have to find a way to keep him, look after him.”

Mum smiled brightly at Sam. If he could see, he would have known she was looking straight at him and he was looking straight at her.

But we had to leave. We gave Homeless our snacks and then he lay down by the ticket office and rested his head on his paws. He watched us go without wagging his tail. I wanted to promise him I’d find a way, but I didn’t know how to do it on my own.

Sam is the best friend anyone could have. He’s like an angel from another world, and as he held my arm while we walked away, he was reading my heart, guiding me.

“I’ll help you,” he spelled on my hand. “But you’re going to have to tell me everything.”

31.

I TOOK SAM TO THE SHED.

“What’s this?” Sam said. It was Dad’s guitar, zipped up in a canvas guitar-shaped bag.

“Dad doesn’t play any more,” I tapped. “He said it’s broken.”

Sam opened the zip and ran his fingers along the strings, leaning his left ear near. And then he found what was wrong; the plectrum in the bottom of the bag was snapped in two pieces, like a broken heart.

I pinned up a photograph of Mum holding me when I was a baby, looking at me, laughing, loving. I pinned it next to the new photograph of Homeless.

Then I told Sam. Sometimes you had to explain things to Sam that he had never heard of before. Sometimes he seemed to know things with his own secret brilliant heart and understanding.

“What do you think is out there?” I spelled.

“Washing line—” Sam tapped.

“No, out there, in space.”

Sam frowned. “What, like heaven?” he tapped.

“Maybe.”

“You must have some idea, or you wouldn’t ask me.”

I like what Sam spelled; it just shows how clever he is.

He closed his eyes and spread his arms out. He found my face and put his hand over my eyes. I heard sounds: faraway footsteps, faraway cars, faraway birds. I heard all of the everyday things and they made me feel safe.

“Sometimes I wonder if the stars are people,” I spelled.