Tainted: Listening to the Silence (Book 1)

THREE

Oliver

                Living with the Andels was a little hard, at least for me. Everything was new for me, I didn’t know anything around here. There was literally nothing familiar. When I accepted living with them, they neglected to tell me they lived in the suburbs, in what seemed like a million miles away from the city. To say I was panicking just couldn’t describe it well enough. I had lived in the city all my life, my parents lived in the city, everything I remembered about them was linked to the city, and I had somehow been able to feel them there with me, in the city, watching me. But I was moving to the suburbs, to a small little town where I didn’t know anything.

                All my memories, the feeling of safeness seemed to stay in the city the day the Andels went to pick me up and drive me to their home. I felt like I was leaving my parents behind as I watched everything I knew getting farther and farther away. When we got to the house where I would be living from now on the Andels showed me to my room and I locked myself in it for at least two days straight. They had taken my piano first putting it in my room before they took me home with them. I spent the next two days locked in my room playing every song I had made before my parents death, remembering everything, tormenting myself because I thought I deserved it. After all I had accepted someone else apart from them, I had let someone else adopt me.

“Ollie?” Mrs. Andel asked tentatively after knocking on my door.

                I had opened the door a while ago when I’d finally given up and decided to just lie down on my new bed looking up at the ceiling. A ceiling I didn’t know, a ceiling I’d be seeing from now on.

“Ollie? I’m coming in,” Mrs. Andel said coming into my room.

                I turned to look at her and she seemed tired, older than she really was. She looked like she hadn’t been able to sleep lately. She must’ve been worried about me. Not coming out of my room for two days straight just after they adopted me. They must think it’s got to do with them. I felt horrible inside and I just couldn’t look at her face anymore.

“It’s ok Ollie. We know this has nothing to do with us,” Mrs. Andel said sitting in the bed next to me and putting her hand on my leg.

                I turned to look at her again, not really believing it. How could she know what I had been thinking? How could she know what I wanted to say?

“You don’t have to look like that. It’s just that your silence speaks louder than any voice I’ve ever heard. It’s not hard to hear you Ollie.”