𝐇𝐎𝐏𝐄𝐋𝐄𝐒𝐒 ✓

ELEVEN

-

I've always loved silence. The faint, white buzzing of the traffic nearby being the only noise to reach my ears, lulling me to sleep while I'm tucked into bed. It even gets to the point where I put my noise-canceling headphones in without playing music, just to shut out the outside world. Silence has always meant comfort to me.

Until today.

It's been two days since our boss told us we'd have to stay together in one house, alone, for two weeks, no neighbors to talk to whatsoever. 

It's been two hours since I left my apartment and got into the car I lent from my elderly neighbor Jolene. She doesn't drive it anyway. In here, it stinks like old, stuffy cave air, and I wonder if there may be growing moss underneath the seats. My fingers are wrapped around the steering wheel, knuckles turned white, palms turned sweaty.

It's been one hour and thirty-five minutes since I picked up Sebastian from the front of his building, a tall skyscraper with approximately sixty stories that have huge, reflective windows and a blinking light on top so no plane accidentally flies into it. 

And it's been one hour and thirty-three minutes since any of us said anything. The silence is thick and heavy around us, at least that's what I feel. Suffocated and claustrophobic, forced to spend at least three more hours in this tiny, stuffy vehicle whose scent doesn't even fade when we roll down all possible windows.

I sigh as I stop at a red light. We're driving through multiple towns on the ride, each of them not more than 200 people living there, each of them only having one grocery store and one diner. Sebastian's gaze is glued to his phone, apparently reading some form of article or book or whatever, and I wonder how on earth he is able to do that. I would've puked an hour ago. Not that I don't feel like puking right now...

I lick across my teeth as if to check if I really brushed them this morning. In the trunk, something's rumbling around. I guess it's my hairdryer that has once again lost its attachment thing that I don't know the correct name for. None of us addresses the slightly worrying sound that comes from the back. I don't know if he's made a guess about what it is or not. Not that I would care...

Finally, I decide to break the silence. It's grown to the most uncomfortable, never-ending silence of my life, the kind that makes your eardrums feel tense and numb.

"Hungry?"

It's a simple word, and I mumble it so quietly it's not more than a loud-ish whisper over the buzzing of the engine, and yet, Golden Boy's head jolts over to my direction as if I just suggested running away together. His brows are raised and he locks his phone without further glancing at it.

"What?"

"Sorry, don't you understand?" I immediately get snappy, "Do? You? Want? Food?"

I mimic eating with my right hand, then pretend to chew on my imaginary burger. Yes, that's what I want right now. A good burger. His brows go back to their normal position. I set my eyes back on the basically empty road. A truck is coming toward us, a red one with a white stripe across the front. I frown at the newly emerged silence and sigh again.

"True, heartless cyborgs like you don't eat," I sarcastically mutter, mostly under my breath, but knowing very well that Sebastian's heard me. 

"Funny, Emmons," he mumbles, and his gaze goes to the road in front of us, too. His window is still rolled down, the wind creating this annoying rhythmic noise as it flaps to the backseat, and his hair is tousled instead of neatly done like usual. It almost looks like he doesn't care how he looks right now. Shocking.

"Oh, so you can hear me," I dryly say, the truck now passing us. A few seconds later, the insanely disgusting and nose-hair-burning smell of diesel floods the car. I cough, and Sebastian groans in utter annoyance before rolling the window up immediately. Now, we're stuck in a stuffy mix of musty car-air and diesel-wind. 

"I chose to blend out your voice. I was afraid you'd try and talk to me the entire ride. By the way," he then adds in a more sincere tone, "Do you want to switch at some point or are you just powering through?"

I roll my eyes briefly at his rude tease, not the first one of the ride. The first had been a comment about the musty smell of the car and my hygiene, about twenty milliseconds after he'd entered the car. The best two weeks of my fucking life.

"What, give you the steering wheel so you can drive into the deepest forest and kill me like you always wanted to?"

"Emmons, I'm serious," he sighs, slightly tense now. I shake my head. 

"I was serious about the fucking food-thing," I counter, "Are you hungry or not?"

"Are you?"

"Stan, I swear to whatever great spirit there is out there, answer my fucking question," I hiss under my breath, my jaw clenched, my cheeks flushed pink. I hate when he's doing that. Ask counterquestions. He groans in surrender.

"I could use some fries," he admits, "And after the food, I'm going to drive. End of discussion."

I'm so incredibly startled by his harsh and definite tone that I just shrug and let the topic rest until I find a sign that tells me to turn right in 1 mile to get to Jerry's Diner.

"Good, finally. By the way, Emmons, you could really start pushing on the upper end of the speed limit here," he comments teasingly, letting out an amused huff afterward. And not the positive kind. I hold my breath briefly, fighting back the urge of telling him about why I don't drive as fast as I certainly could — or maybe even should. But that's none of his business.

"I get it, you're starving. Don't push me," I utter from behind clenched teeth. My stomach feels like someone scratched its insides with a butter knife. Really hard. It doesn't feel like a stinging pain though, hence the butter knife, but it certainly is unpleasant. I blame the hunger for this feeling, trying not to give in any further into the rage and fury I feel whenever fights end up escalating like this. With both of us being offended, tense, and mean.

"Jeez, relax," he sighs, obviously insanely worked up by my uptightness concerning the fast driving. "Just a suggestion."

"Here's one suggestion for you," I snap back as I make the turn to the right, where a neon sign tells us where to find the parking lot, "Stop being so insanely arrogant."

He seems offended by my statement, and maybe I exaggerated a little, but he can't answer as I stop the car with slightly sensitive brakes in a matter of a second. We both jolt forward, our seat belts keeping us from flying onto the dashboard. The utter silence comes back, and it's even worse than before. Now, there's not even the faint buzzing of the car's engine or the tires rolling over the road. It's just nothing, me and Sebastian, and this shabby diner we chose to get our food from. I hate this silence.

"So, let's go, you starving baby," he says, and with my mouth slightly agape, I follow him out of the car and inside the restaurant. Two weeks of this, Charlie. You won't survive unless you continue to fight back.

Trust me, I will.