The Melody of Silence: Crescendo

by LP Tvorik

  She needed help, and I was woefully unqualified to give it to her. Hell, if I tried to shrink her brain I’d probably end up hurting her more than I helped.

  “Nate!” Kyle shouted in my ear, punching my arm so hard I nearly fell off the edge of the bench. I recovered my balance and slugged him back. His hand was on his tray, so my punch sent tater tots scattering over the table. The teacher on lunch duty straightened at the commotion, glaring at us from her position by a column in the center of the cafeteria. I lowered my face and helped Kyle gather up his scattered food.

  “Sorry, man,” I said without a lot of remorse.

  “Fuck you,” Kyle said with a parallel lack of anger. “Where are you at, though? You’re staring at Aly Winger like you wanna fuck her or something.” He slapped my shoulder with the back of his hand, laughing. “That prissy bitch doesn’t put out, man, everyone knows that.” He paused to leer at Alex, and my blood began to bubble and fizz in my veins. “This dead-mom-goth-chick thing she’s got going now is kinda hot, though. Hell, maybe she’d want to try both of us—”A primal growl formed, deep in my chest, rumbling, powerful as a building earthquake. My fists clenched and my breath came hot and fast, heart thundering in my ears. I blinked and found myself on the ground with Kyle, his legs still tangled with the bench as I pinned him down. My muscles worked independently of my mind, raining down punches that sent his head snapping from side to side, blood spraying from his mouth and nose.

  Fighting Tim always felt like a sprint uphill. Fighting everyone else? I’d never been skiing, but I figured this was what it felt like. This blissful, rapid glide, answering the call of gravity. Gravity, rage, whatever it was—this force that tugged at me every minute of every day, and finally I was answering it. Flying downhill, muscles burning as every second took me farther from that agonizing pinnacle of trapped emotion.

  As suddenly as it had started, it was over. Deb got between us, fake nails digging into my shoulders as she pushed me back. She was the only person brave enough to interfere. We’d been in foster care together on and off for nearly eight years. She was well-acquainted with the storm that lived inside me, and she was one of few people who knew the only way to tame it.

  “Nate, stop!” she said, cigarette-breath fanning my face as she leaned in close, the pitch of her voice and her soft features effectively dousing the fire and dropping me back into my senses. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  “I’m good,” I croaked, shoving her hands away and pushing myself up. Kyle lay at my feet, groaning, rolling his head from side to side as he fought his way back to consciousness. We’d drawn a crowd, but it was already dispersing as teachers and our school’s lone security guard pushed to the front. I craned to see Alex, but she had disappeared from her table.

  Deb disappeared, replaced by stern-faced adults who split between me and Kyle. I was escorted from the cafeteria. I’d likely face suspension, or even expulsion, and a sound beating when I got home. Despite my grim near-future, the only thing I regretted was that I hadn’t finished my pizza.

  ‥ ‥ ‥

  I was stretched out on my bed, nursing a splitting headache, when Deb found me. My vigilante justice against Kyle had cost me a week of suspension. They’d called my ‘parents’ to come pick me up, but Tim was the only one around because Marsha was out of town on a bowling trip. Tim was pleasant with the administrators as he picked me up, and silent on the drive home. The second we walked through the door, judgment day arrived.

  The good news was, I won the fight. With the kids at school and Marsha gone, there was nobody to interfere. For the first time, we fought to the end of the line. I learned that, where Tim still had the advantage in strength, I had the advantage in stamina. The fight ended when, winded and weak, he found himself pinned to the ground, unable to even lift his hands to defend himself as I pummeled the shit out of him.

  I stopped as soon as I felt the victory. That fight wasn’t like the one with Kyle. There was no passion in it, or fury. I was calm and collected and I almost— almost— had fun with it. With nothing at stake but my own well-being, I found I liked the thrill of the battle.

  “Stop fucking with me, old man,” I said as I climbed to my feet, leaving him sprawled on the living room floor. It took everything I had to stride confidently out of the room. He didn’t need to know he’d landed a couple hard blows that had my head pounding and my left shoulder throbbing angrily. That stupid shoulder was a damned inconvenience. I’d dislocated it when I was five and it had a tendency to slip in and out of the socket at the slightest touch.

  So that was how Deb found me— sprawled on my bed with a bag of frozen peas on my shoulder and a forearm pressed against my eyes to ward against the light coming through the window. It was a migraine kind of day.

  I didn’t look up as she opened the door and stalked across the room, sitting on Ronnie’s bed. I could tell it was her from the stench of cigarettes and the weight of her step.

  “What the hell got into you, today?” she asked without preamble, her voice slightly slurred and tinged with a blissful inflection. Her words were stern and demanding but her tone was damned near euphoric.

  “Are you high?” I asked, arm still pressed to my eyes. I sensed her bristle.

  “Fuck you,” she slurred. “I don’t need judgment from a psycho like you.” She giggled at her lame insult and I heard the springs creek as she dropped back onto Ronnie’s bed.

  “What are you on?” I asked, pushing myself up and studying her. She lay on the bed with her arms out to the side. She was wearing a mini skirt that rode dangerously far up her thighs and a tight white wifebeater over a hot-pink lace bra. Her brown hair was streaked with flares of pink and platinum blonde.

  Deb broke my heart. When we first met, she was a lot like Trish— sweet and innocent. Quick to cry and laugh. Nearly a decade later, she’d become a living embodiment of the phrase ‘lost cause.’ She was hard and mean, with a temper nearly as short as mine. She had unprotected sex with every guy she could pin down, and I’d spent more money on Plan B than I had on food. Twice, I’d found her passed out in the bathroom in a puddle of vomit, and she’d been to the ER once for opioid overdose.

  I loved her, though. She was the closest thing I had to family. Where parents and other siblings came and went, Deb and I had managed to stick together. I was the last person left on earth who knew the quality of Deb’s soul. I was the only one who remembered the little girl who loved to sing and tucked her mangy stuffed rabbit into bed every night, kissing it gently before she crawled beneath the covers herself.

  Deb had been a sweet little girl, which made who she was becoming that much more painful. I couldn’t even remember when she’d started using, and maybe that was the problem. If I’d noticed when it started I might have been able to stop it, but I hadn’t. I’d let her down. Just like I was letting Alex down. Just like I would eventually let Trish down. Ronnie. Paul…

  “What are you on?” I asked again when she answered my initial query with silence.

  “It’s none of your business,” she slurred. “You don’t give a shit.”

  “Deb, don’t be stupid,” I said, pushing to my feet and sitting on Ronnie’s bed beside her. She sat up with a groan and we both stared at the opposite wall.

  “I am stupid,” she said clumsily, her voice suddenly thick with tears. I swallowed a sigh. Deb on drugs was always a rollercoaster.

  “You’re not stupid,” I said, nudging her with my shoulder. “You just gotta stop saying stupid shit, that’s all. You know I care about you.”

  Deb shrugged, sniffing loudly and picking at her acrylic nails.

  “You care more about her,” she said finally, her voice barely more than a whisper. My stomach lurched.

  “Who is ‘her?’” I asked, cautiously shaping my voice into a tone of amused nonchalance.

  “Nevermind,” Deb groaned, dropping back onto the bed once
more. I knew I should press, but I was afraid to. What if she knew?

  “So are you gonna tell me what you’re on, or not?” I asked, poking her in the leg.

  “Just some shit Kyle gave me,” Deb said with a defeated sigh. “It’s good stuff.”

  “Oxy?”

  “Maybe,” she said listlessly. She dug in her pocket and pulled out a small baggy of assorted pills, eyeing them blearily through the dust-coated plastic as if to decipher the little symbols. I knew she couldn’t. Deb couldn’t tell the difference between Vicodin and Advil. She just knew what it felt like to be high. That was what she paid for. “He gave me a discount for pulling you off him.”

  I snatched the bag out of her hand and pushed myself up, stalking toward the door and flinging it open so hard it bounced off the wall. Deb’s muddled mind caught up with her and she scrambled after me.

  “Don’t you fucking dare!” she shrieked, tearing after me as I marched to the bathroom and slammed the toilet lid up.

  “You gotta stop with this shit, Deb,” I said, shaking her off as she clawed at my arm, reaching for the baggy. I upended it, depositing the contents into the stained toilet bowl.

  “You fucking asshole!” Her nails gouged at my arm, but I ignored her and reached out, flushing the toilet. Deb stilled as the water swirled, washing away her high. We both watched in silence, listening to the thirsty gulp of the toilet as it swallowed the pills.

  “God, I fucking hate you,” Deb whimpered, clinging to my arm as she swayed, her knees half-buckling beneath her. I tried to support her, but she shoved me away. “Why are you so goddamn convinced you have all the answers?”

  “I don’t!” I whisper-shouted back, worried that raised voices would pull Tim from his drunken stupor in front of the television. “But I do know that this is wrong and so would you if you’d pull your head out of the sand for five seconds. You’re gonna end up killing yourself, Deb. That’s the only way this ends.”

  “Fuck you!” Her hissed words were punctuated by the crack of her palm against the side of my face. I staggered back a step, blinking away stars that were caused more by shock than the blow. Deb had never hit me. We lived by a code. A twisted, broken code, but still… there were rules. We’d suffered enough at the hands of the system, so we vowed, years ago, never to hurt each other.

  Deb left the room, and a few minutes later I heard the front door slam. She was gone for the night— off to seek comfort with a guy who would, if she was lucky, supply her with the high I’d just stolen.

  My instinct was to be hurt. She’d broken a sacred rule. Our code had carried us through years of hardship and abuse. It was our foundation of faith— a thread of good that reminded us through everything that there was something that would never betray our trust. Her slap hurt more than any blow Tim had ever dealt, because I didn’t expect it. We never — never — hurt each other.

  Then again... I stared at the empty toilet bowl, thinking of what she’d said about Alex. Maybe I was the one who’d cast the first stone.

  ‥ ‥ ‥

  After Alex’s outburst in the hallway, I didn’t expect her to be at the spot. That didn’t stop me from sneaking out, though. I couldn’t bear the thought of her showing up, needing me, and being alone because I was too busy feeling sorry for myself to be there for her.

  My heart leapt into my throat when I entered the clearing and saw her sitting there on the rock, leaning back on her hands, face tipped up to the sky.

  “Hey, Al,” I said cautiously, hopping over the stream.

  “Hey,” she said easily, still staring up at the stars. I couldn’t help but notice that she was dressed a little differently than usual. She seemed to be splitting the difference between daytime Aly and my Alex. She’d traded her dirty cargo shorts for cut-off jeans that left most of her legs exposed, shining in the moonlight. Instead of a t-shirt, she wore a tank top, the straps of her bra peeking out to tease me. Her hair was back in a loose braid rather than hidden beneath a baseball cap. Her feet were bare, heels drumming gently against the side of the rock.

  “I, uh…” I cleared my throat, unexpectedly nervous. “I didn’t think you’d be here.”

  “I’ve been thinking,” she said, lowering herself onto her back.

  “Okay…”

  “Come lay with me?”

  Hesitant, I hoisted myself onto the rock and stretched out beside her. She shifted naturally into her usual position, canted a little sideways with her head on my shoulder. The faint, floral scent of her shampoo filled my head and my mouth grew dry with need.

  “I’ve been a jerk lately,” Alex said.

  “No you haven’t. You—”

  “Let me finish,” she cut me off, her voice gentle but firm. I clapped my mouth shut and eyed the stars, trying to find a constellation. She’d showed them to me a thousand times but I still had trouble finding the shapes.

  “Okay.”

  “I’ve been a jerk lately,” she began again, turning onto her side and pressing her hand to my chest. “I’ve been having a lot of trouble since my mom died, and I’ve kind of shut down. I’m sorry for snapping at you, today. I know you were just trying to help.”

  Her hand slid slowly down to my belt buckle and began fumbling with it. I swear I nearly had a heart attack.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, jerking away from her and hopping off the rock, putting as much distance between us as I could. Something felt terribly wrong. Of course, in a sense, something also felt incredibly right and my dick was screaming at me— cursing me for pulling away.

  Mostly, though, it felt wrong. Alex was bold, but she wasn’t unceremonious. Everything she did made sense. Her every move fit like a puzzle piece into the dance we’d created together. There was a rhythm to it— a heartbeat— and her sudden, unexpected advance-apology combo was completely out of sync. It made my skin crawl.

  “I want to have sex,” Alex said plainly, sitting up. I took a step back from the dead look in her eyes. No you don’t.

  “No you don’t,” I said aloud, shaking my head. “What’s going on with you?”

  “I want to have sex,” Alex repeated, hopping off the rock and stalking toward me until I stood at the edge of the island with nowhere else to go. She threw herself against me, her hands possessively groping at my ass as she pulled me tighter to her. I felt dizzy— my mind and heart in violent disagreement with my body.

  “No you don’t,” I said again, my voice muffled at the end as she reached up with one hand, her fingers gripping my hair hard as she pulled my head down and pressed her lips to mine.

  I shouldn’t have returned the kiss. I knew something was wrong. I knew she was up to something. There was something about the sharp pain of her fingers in my hair, though, that broke me wide open. I was a shaken-up can of beer and she’d just cracked the top. My need for her spilled over, and suddenly the tables were turned.

  I kissed her back hard, plundering every inch of her mouth. I pulled the elastic out of her hair, shaking it loose, and buried my hand in the tangled locks as I walked her backward. When her ass hit the rock I lifted her onto it, following her as she tipped back. I kept my left hand behind her, cushioning her head, and allowed my right to roam as I kissed her. I released the button on her shorts— an unspoken promise for more— before moving north beneath her shirt.

  Her bra was a hindrance, so I lifted her up just enough to worm my hand beneath her back and unclasp it. As soon as it popped loose I let her back down, breathing a sigh of relief as I curved my hand over her chest. Alex sighed too, her back arching slightly, arms linked around my neck as if to hold me to her— as if I had any intention or ability to leave.

  “I love you,” I breathed against her lips, the words as involuntary as they were true. She moaned in response, her breath coming faster as I kneaded the soft flesh in my hand.

  The sense of wrongness was still there, but we�
��d evolved around it. The clumsy misstep of her blunt forwardness had become part of our dance. We were being rough with each other— rougher than we’d ever been. Her teeth grazed my lip as she kissed me and her legs wrapped around my waist, locking me in. Her hands gripped my shoulders so hard her nails bit into my skin.

  I wasn’t sparing her, either. My weight must be driving her against the hard granite, scraping her bare skin against the rock. I felt pebbled flesh beneath my palm and rolled it between my finger and thumb, pinching. She gasped in pain and pleasure, her legs tightening around me, and a jolt of electricity shot up my spine.

  Suddenly, Alex was pulling away, shoving at me. I stumbled back, equal parts frustrated, confused, and afraid. Tears glistened in her eyes as she sat up, and disgust at my own weakness turned my stomach over. I’d known it was wrong. I’d known she didn’t really want it. I’d let my dick act on my behalf, and I’d hurt her.

  “Shit, Al,” I groaned, taking another step back. “I’m sorr—”

  “Shut up,” she hissed, ripping her shirt off in one smooth motion. Her bra, already unclasped, slipped down her arms and she tossed it aside. It landed half in the stream. Her watery gaze was fixed on mine as she slipped off the rock and shoved her shorts down her legs, kicking them away. She wasn’t wearing underwear.

  Shit.

  “Al—”

  “You talk too much,” she said, stalking forward, her body on full display in the moonlight. I swallowed hard, my head swimming with an uncomfortable combination of lust and concern.