Voiceless Love

46. Don't talk

A/n: hey y'all. Sorry for the long wait. Wattpad wasn't working for me for several days. Also I got distracted by Volume 2 of Stranger Things, which I think is understandable.

Enjoy.

2019 Phoenix Academy Shooting

On May 20, 2019, at 10:22 a.m., Phoenix Academy of Arizona went into shut down after hearing a series of multiple gunshots being fired on campus. Students said it was during an award ceremony for the students of the academy when the lockdown had begun. Reports state the shooter, Benny Roberts was found dead in the main west wing hallway of the academy. Another student, Jacob Dalton, was also found next to the body of Roberts and was pronounced dead before the paramedics could get to him. 8 other students were injured during this terrible morning. One of the students, Zoey Dalton, sister of Jacob Dalton and friend of Roberts, faced permanent damage to her ears from the gunshot and is receiving medical attention.

I turned off my phone after the first paragraph. Fuck. I couldn't read any more of it.

She...

A sigh escaped my lips. I can't even think. It was a lot. Reading that. All of her diaries. Reading her raw, brutal feelings. I... understand why she can't say yes to being my girlfriend. She's afraid of commitment. Afraid of losing me somehow. Afraid of being attached. Because of what happened to her brother. Oh my fucking god.

I felt like I couldn't breathe without sounding shaky. I was stunned. Shaken up. I didn't know... what to do about it but stay confused, feeling my eyelids threaten to close on me. My tiredness was getting to me quickly after that, making it harder for me to stay awake any longer. And the darkness consumed me until I saw things my mind made up. Unrealistic situations of her and her brother. And with me being there.

I was in the hallway, just like I had imagined from her diaries, and Benny was pointing the gun. But not at Jacob, at Zoey. And he shot her before I could get to her. I couldn't move my feet, as if they were glued to the floor. My screams were silent as her body dropped. And Jacob, the same face I saw in pictures, smiled my way. Zoey's body had rolled over to reveal she was laughing, pointing at me as I was terrified. Confused, she got up off the ground with a bullet hole still in her chest while she would randomly pull out a gun and shoot herself in the head. But she would never die. She'd keep rolling onto her back, getting up and continuing to shoot herself, while smiling and laughing.

I would wake up a couple of times from these nightmares, only to go back to sleep and they were the same one again. Over and over, throughout the night.

The same thing of her. Hurting herself.

*****

Zoey:
Hey, running late?

Was the first thing I saw when opening my phone. My eyes still new to the sunlight, flickered to the time, 1 p.m.

It was so quiet and still in my room. I don't think my mom's home. The air was cool, and so were the tops on my exposed limbs, since I went to bed wearing my school clothes, it being around 90°.

When I sat up and swung my legs around to the edge, I spotted the books, splayed out like they were roughly thrown. And I remember. I remember tossing each one to the side after I finished reading, eager to read more after how the last sentence of every diary left me on the edge.

They were a lot. A lot coming from a deaf girl I once thought was innocent and full of happiness. Now I know... everything. How she lost her hearing, who Jacob was, the real reason she takes her sleeping pills, why her mom's not around