A Silence Full of Sound

Chapter 15

The days dragged by as I looked for Hunter everyday in school. I looked for him in the cafeteria, the corridors. I looked around every corner waiting for him to arrive. For days and weeks I had carried his jacket around with the pure intention of giving it back.

The day that he got back I was ready to confront him; ready to ask him where he had been, and why he hadn't been in school.

Truth be told, I had missed him.

I was sat on the cafeteria bench on Monday morning. Early again; so that I missed the chaos of the late bell. I was sat with my book in front of me and my headphones in my ears; ready to get lost in literature.

Sat two benches along from me was a jazz band musician. He had sheet music lying everywhere as he frantically tried to find a melody on his French Horn. Every so often I would look over at him to see him panicking even more as he scribbled notes in a book and made notations on each piece of paper. How he kept track of what paper came where; I do not know.

It shocked me when someone walked in front of me.

"'The Great Gatsby', good choice." Hunter said as he sat down opposite me.

I was lost for words. His hair was shrivelled and his clothes creased. Deep, red bags hung under his eyes as if he hadn't slept in weeks. They were puffy as if he had been crying for days on end. He leant his arms on the table and I saw his knuckles. They had been bleeding, repeatedly and it made me wonder what had happened to him. He wasn't the sad boy who had given me that jacket weeks ago. His eyes stared at me; a gentle smile tugging at his lips even though his eyes shimmered with previous tears.

"Spoiler alert; it's all a dream." He said as he took Grandma Nora's bookmark in his hands and looked at it.

I gasped as he turned the bookmark over in his hands. He looked at me as I tried to grab it out of his hands. I pulled it from his fingers, smoothing it back out again.

I looked back over at Hunter. "Sorry." He said referring to the bookmark. "Is it important?"

I just nodded putting it safely back in my book and placing the book in my bag. Clearly, I was not getting much further in the book today.

I looked back up at Hunter. The top of his hair was pulled back into a messy bun while the bottom half hung just above his shoulders. He wore his signature high top converse and a black denim shirt over a white t-shirt. His chain hung around his neck, again buried inside his t-shirt neckline.

"See anything you like?" He said, his left eyebrow rose taunting me. It was evident he had gotten quite good at hiding his emotions behind a mask.

I scrunched up my nose and shook my head mocking disgust.

His face lit up with a small laugh. His eyes flickered and his smiled etched its way ever so slightly further up his face.

His smile was contagious. Even a small one.

He shook his head and looked away from me. When he looked back at me he had composed himself. The smile was replaced by a much more serious tone.

"So how long have you been carrying that around?" He said pointing to his jacket laying on the bench beside me. I rolled my eyes and handed it back to him.

He shook his head and looked over at something through the window behind me. "It's yours. Keep it." He said.

I shook my head profusely. I couldn't keep it.

"Seriously, it looked much better on you than me anyway." He said still looking out through the window. It was as if he didn't want to look at me.

I held out the jacket in front of him. I could not keep this jacket.