Silent

by Sara Alva

  I led the charge, somehow positive he would in fact be in his room. It wasn’t really a giant leap of faith.

  “Seb!” I burst into the little cabin. “Hey, it’s me, Alex!”

  The creak of bedsprings came from the end of the small hallway. I dashed into the room there and immediately spotted the lump under the blankets of the bottom bunk.

  “Seb!” Unable to contain myself, I pulled back the covers rather than waiting for him to emerge. “Hey, man, I’m here.”

  His eyes met mine, and for an instant, his pupils widened into pools of pure black surprise. But just as quickly, the curtain of blankness snapped over them once again.

  Suzie had entered the room.

  “Still sleeping during the day, Seb? You know the other kids have been hoping you’d join them outside for soccer on Saturdays.”

  He didn’t look at her, but he sat up slowly.

  “Well, Alex wanted to check up on you. I’m sure the next time he comes he’d like to see you getting out more and enjoying everything this place has to offer.”

  The blanket fell from his chest, and I stood back a few inches, mostly to resist the overpowering urge to gather him in a hug. From that viewpoint, I could see the color in his skin had started to fade, leaving him pale again. He also seemed thinner, his collarbones jutting out and his eyes even more immense than usual in his drawn face.

  “Shit,” I murmured, resting my hand against his arm. “I don’t think he’s been eating right. Doesn’t he look really skinny?”

  Suzie nodded. “I’ve heard he’s been having some difficulties adjusting…like you were at Eleanor’s. Maybe you could encourage him to start eating a bit more?”

  Guilt swirled in the acid of my own empty stomach. How could I have let Seb down like this? He looked terrible, he obviously wasn’t fitting in here, and the whole time he’d been suffering I’d thought of no one but myself.

  Forgetting Suzie was in the room, I put my other arm on his shoulder. “Hey, you okay?” I asked softly. He tilted his head down and some hair fell over his eyes. “And you need a haircut, huh.”

  A squeak startled me, and I drew back. It was Suzie’s shoes on the tile floor. “You know what, I think I saw someone else I need to visit with.” She patted her briefcase. “I’ll be back shortly.”

  Thank God.

  As soon as she was gone, I ran back to Seb and bent over to wrap him in my arms. “Shit, Seb. I missed you. I’m so sorry about this. I’m so sorry.”

  For three terrifying seconds, he remained stiff in my embrace. But then his arms slowly tightened around me and I practically collapsed into him, resting my head in the crook of his neck. He smelled different—sort of chemically, and not at all like the earthy scent he’d had before. But his skin felt the same against mine, soft and warm, and I turned to press my cheek into his for as long as I dared.

  “I’m so sorry, man. They took me to some other house and I didn’t know they’d let me come see you…but I shoulda tried harder. I’m so sorry.”

  I finally pulled back enough to look in his eyes. There was definitely something there, but not really anything I could read—especially when he immediately ducked away from my gaze.

  “Look, I’m going to figure this out, okay? I’ll have Suzie find us a place where we can stay together, or if that doesn’t work, maybe…maybe I can come stay here.”

  I pushed some of the hair from his face.

  “Okay, Seb? I promise. I’m gonna work this all out.”

  He glanced back up, and fuck if his eyes weren’t full of doubt. In all those moments I’d longed to find emotion in their depths, this wasn’t one I’d wanted to see.

  “I’ll be back for you. I promise.” I swept his hair to the side one more time, and then, before I could really think about what I was doing, I pressed a kiss into his forehead.

  My whole body hummed in response, filling up with energy like it was ready to explode with the declaration: Yes, yes, yes! I want more of that! I wanted to take him into my arms and kiss every inch of his smooth, pale skin, to pull off his shirt and slide my chest against his, to feel his heartbeat echoing mine…

  My trembling hands trailed down his body and eventually grasped his cold fingers. I gave him the most encouraging smile I could manage while I worked on controlling the rest of my emotions. “I promise.”

  His hands fell out of mine and I finally stepped away. Only a few seconds later, Suzie reappeared.

  She cleared her throat before speaking. “Alex, maybe you and Sebastian would like to go for a little walk around the grounds? I brought that paperwork to do, so I don’t mind waiting.”

  Seb dove back into his bed and immediately yanked the covers over himself. I tried not to be discouraged by that, and instead took it to mean the faster we got back to Suzie’s office, the faster I could get her to set things right.

  “No. Let’s go. Now.”

  ~*~

  Suzie shuffled the papers around on her desk when we returned, making the piles neater without actually putting anything away.

  “So, Alex, have a seat,” she said with a lighthearted flip of her hand. “Let’s talk about school.”

  Her attitude seemed a bit off for someone who’d just been forced to drive nearly two hours round-trip for a five minute visit, but in any case, I was ready to take advantage of it.

  “I want a placement where Seb can stay, too.”

  Suzie pursed her lips. “I don’t have any openings like that at the moment.”

  “He didn’t start the fire.”

  “No one is being charged—”

  “I don’t think he’s really retarded.”

  “I never said he was, and I would never use that word. Seb has…special needs.”

  I inhaled deeply, counting to ten before I released. “Fine. Then I’ll go stay at that camp…facility…whatever it is.”

  “I’m afraid it doesn’t work like that. But we can make a schedule of monthly visits, if you like.”

  My restraint failed me. Really, it’d been remarkable I’d kept it for so much of the day. But now that I’d seen Seb again…seen how much he needed me…I had no time for this bullshit.

  “No fucking way! Listen to me, lady. I’m not gonna stay nowhere without Seb, so if you even give a shit about us you’ll go into your little files or computer system or whatever and figure something out!”

  “Alex, please calm d—”

  I picked up the stapler on her desk and hurled it into a nearby filing cabinet. The metal-on-metal clank echoed in the building and several people rushed over to see what the commotion was, including a security guard. I geared up for a fight.

  “It’s all right, it’s all right,” Suzie told everyone. “We’re fine.”

  “You sure?” The guard asked, eyeing me suspiciously.

  “It was an accident. Yes, we’re okay. Thank you, though.”

  The crowd scattered and I sank shamefully into my seat.

  “Alex, I want to be able to help you, but I just don’t have any other options for Seb right now.”

  “I don’t believe you,” I muttered through clenched teeth. I wanted to cry, but I channeled the feeling into bitterness instead. “You fucking show up at my school and take my whole life away from me…then you give me a new one, and now you’re gonna fuck that one up, too?”

  Suzie didn’t respond right away. She looked at me sadly, tapping one finger against the arm of her chair.

  Finally she said, “I didn’t realize how close you and Seb had gotten.”

  My turn for silence.

  “Not that it’s out of the ordinary. Many children who are placed together in foster care develop sibling bonds with each other.”

  My eyes narrowed. Where was she going with this?

  “Is that how you’d say you feel toward Seb? Like a brother?”

  Oh Jesus Christ. My heartbeat went into a wild mariachi rhythm, pounding into my throat and my ears. Was she on to me?

  “Alex?”

  Lie,
I ordered myself. And that shouldn’t have been very difficult. After all, I’d spent a good portion of my life lying. I’d lied to teachers, lied to friends, lied to Hector, lied to my mom…hell, I’d even lied to myself.

  God, I was so fucking sick of it.

  I opened my mouth with one more strict internal command for the simple response of yes, but instead found myself saying, “It…it was Hector.”

  “I’m sorry?” Suzie leaned forward.

  “Hector. You were right. He did it. He burned my wrist.”

  Holy shit. Where was this coming from? Was I actually telling the truth?

  “Oh, Alex,” Suzie murmured.

  “It was my fault. I stole his w—…I stole his stuff, ’cause I needed to sell it to buy some shoes. And he found out and lit them on fire and then burned me with his lighter.”

  “Alex, that is not your fau—”

  “He’s done other shit, too. In the fifth grade he broke my arm. I was trying to stand up for my sister when he was throwing her out of the house…shitload of good that did.”

  “You were just a little boy then, you couldn’t have—”

  Obviously, a mental dam in my brain had crumbled, as words continued to gush out. “My second year of fifth, he snapped my collarbone, but I pretended like it happened at the park by falling off the jungle gym.”

  Suzie came around her desk and perched in front of it, bending over so she could take my hand.

  “The rest is mostly bruises, I guess. Those were easy to hide ’cause I always got into fights. He tried to stab me with a knife once, but he was so drunk he only scratched me.”

  I was surprised at how little emotion I experienced, saying all that out loud for the very first time. If anything, I felt relief…like I was releasing the asshole that was Hector from my life. I didn’t owe him anything anymore. He might’ve put a roof over my head for six years, but where the fuck was that roof now?

  Suzie’s eyes were red. She stroked my hand with her thumb. “Thank you, Alex,” she whispered. “Thank you for sharing that with me. It was incredibly brave of you.”

  I shook my head. “But you already knew, didn’t you.”

  “That’s not the point. It was your story to tell. And now that it’s out, I hope you’ll come to know…you didn’t deserve any of that. None of it was your fault. You were—are—a child, and it’s the adults in your life who’ve let you down.”

  The adults, plural. I had lots of excuses for my mom, and I knew I loved her, but deep down, beneath that…

  “Can you answer my other question now?” Suzie interrupted in the nick of time.

  “What?” I blinked at her, confused.

  “About Seb. About how you feel toward him.”

  Fuck. After all that, she was still on about Seb? She had to have more than a hunch, then. What if she’d seen that stupid kiss?

  And why hadn’t that little twerp warned me she was nearby? Maybe he was off his game. I fucking was, obviously.

  Suzie stood. She walked over to a filing cabinet and shuffled through the folders, then pulled out something and returned to her spot in front of me.

  “I thought you could look over some of this reading material…see if it answers any questions you might be having.”

  She handed me a pamphlet, and the percussive beat of my heart came to an abrupt stop.

  Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Transsexual and Questioning Youth

  I read the title several times, and each terrifying pass of my eyes added more nails clawing at my painfully-still chest, willing me to scream or cry or run for my life.

  This was it. I was exposed. Revealed. Naked.

  As if to mock me, smiling faces of all racial groups stared up from the glossy paper, complete with a kid in a freaking wheelchair. How the fuck could they be so happy? Didn’t they know what this meant? My deepest secret—deeper than the drugs or the dealing or the fucked-up family—uncovered for the whole world to see.

  “If you are having a…different kind of feeling for Seb, I want you to know, there’s nothing wrong with you.”

  I couldn’t breathe. My field of vision narrowed on the pamphlet, the bright colors swimming out from the sea of murky brown and gray around them.

  “But remember that Seb is…is special. And the kinds of feelings you might be having, well, you know it’s important to make certain they can be reciprocated—”

  A thump in my heart so loud I was sure it could be heard several cubicles away brought me back to life. I leapt up and crushed the pamphlet with all the force I wanted to use on myself for my stupidity.

  “Shut the fuck up! I don’t need your damn advice! I already know what I am, but I’m not a fucking pervert! Seb is my friend, nothing more!”

  I raised my fist in front of me and Suzie cowered back, her plump rear knocking a bottle of whiteout off the desk.

  “A-alex,” she stuttered.

  “Fuck you, bitch. If Eleanor calls, tell her I’ll be waiting outside.”

  By the time I burst out the front doors, my chest was rising and falling in strange, uneven jerks, like my body had forgotten how to breathe. It wasn’t until a gust of wind came by that I realized it was because I was crying. A few tears had slipped down my face, their trails now cooled by the evening air. I rubbed them away with the fist that still held the pamphlet, my hand shaking wildly against my skin.

  Who the fuck did she think she was? Guessing shit about my life and giving me fucking reading material, like a couple of paragraphs would fix all my problems. I uncurled the paper, still trembling, and glanced one last time at the posed multicolored happiness.

  Then I tore the damn thing in half, straight through the face of some Latina lesbian. I doubled the remains over and ripped them again. And then again. Gripped by the need to destroy each and every smile, I kept working until only shreds were left, watching with satisfaction as the little rainbow pieces fluttered down to the dirty street below.

  When it was all over, I was sure of one thing.

  It was time to pack my bags and run.

  Chapter 14: High School Dropout

  Back at Eleanor and Greg’s, I hurried into my room to take stock of my belongings. I didn’t know if Suzie would tell them what she’d discovered, or if that would change things at all, but I still had a crushing sensation in my chest that told me I had to act fast.

  The only things I owned were my backpack, the few notebooks and pencils inside, and the clothes I’d arrived in—not much to start a life on. I didn’t really want to rip the Richards off, but a few pairs of underwear and some of Dylan’s old t-shirts wouldn’t be missed, so I rolled those up and stuffed them in my bag as well. And the shoes…those were mine, right? After all, a gift was a gift.

  Eleanor’s gentle knock interrupted me. “Alex? Would you like to come down for dinner? Magda made us some shepherd’s pie before she left work yesterday.”

  I didn’t know what that was, but the bigger issue was whether I wanted to break my grouchy streak by joining them. Would that tip them off that something was up, or set them more at ease?

  “Alex?”

  I finally let my stomach decide. Whatever shepherd’s pie was, it was probably a decent meal, and I had no way of knowing when my next one of those would be.

  “Yeah. Just a minute.” I shoved my backpack under the bed.

  Eleanor beamed at me when I opened the door. “Oh, and Suzie wanted you to have this.” She handed me a DCFS business card with an extension number scribbled across the back. “In case you ever wanted to talk with her about anything.”

  I crushed it into my pocket, my skin flashing hot and then cold. “Sure. Whatever.”

  Still smiling, Eleanor gestured for me to follow her down the stairs. “Table’s all set. Let’s go eat!”

  Greg was less enthusiastic about my appearance at dinner. He’d barely said two words to me since I’d arrived, and I had a feeling he’d been dragged into this whole fostering thing by his do-gooder wife.

  “Did you hear the Bentley
’s are planning some sort of charity event? I forgot what it was for,” he remarked to Eleanor over the dish of meat, veggies, and potatoes. I didn’t see how that was pie, but it tasted good enough.

  Eleanor was fixated on me, and she waved him off with a quick nod. “Alex and I are going to stop by the school on Monday to pick up his home study packet…unless you’ve decided to go back to Mid City? Suzie said you hadn’t quite resolved that.”

  “Um…” I swallowed a lump of mashed potatoes. “We can go pick it up.”

  “All right. And did you finish the last week’s packet? We’re supposed to turn it in to that teacher…what was her name? Ms. Cranfield?”

  She was pretty much talking to herself, so I just shrugged.

  Greg made a harrumph sound. “You should finish it.”

  “Sure. I’ll do it tonight.” No sense in upsetting them now.

  Practically swooning at my obedience, Eleanor stumbled to her feet. “I think we should have a special dessert. I’m going to go get that ice cream cake that’s in the freezer.”

  She returned with a blue-frosted cake and a fancy silver serving knife. “I was saving this for tomorrow—oh, that’s right! I haven’t told you!”

  I raised an eyebrow questioningly.

  “Dylan is coming by! I’m sure he’ll be excited to meet you. Maybe you boys could hang out…go to the movies or something. Won’t that be nice?”

  A large slice of cake was placed in front of me, and I stuck my fork in to take a bite before answering. I didn’t feel bad for what I was about to do. They were nice people, but they already had their picture-perfect family to go with their picture-perfect house.

  They didn’t need me. And I didn’t need them.

  “Sure. Sounds great.”

  ~*~