Chapter 35

"He wanted to know why I had finished my test so early and why all of the answers were correct. Except I am assuming that they were all correct since he thought I had been cheating."

"How did you find the test so easy?"

Maya in her head had already guessed the answer to this question and some part of her told her that she was right.

While Maya already knew the answer both Abby and Mia had no clue which was why Mia was happy that Abby had asked.

"I am fluent in French."

"If you are fluent in French then how come you are in our class. Why didn't they put you in a Spanish class?"

"I am also fluent in Spanish."

Everyone sitting around the table was shocked. Maya was the least shocked out of the three.

"Can you speak any other languages?"

"I can speak Russian."

Mia and Abby had resurfaced out of their shock and now had impressed looks on their faces.

Maya knew sign language. One of her older cousins was deaf so he had taught it to her years ago. If Ali also knew sign language, then they could have their own secret conversations and nobody would ever know what they were saying!

"Do you know sign languages?"

She had signed it and Ali signed her response.

"Yes."

Both were grinning like maniacs and thinking of the endless possibilities this presented them with.

Mia and Abby were no longer shocked and had started to think of Ali as their language expert.

"You two can speak sign language?"

Mia had asked the most obvious question, but Abby gave her the answer instead of Maya or Ali.

"Well, you can't really speak sign language but yes it seems they can."

She then turned to Ali and said,

"Maya has been trying to teach us two sign language for ages, but we could never pick it up. How do you know it?"

Ali liked these people and knew that lies with start to chase her if she started to tell them.

"I honestly have no idea. I have always been able to speak English and Russian, but I only found out I could speak other languages when somebody spoke to me in them."

Of course, it was Mia and Abby that only half believed her. Ali was starting to think that either Maya was very trusting in people or she could read minds as Maya always seemed to be the one to believe her.

Wanda didn't walk over during lunch as she was trying to give her little sister space since she didn't think that Ali would find it cool to constantly have her checking up on her even if she really wanted to.

They talked about their future classes for the rest of lunch before the bell rang.

Ali had Music and then Drama as her last two lessons of the day.

These two lessons were with the same people that were in your tutor group so both Mia and Abby wouldn't be in their class.

To get to music they had to walk out of the hall and into the corridor before turning left. They then had to walk down the corridor until they came to a door on the right that said M2.

They both waited outside it as they honestly had no idea what to expect after their lesson with Monsieur Dupont.

The teacher seemed to have either have seen or heard them from his desk as he told them to come in.

He had a booming voice and was quite rounded. The suit that he was wearing made him look like a teacher from the days when the cane was still in use.

Unfortunately, he already had a sitting plan on the board, so the two girls took their seats.

Luckily, they were only a table apart so this would be a good experiment to see if they could actually get away with and be able to communicate across the classroom.

The rest of the class arrived pretty quickly after that. Ali counted herself lucky that whoever was sitting next to her was ill since it meant she got the whole desk to herself.

"My name is Mr Williams, and I am your music teacher for the year."

Ali quickly looked over at Maya to make sure she was watching her before signing,

"He does realise that we are in a room full of keyboards, right? This isn't exactly an art class."

Ali could hear Maya's snickering so knew that she had understood her. The teacher hadn't even noticed what was going on.

Unfortunately, just like in French he handed around a test to gauge where people were in the class in terms of their music.

Ali didn't have much time for sign language then, as unfortunately she actually had to concentrate. She had no clue what half the stuff on the page meant.

Once she had reached the second page and still didn't know any of it, she had practically given up so she decided to use her connection to Wanda.

"Wanda do you know what any of this is?"

She showed her the memory of the second and first page before waiting for a response."

"You do realise that I dropped Music right and that there was a reason I dropped it."

"So, you can't help me?"

"Sorry Ali. Also, if I helped you wouldn't that be classed as cheating?"

"I would do the same for you..."

"You refused to change my English Literature grade."

"Okay fair point."

"Good luck Ali!"

Ali almost groaned out loud but caught herself just in time.

In the end she just tried to find the questions where she could either guess the answer or she understood actually understood the question and filled in those.

The end of the lesson could not come soon enough, and Ali was flooded with relief when their teacher told them to pack up.

Their Drama room was M2 and right next to their last class.

Nobody was in the classroom and the door was locked so they all waited outside.

It seemed like the class had saved up everything they wanted to talk about during the hour of silence and were saying it all now. This made the corridor extremely noisy and there was no way that, without shouting the person next to you, you would be able to hear what you were saying.

That was why Maya and Ali were signing to each other. They were mainly talking about how difficult the music test was, but Maya soon moved the conversation on to something else.

"Are you walking home because maybe we could walk together?"

Ali knew that Natasha and Clint were going to pick her up but also knew that if she told Wanda what she wanted then she would make sure that they wouldn't pick her up right outside the school.

"Which gate do you walk out of?"

Since Natasha and Clint were going to bring the car it didn't really matter much which gate it was. All it would mean was either a longer or shorter drive home.

"The back gate as it is my easiest way home, but I can also go out of the front gate."

"I walk out of the back gate too."

They were still smiling at each other when a teacher with blond hair came down the corridor a second later. She had a set of keys in one hand and in the other she had a coffee cup that obviously contained some sort of drink. Ali couldn't be sure that it was coffee though.

"Morning munchkins."

Ali and Maya both looked at one another slightly confused. Not even their parents called them that and yet this woman was a teacher.

Once their teacher had unlocked the door the whole class entered the room.

The whole room was bare and there weren't any desks apart from the teachers one at the front of the room. In the corner of the room though were stacks of chairs.

"Alright pop squeaks I would like you to take a chair each and make a u shape around the room."

There was still some chatter in the room as they were doing this but not nearly as much as there was in the corridor.

Once everyone had got a chair and sat down the teacher started to speak.

"I am Mrs Miller and now so that I can learn a bit about you all and your names we are going to go around the room. You have to first say your full name and then say one thing about yourself."

The teacher pointed to a boy on the other side of the classroom to start. After he had spoken it continued down the line.

Maya had already thought of something to say but Ali hadn't. In the end she just decided to repeat something she had already said,

"My name is Ali Barton and I like rock climbing."

Ali was at the end of the U and was the closet person to the teachers desk so expected the teacher to stop the game and give out her next instructions. Instead, though the teacher turned to her and said,

"Do you have a sister that would now be in Year 11 called Wanda?"

Ali nodded her head a little confused but decided to let Wanda into her head to see what was happening though she told her to be quiet.

"I remember her. She brought 3 members of her family to parents evening in her first year and while they were waiting, I couldn't understand a word of what they were saying and by the look on your sisters face neither could she."

Ali could feel Wanda blush even though she was all the way on the other side of the building.

Mrs Miller had a small smile on her face which matched Ali's.

"That's probably because my sister never managed to pick up Russian."

Everyone in the room already knew that Ali could speak Russian from the game earlier in in their tutor room so all of them looked slightly bored.

The teacher nodded her head in understanding.

"That's probably it."

After that the lesson properly started though it wasn't really a proper lesson since they had already been told that those would start next lesson.

This lesson they got introduced to the game Splat.

They had to make a circle in the middle of the room.

One person was the caller and they had to call a student's name. Once that student's name had been called, they had to duck down before the two people either side of them pointed their hands, which were put into the shape of a gun, at each other and shouted splat.

Whoever shouted splat the quickest won and stayed in the game while the other had to sit down. If the person called didn't duck down quick enough then they would be out.

The game was extremely fun, but it took up most of them lesson.

Ali won the first game without a doubt as her reflexes were so much quicker than anyone else's in the room from all that training with her Mamma.

For the second game, Ali got asked to be the person to call on people since she had won the last game. She had been given a sheet with people's pictures and names on it, but she didn't use it as she had already memorised everyone in the room's names.

Unfortunately, they didn't have time to finish the second game, but Maya made it to the last 5.

They all quickly stacked away their seats and collected their bags which they had put behind their seats.

Maya and Ali were smiling as they left the classroom and headed towards the back gate where Ali had entered with Peter earlier on in the day.

Ali had already told Wanda that she was going to walk with Maya at least part of the way back and Wanda had promised her that she would tell both her Mamma and Uncle what was going on.

Maya had pulled out some AirPods from her pocket once they were outside the gate and offered one to Ali.

"Would you like to listen to some of my songs. I promise you that this is the best music that you will ever hear."

"Songs? I have never listened to those before."

The shocked look on Maya's face told her that that was not normal. Ali really didn't want to have to ask any questions as to why she had never listened to any songs and so was relieved when Maya said,

"Well, I feel honoured to be the first one to educate you on song choices."

Maya was grinning at her and Ali took the AirPod before putting it in her ear.

She saw Maya place the other one in her own ear and then take out her phone from her inside blazer pocket.

As soon as Maya had clicked start on a song Ali could hear it through the AirPod.

It wasn't particularly loud as Ali could still hear everything that was going on in the outside world but she, for some reason, started to feel really happy just listening to the music.

"Ed Sheeran does amazing songs. This one is one of my favourites, it's called Galway Girl."

Maya could tell from the smile on her friends face that she was enjoying the song and decided to ask her Mum latter that day if she could invite Ali over to her house so that she could show her more songs.

By the end of that song, they had made it halfway down the road that their school was on and Ali now knew practically every word to it.

Unfortunately for her, she only got to listen to half of the next song that was called Castle On The Hill before she spotted the family car parked a few metres in front of them.

Now Ali could completely ignore it and carry-on walking with Maya, but she didn't want to annoy her Mamma so sighed to herself before handing the AirPod back to Maya.

"That's my mum's car but would you like to meet each other here at 8:15 before school so that we can walk in together?"

"I would love to! What's your number?"

After they had swapped numbers Ali opened the back door of the car and was just about to get in when Maya spoke.

"The Album is called Divide and it is by Ed Sheeran if you want to try and find the songs."

Ali smiled at her new friend before saying just as she hopped in the car

"I will listen to those tonight! See you tomorrow!"

Just before Ali closed the door, she heard Maya shout goodbye.

Turning around to grab her seatbelt and put it on Ali noticed that there were already three people in the car when Ali had only expected to see two.