Sweet Sound of Silence

by Melanie Dawn

  My eyes grew wide. I shuffled back a step or two. Was it? I didn’t think so.

  Vivian burst out with a booming laugh. “It is! I knew it.” Shaking her head, she said, “I sure do feel sorry for her though. She’s got a big wall to climb to get you to open up.”

  She was right. There was no way I was ready to open up to anyone yet. My shoulders slumped as I took the fresh glass of Cheerwine from Vivian’s hand.

  “Don’t you worry,” she assured me. “When she scales that wall, she’ll be a hero to all of us.” She gently placed her hand on my arm. “Because I know behind that wall is something spectacular.”

  I glanced down at Vivian’s hand. Her fingers, with their freshly painted bright red nails, lightly tapped my skin. It was the first time she’d ever touched me. Her warm smile reminded me of my own mother’s smile, genuine and caring. I hesitated a moment, but found the courage to place my hand on top of hers, assuring her of my gratitude.

  Vivian’s smile grew wider as she looked down at my rough and calloused hand covering hers. Peering back up at me, her eyes were filled with tears. She said quietly, “You hang in there, honey. The words will come when the time is right.”

  I gently squeezed her hand then released it, walking back toward my table. I spent the rest of the night completely off my game, miscalculating my shots and missing the pockets. As much as I hated to admit it, Vivian was right. It was about a girl—a girl I didn’t deserve.

  I DIDN’T TELL Gia about the kiss. I didn’t want her to give me hell about it. So I spent the night, tossing and turning, reliving the ache all over again—the ache of desire, the ache of rejection, the ache of the unknown. When I got up the next morning, I knew the best therapy for me would be to spend a little time with someone who knew a thing or two about life.

  Gloria, who’d easily become my favorite patient at Glenbrook due to our common love of classic literature, greeted me with a wide grin when she saw me. “Hi, precious,” she said in that sweet Southern drawl. “How are you? Did you bring Mr. Darcy with you today?”

  I smiled at her. “I’m doing great, and yep—” patting the book I held in my hand, “—I sure did. How are you feeling?”

  Gloria reached up, rubbing her forehead with her bony, wrinkled fingers. “Not so good, child. Feeling a little weak today. But, I’ll be alright.” She glanced at the book in my hand. “Now, where were we?” she asked, as I slid the stool close to her bed and plopped down on it.

  “We had gotten to the part where Elizabeth was visiting Mr. Darcy’s estate,” I said with a wicked grin.

  She nodded. “Ah, yes. A changed Darcy.”

  I opened the book and began to read aloud. Gloria’s bright blue eyes danced with pleasure, soaking in every word. Every now and then, she’d smile and interject her thoughts on the story or Mr. Darcy. The longer I read, the more quiet Gloria became. She’d leaned her head back against the pillow with her eyes closed. When she finally spoke, her comment jarred me from the fictional world, and my eyes darted to hers.

  “Ish punny how….mush… Mir Darsh… Darsh…” Gloria was struggling. Her eyes were wide, but her lip drooped on one side.

  “Gloria? Are you okay?” I asked, feeling panic welling up.

  “Yesh… I—”

  I didn’t wait for her to finish, I slammed the book down on her bedside table and ran for the door. “Nurse!” I yelled. Frantic, I stumbled toward the nurse’s station. “Nurse! Gloria Hawkley… she’s… something’s wrong!”

  Several nurses ran toward her room, closing the door behind them. I paced the floor, hoping she was going to be okay. A doctor arrived shortly after. Several nurses came in and out of her room, but no one would tell me anything. I leaned on the wall outside her room, tears sliding down my cheeks… fear coursing through my body.

  I don’t know how long I stood there. Eventually, I slid down against the wall and crouched on the floor, waiting. The last nurse finally left her room.

  I hopped up. “Nurse? Any news?” I pleaded.

  “Mrs. Hawkley is going to be fine. She’s resting easy now. We are keeping an eye on her. She’ll probably be back to her old self in no time. Her family will be here shortly.”

  “Can I go in?” I asked, glancing into her room and seeing her frail body covered by the stark, white blankets of the hospital bed.

  With a nod, the nurse said, “Sure. Go ahead.”

  I stepped into Gloria’s room, hearing the beep of her monitor and her heavy breathing from sedation of the meds they’d given her. Sitting down on the stool, I reached for her hand.

  “Everything’s going to be okay, Gloria,” I whispered, tears pooling in my eyes. “We’ll finish reading about Mr. Darcy when you wake up, okay?”

  She lay still, steadily breathing in and out. Her gray hair matted to her head on one side. Her wrinkled skin hung loosely on her face, revealing deep laugh lines and crow’s feet. What a happy woman, content with life. I could only hope to be as happy and content as she seemed to be at that age.

  Continuing to hold her hand, I softly sang some of her favorite hymns. On the third verse of Amazing Grace, a middle-aged couple walked into the room with Ryder ambling along behind them.

  I leapt to my feet. Ryder’s eyes widened at the sight of me standing by his grandmother’s bed side. He took a step back and ripped his gaze away from mine.

  In response, I turned my attention toward his parents. “Mr. and Mrs. Hawkley?” I asked, reaching a hand out to shake theirs.

  Mr. Hawkley looked down his nose at me. “Who are you?”

  I glanced toward Ryder, who kept his eyes trained on the floor. Look at me. Please. Don’t make this awkward.

  “Oh, I’m Alexis. Alexis Honeycutt. I… I volunteer here. I was with your mother when she started showing symptoms. The nurses wouldn’t really tell me anything, but I’m guessing she had a mini-stroke.”

  “Transient ischemic attack,” Mr. Hawkley barked his medical terminology at me as if I were less than human.

  Ignoring her husband’s rudeness, Ryder’s mother reached out and grasped my hand. “Thank you so much. I’m so glad you were with her.”

  Mr. Hawkley continued to stare at me as if I were a fly he’d like to swat.

  I tried to break the ice a little. “I go to school with Ryder.”

  “Hmph,” he grunted as he veered around me and headed toward his mother’s bedside. Ignoring me entirely, he glared at Ryder, “Son, this is unacceptable. I placed Nona G. here so you could spend more time with her, not some piddly, little—” he wrinkled his nose in disgust “—candy striper.”

  My mouth fell open. Ryder’s eyes flew up, shooting invisible daggers across the room toward his father.

  “Dan…” Ryder’s mother warned her husband. She shook her head. “I’m so sorry… Alexis, right?”

  I gave a curt nod in her direction, but stalked past her. My lip quivered with rage. I didn’t know why I had this sudden urge to protect Ryder, but I could feel the adrenaline coursing through me, flushing my cheeks. “For your information, sir, I’ve seen Ryder on more than one occasion sitting by Gloria’s bedside. Which is more than I can say for you.”

  Mr. Hawkley’s piercing eyes ripped through me. “Gloria?” he snarled, jutting his chin. “Didn’t your parents ever teach you any manners, little girl? You may refer to my mother as Mrs. Hawkley.”

  “Dan, please,” his mother interjected, shaking her head.

  I clenched my jaw. My arm muscles quivered as I folded them across my chest. I could feel my heart beating wildly as heat rushed throughout my body. “Your mother,” I sneered, “asked me to call her Gloria.”

  Mr. Hawkley peered at me over his black framed glasses that rode low on the bridge of his nose. Grunting his disapproval, he fumed, “Mrs. Hawkley needs her rest. Please see your way out.” He held his palm face up toward the door, indicating my exit.

  I glanced at Ryder, whose face held a pinched expression. His jaw twitched as he glared at his father. Fists were tight by
his sides.

  Throwing my own harsh gaze toward Mr. Hawkley, I stalked over to the table beside Gloria’s bed and snatched up my book. Without another word, I spun on my heels and breezed past Ryder’s mother, who couldn’t look me in the eye. I caught Ryder’s eye as I blew past him. His cheeks were red. I assumed it was partly from anger, partly from embarrassment. Through his apologetic gaze, his eyes sought forgiveness for his father’s appalling behavior.

  I swiped at the tears that had begun to pool in my eyes and took a deep breath. Gritting my teeth, I marched past him, trying to ignore the knot in my stomach.

  I COULDN’T BELIEVE that Alexis had gathered the courage to stand up to my father like that, and I’d immediately gained a newfound respect for her because of it. I’d tried to convey my apologies to her for my father’s deplorable behavior, but she’d flown past me so fast that she’d barely even looked at me.

  Glaring back toward my father, I fought back the rage that was roiling through my body. How dare he treat someone as kind and compassionate as Alexis that way?

  “Dan,” my mother hissed as soon as Alexis was out of sight, “how could you?”

  My father shrugged, returning an indignant expression toward my mother. “How could I what?” he challenged, seemingly unaware of my restraint to punch him in the jaw for being so rude.

  My mother placed a weary hand on the end of Nona G.’s bed. “Alexis was here, Dan. If she hadn’t been here, you don’t know what might have happened. You should have been thanking her, not insulting her.”

  My father folded his arms over his chest. “I’m not going to apologize for putting a classless girl in her place,” he insisted.

  That’s it. I’m done. I shoved Nona G.’s rolling bed tray out of my way. It slammed against the wall with such force that my mother jumped. “Ryder?” she yelped, glancing at me as if she’d forgotten I’d been standing there.

  As I took a step toward my father, she recognized the fury in my eyes. “Stop!” she cried. “What are you doing?” The pleading look in her eye and her gentle, but firm hand on my chest caused me to freeze. I heaved against the pressure of her palm, feeling my nostrils flare with each panting breath. She shook her head, begging me without words. I glared at her as she tried to soothe away my anger with a soft, reassuring hand that swept back and forth over my shirt.

  Finally relenting, I released my tight fists and retreated. My mother’s wistful gaze followed me until I spun on my heels and reached for the door handle. As I walked out the door, my mother’s biting words to my father rang in my ears. “You’re losing him, Dan. I’m losing him.”

  I let the door slam closed behind me and didn’t bother to look back to see if my father would come chasing after me. I already knew better. Instead, I sank down in my car and drove away, a heaviness weighing me down in the pit of my stomach.

  FOR DAYS I tried to put my run-in with Mr. Hawkley out of mind. If his father’s behavior was any indication of how he treated his son, then my heart broke for Ryder.

  As I sat in English class, awaiting the professor’s arrival, I just couldn’t forget the look of contempt Ryder shot his father when Mr. Hawkley had insulted me. It was the look of a lion, prepared to protect his pride.

  Interrupting my thoughts, a girl in my English class leaned across the aisle. “I heard there was gonna be a huge foam party on Fraternity Row Thursday night.”

  I remembered hearing the guys talking about some big foam party, but I hadn’t heard exactly when it was happening. “Sounds fun,” I told her. “Are you going?”

  She nodded, her ponytail swishing back and forth on her head. “Yeah, it sounds awesome. I’ve never been to a foam party.”

  “Me neither,” I said. It sounded crazy. Dancing in four feet of wet, sudsy foam. I’d seen photos of college foam parties on social media, but I hadn’t actually attended one.

  After class, I met up with Gia for lunch. “I heard there’s gonna be a foam party. Did Dane tell you anything about it?” I asked.

  “Oh yeah, I remember him mentioning it a few weeks ago. This Thursday, right?” She bit down on her toasted pita triangle slathered with hummus.

  I nodded. “I guess we’ll be bathing with about a thousand other people that night.”

  Swallowing her bite, she crinkled her nose. “When you put it like that… ewww.”

  I shrugged, picking up my grilled chicken sandwich. “I’m just sayin’…”

  “It’ll still be a blast, though,” she said, grinning.

  BY THE TIME we showed up Thursday night, the party was in full swing. People were everywhere, covered in massive amounts of white, puffy foam. The foam pit was full, at least four feet deep in most places. Bodies were writhing and sloshing around in the frothy, wet spume to the beat of the loud, thumping song being played through the speakers.

  “Oh my god! This is crazy!” Brynlee shouted over the music.

  Looking around, we searched the crowd for Lance and Dane. We found them, covered head to toe in suds, playing chicken, in the pool of foam. Dane was on Lance’s shoulders, fighting Fletcher who was on Moss’s shoulders. Moss was trying to hold onto his red plastic cup without spilling it.

  “That’s a recipe for disaster,” I mumbled as Gia grabbed my hand and headed toward the sudsy pit.

  “What are we waiting for?” she shouted. “Let’s get in there!” She dragged me through the crowd toward the guys.

  By the time we’d reached them, Moss had spilled his beer and Dane had been declared the winner.

  Dane grabbed Gia for a victory kiss the moment he saw her. They quickly disappeared under the fresh layer of foam that the large cannons above our heads were dumping.

  Girls all around us screamed, throwing their hands up to catch the flow of bubbles.

  Moss grabbed me around my waist. “We need to practice our dancing skills!” he yelled above the raucous noise.

  I laughed, wiping the soap off my face. “Yes, we do!”

  Before long, we were all dancing and grinding to the beat. Moss was a great dancer. He dug his hips into me and pumped side to side, dipping and swaying to the beat better than any guy I’d ever danced with before.

  He wrapped his arms around my waist, pulling me tight, when some drunk guy bumped into us, nearly pushing us backwards on our asses. “Watch it, dude,” he growled, as he shoved the guy’s shoulder.

  The guy turned around, glaring. Tim.

  “You again,” Tim snarled at Moss. Then he noticed me. “Alexis,” he said in a clipped voice with an odd look on his face.

  I smiled, remembering our last encounter at the coffee shop. “Hey, Tim.”

  Tim looked at Moss again, his expression unreadable. He gulped the rest of his drink then tossed the empty plastic cup into the crowd. Without another word, he pushed through the swells of foam and disappeared.

  “You know him?” Moss asked.

  “Barely,” I said.

  Moss shrugged and continued dancing with me. After a few more minutes, he said, “I think we’ll do just fine at that dance-a-thon.”

  I nodded. “Me too,” I said, smiling.

  Pointing toward the open door of the Theta Psi Chi house, Moss said, “I’m gonna go get another drink. Want one?”

  I shook my head. “No, thanks.”

  Lance had put Brynlee on his shoulders. She was waving her hands, trying to catch the fluffy balls foam floating down from the sky. Fletcher was dancing with some sorority chick sporting a skimpy bikini top and a pair of shorts that showed the bottom half of her ass. Gia and Dane were nowhere to be found. Drunk bodies were still writhing like mating earthworms in the barmy froth, and I suddenly felt very disgusted, realizing that I was covered in it. I needed to get out of there. And fast.

  “I’m going to go find Gia,” I yelled to Brynlee.

  “Want me to go with you?” she asked, looking down at me from Lance’s shoulders.

  I shook my head. “Nah.”

  “Okay,” she said, nodding. “Come find me later. I’
ll walk back to the dorms with you.”

  Wading out of the suds, I wiped the foam off my body and slung it to the ground. I walked into the Theta house but didn’t find her there, so I headed back outside. Someone on the front porch had said there was a bonfire on the street behind the SigUp house. Maybe she and Dane had gone to the bonfire. I went around the corner to walk through the alleyway. As soon as I’d stepped into the alley between the Theta Psi Chi and the SigUp houses, I felt a hand connect with my shoulder.

  “Alexis,” Tim’s voice rasped in the darkness.

  I spun around, looking up into his unsettling green eyes. “Tim,” I breathed, my voice catching in my throat.

  His voice was low, like a stern parent reprimanding a child. “You were dancing with Moss Hayes. I thought you said you had a boyfriend back home.”

  I swallowed, feeling like I’d just stuffed a spoonful of cotton into my throat. “I did… but… we aren’t together anymore.” Why did I feel like I had to explain myself to him?

  Tim stared down at me, piercing me with his beady eyes. “I thought we had a good thing going at the coffee shop.”

  I nodded quickly, glancing toward the street at the party-goers and wishing I had never decided to come this way. I really didn’t want to have to explain my way out of a date with Tim. “We did,” I said, biting my lip.

  Tim smiled, nearly in slow-motion. “Yes, we did,” he said. “But then I saw you dancing with Moss Hayes.” The look in his eye was malevolent.

  He took a step forward. I stepped back, bumping into the hard lap siding of the house. He leaned toward me and whispered, “You wasted no time getting cozy with another guy, huh?”

  “I… I…” The words wouldn’t come, as if my voice had been robbed. I suddenly felt very claustrophobic in that alleyway. It was the same way I felt that night in Southside when Deuce had me pinned in his room. I wanted to run, but my feet were planted to the cobblestones below. I could feel the thump of the bass from the party in my chest… or maybe that was just the pounding of my heart.