The Language of Silence (20 page)

Chapter
Forty-Three

Brett
:

I’m staring at myself in the mirror. I can see it written all over my face.

Defeat.

Lost.

Broken.

I have one hand braced against the sink, the other clutches a bottle of Vodka. I’m considering drinking it. I’m considering trying my mom’s way of coping. My mother who isn’t here. She’s been drinking for years. It has to have some benefit. Maybe it can numb the pain for a while, allow me to forget it all if only for a few hours. I can see the appeal in that.

He left us a stupid poem.

A poem.

He left me with no answers. Did I mean so little to him? Couldn’t he have given me something?
Is the poem supposed to be ironic? A big f-you to everyone who cared for him? I’m in no mood or shape to do some kind of freakin’ literary analysis.

I look at the bottle in my hand. I know it will change nothing. I shudder at the cliché nature of it all.

Did he want me to hate him? He certainly didn’t want me to understand.

I uncap the bottle.

My leg is bouncing up and down.

I look at myself again.

I should call Ed.

I press the bottle to my lips.

The liquid burns down my throat.

I
’m coughing. My eyes are watering.

I press the bottle to my lips again.

And again.

And again.

I don’t know when I started crying.

I stumble to my parents’ room. I want my mother.

I can hear my phone ringing.

The room is spinning.

My eyelids feel heavy.

I welcome the darkness.

Chapter Forty-Four

Ed:

I ring the doorbell again. I’m going to break up with Brett. It’s not going to be easy, but it’s the only thing that makes sense anymore. I love her. I know that. But like I’ve always known, I just can’t be with her.

Love is not always enough.

This will be good for her. She’ll get over me. I remember what she said about always remembering me, but she’s young. We’ve only been together a few months. She can move past this. She can move past me.

I
need
her to move past me.

It took me till the end of the day to realize she wasn’t in school yesterday.

I’m a jerk.

When the door opens, my breath catches inside my throat. She looks horrible. Her face is pale, her hair a mess, and her eyes are red. I think I see vomit on her t-shirt. She closes her eyes, shudders, and runs toward the bathroom.

This girl is a vomit machine.

I come inside the house and shut the door behind me. I can hear her retching behind the closed door. I grab a glass of water from the kitchen and a cool, wet rag. I open the do
or to the restroom only to find Brett laying her face against the tiled floor. I brush the hair from her forehead. I press the damp cloth against her face and neck. She reaches for my hand. She quickly sits up and begins to throw up again in the toilet.

It’s another half hour before she’s done. I help her upstairs to her bed.  We haven’t said a single word to each other. I can’t leave her. Not like this.

I find the bottle of Vodka in the upstairs bathroom. I empty it down the drain.

For a wild, crazy moment
, I abandon any notion of ending this. She seems so vulnerable. So helpless. But I only think on this for a moment, because if I stay with her, I’ll ruin her. I’m not a good person. I spent an hour today texting Evelyn, a girl I’m not sure I even like, rather than be there for the girl I love. 

I’ll have to do it. I just can’t do it tonight.

Once I think Brett is asleep, I move to go and call my mom and tell her I am going to miss our dinner plans. But Brett isn’t asleep.

“Tell me,” she whispers.

I clear my throat. I’ll even miss hangover Brett.

“Tell you what?” I run my fingers through her tangled hair, hoping to find some peace for both of us.

“I want to know three things you like about me.”

I chuckle.

She attempts a smile. “Come on. I’ve waited a long time. I have been very patient. Tell me.” She reaches up and grabs my hand, placing it over her rapidly beating heart.

I give her hand a squeeze. I don’t know why
, but my eyes prick with tears. “I like how stubborn you are, your ability to make your views known about everything, and fight for them. I like the way you sing to The Smiths. I could listen to you sing them every day. I like how you can look cute even after you puke. And let’s be honest, you puke a lot.”

“Awesome,” she says, rolling her eyes.

“I guess I just like you.”

“Good answer,” she replies. And the smile I love graces her face.

I shift so I am lying next to her on the bed. We fall back into silence.

“I want to go to the
spring formal,” she says.

“You do?”

She nods.  “Will you take me, Ed? I know it’s not your thing, but will you take me?”

The way she looks at me makes it impossible to say no. I tell her I will. I don’t ask why she wants to go so badly. I don’t tell her that it’s probably a promise I won’t be able to keep. I don’t tell her how much I love her, or how I keep thinking about having sex with Evelyn.

I just lay there and hold her hand.

Chapter
Forty-Five

Brett
:

I have made a promise to myself never to drink again. Seriously, I have. I intend on keeping it. Alcohol hasn’t done any good for anyone in my family. It didn’t even make me feel good. In fact, I felt like crap. For days.

My mom is home now. She’s very quiet and keeps to her room. I make a point of going to the store and getting her favorite junk food and magazines. I leave them in the kitchen for her. When I wake up in the morning, they’re gone. It’s the only sign she’s back in the house.

I had to ask my dad for the credit card to buy a dress for the formal. He quickly gave it to me, choosing to forget about my earlier transgressions. Back to pretending our family isn’t some kind of joke.

I’m done fighting it. I’m just going to let whatever happens happen. If I’m feeling down, I am going to let myself feel down. If I find some happiness, I am going to let myself feel happy. I refuse to question it anymore.

Yesterday, my math teacher had to call my name three times. I was lost in the memories of my brother. I had been thinking about last year when I watched him and Sophia go to the spring formal. He seemed happy. He came home that night and told me he enjoyed himself. He said it was mock-tastic.

I chose a light blue dress to wear to formal. It’s strapless and stops midway down my thigh. I have decided to wear my hair down. Nothing too fancy.
Very status-quo, but the only person I want to notice me is the one coming to pick me up.

I’m glad Ed
agreed to go with me tonight. If I have to suffer another two years of high school, I want some high school memories to think fondly of later in life. I’m sure it will be awkward, but I guess that’s how these things are supposed to go.

Except, I
’m starting to wonder if the boy plans on showing up at all. Ed’s late. I look at the clock on the microware for the billionth time. I have become a walking cliché. When did I become the girl that waits around for a boy? Feminism be screwed. I close my eyes and count to ten. I can find logic in this. I can.

He’s
only going for me. I’m sure he’s in no hurry to watch a bunch of people attempt to dance to whatever techno/dubstep song is climbing the charts.

I take a few more deep breaths to stem off the anger that has begun to move through me. Or maybe it’s not anger
—maybe it’s fear. I decide to kill time by finding my digital camera. I’ll make a point of taking a picture. Maybe my mom will want to see them one day.

Despite promising myself that I wouldn’t, I look at the clock again.
Ed is now an hour late. I try calling his cell phone, but he doesn’t answer. I grit my teeth and slam the phone against the kitchen counter. After pacing back and forth a bit, I snatch the phone back up and try calling again. I call over and over until the sound of his voicemail sets my nerves on edge.

I can hear my mom moving around upstairs. I wonder if she is anxious for me to lea
ve, so she can come downstairs and pretend this is still her house.

I try calling Ed again.

No answer.

He is two hours late.

He isn’t coming.

“Brett? Is that you?”
my mom calls hesitantly from the top of the stairs. I blink back the tears that want to fall. I hear her begin to slowly make her way down the steps. I begin to panic, scrambling to find where I put the car keys.

I can’t have her see me like this. Abandoned. Ditched. I can’t bear to watch her try and be a mother and fail miserably at it.

The minute my hands touch the keys, my mother appears in the kitchen. She doesn’t look haggard or worried. She looks like she spent the past month at the spa. Her eyes travel up and down me. She swallows and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. “You look very pretty tonight, Brett. Are you going to the formal?”

I manage to nod, but that’s all she gets from me. I exit as fast as I can, finding it so much easier to breath
e outside the place I’m supposed to consider a home. I cringe when I realize how much I am starting to sound like Ed.

I don’t try and call him again.
His absence is message enough. I’m sure I will feel the weight of this all later. I just don’t feel much of anything right now.

*
***

I linger outside of the cafeteria a little before I enter. I’m ashamed that I wonder what others will think of me attending the dance alone. I take a deep breath and welcome the noise that greets me as I open the doors.
It’s like a scene from the movie
Footloose
. Balloons everywhere, and considering the new trend is body painting, I swear there is actual glitter falling from the ceiling.

It’s so very, very loud.
I let the noise enter my brain and shut all the other voices out. It’s nice to let the waves of
whomp whomp
consume me. I’m not alone for very long. Everyone I know seems to stop by and say hello. Even Evelyn.

“You look great,” she yells over the music.
I offer her a small smile in return. “I see Ed’s not with you,” she says.

I nod.
She looks back at her bubble gum-glitter friends and motions that she’ll be right back. She pulls me toward the hallway, and I wonder what we could possibly talk about. Not anything more important than the cha-cha slide, at least.

She leans against a
locker and pulls out a tube of lip gloss from her clutch purse. She reapplies and then raises an eyebrow as if to signal a response from me. I nod, affirming she still looks good enough to make it on multiple pages of the yearbook.

Evelyn sighs and crosses her arms.
“He told you, huh?”

“Yeah he told me,” I reply, having no idea what she’s talking about. My ears are still ringing.

“Look. I warned him, you know. I told him he should break up with you. Even before it happened, I asked him to do it. He just couldn’t.”

I’m starting to feel something now.
Flashbacks of heaving all the contents of my stomach into the toilet while Ed held my hair are rushing back to me. It’s a similar feeling that controls me now. I just don’t know why I’m feeling it.

Evelyn’s just staring at me waiting to say something. She sighs again, and I realize this is her way of seeking absolution from me. She feels bad for something.

And then I know.

“You two hooked up?” I ask
shakily.

I don’t wait for her to answer. I walk down the hallway toward my locker.
I don’t even know how I’m walking. How strange the brain is. It still knows what to do when it’s so preoccupied with something else. Something terrible. Something I should have seen coming. I’m shivering. It’s freezing in this building. This darn building. My locker is far from the dance and even farther from the life inside of it.

I want to cry, but I can’t.

I open my locker and pull out my cardigan. I press the cardigan against my mouth. For a minute I just want to suffocate.

Chapter
Forty-Six

Ed
:

I just ridiculously hoped Brett would avoid me at school, but she doesn’t.

I never made it to her house to pick her up for the dance. I could hardly look at myself in the mirror since hooking up with Evelyn, let alone get in some stupid rent-a-tux and pretend I was some joyous teenager.

I should have been a man, brave. I should have been the one to tell her. I shouldn’t have let things get so far.

Disjointed.

Ruined.

When Evelyn asked me to come over the day before the dance, I knew we were going to have sex. I didn’t even think about not going over there. Isn’t that sad? Pathetic? When she opened the door
, she flashed me that damn knowing smile. For a brief second, I wanted to run away. I wanted to drive straight to Brett’s house and ask her to leave with me. I wanted to get out of this God-forsaken town.

But it’s not the town’s fault. The town didn’t make me do the things I did. I can see that now. A town is just a place
. It’s the people in it who are screwed up.

I have been blaming everyone for my screwed up existence for seventeen years. My absent father. My dead friend. This town. It’s what’s inside me that’s screwed up. It’s me.

Evelyn got the drop on me.

Not that I blame her.

I knew who she was. She didn’t hide it from me.

Even before I had her shirt off, she whispered into my ear that I should call Brett. I should end things. It would be worse for Brett if I did this before breaking up with her. I just pressed my lips harder against Evelyn’s in order to get her to shut up.

After she asked me why I had come over, I told her it was because I didn’t know the difference between love and hate. And maybe she didn’t either.

I haven’t talk to Evelyn since, and she hasn’t called me.

I had to force myself go to school. I was going to have to face Brett someday, and it seemed better, smarter to just get it over with. Besides, some insane part of me wanted to see her, needed to see her. Make sure I hadn’t damaged her beyond repair. I wasn’t sure if she knew about Evelyn. The moment I saw her changed that. I could see it written all over her face.

Accusation.

Regret.

Hate.

She looked like she was going to turn the other way, but she went still. She took a deep breath and lifted her head up. She walked right toward me, not hesitating to look me right in the eyes. And then she was gone. She moved past me like I was nothing.

I felt like nothing.

I had no right to complain.

It’s what I wanted. Right?

****

             
Two guys in my Spanish class are talking about Brett. One of them wants to ask her out. He looks quickly back at me. Like I can stop him. I guess they figure if Brett can slum it with me, anyone has a chance.

The
kid hovers around Brett’s locker after class. I watch as he leans over her. Her hands tightly grip onto the straps of her book bag, but her face is all smiles and bright eyes. I’m hoping she will tell him yes. But I see the word “no” issue from her lips. I can’t actually hear it. All I hear are all the lies I have told lately. Lies to Evelyn. Lies to Brett. Lies to myself. It makes me feel sick.

After school. I have nowhere to go. No friends. I have pretty much ruined all that. For some reason
, I find myself driving to the bus station. I buy a ticket for Sunday.

I’m gonna run.