Silence

One

It was a cool, crisp, autumn Saturday with the sun gleaming golden through the fiery leaves that littered the roads and the breeze and the trees. I was walking home from my usual Saturday things: walk to the library with my thermos of coffee, get my weekly book haul, and then walk by the park, and maybe even read there if I wasn't busy and the weather was nice. I was the usual type of 'nerd'-I wore plain, sleek, black reading glasses; I had curly dark brown hair (it looked black) that reached my shoulders, and I wore it down and natural (minus my side-swept bangs that I straightened); some type of graphic T-shirt with a jacket (that day it had been a red shirt with a logo of one of my favorite bands and a black leather jacket); some blue jeans; my black and white classic Converse; and a black flower crown to tie it all together. Oh, and no makeup. I was a firm believer in only wearing makeup for special occasions because I didn't have that type of money to spend, and when I did, it usually went to something like books or music or video games or something. And even if I did have the money to spend, I wouldn't wear any. I figured if I needed to put myself through hours of misery to get people to like me, they weren't real friends or good potential boyfriends. So I had natural freckles, but they weren't too noticeable without the summer sun's help, and my nice tan was slowly fading away to my regular Frosty the Snowman shade of skin tone once again. My eyes-the one thing I thoroughly enjoyed about my appearance-were hazel, but not like most people's hazel eyes. Mine were hazel in the sense that they were brown toward my pupil, gold in the middle, and green toward the outer edge, finishing in a perfect green ring on the outside of my iris. I enjoyed them because the color intensity would change with my mood-brighter golds when I was happy, darker browns when I was upset, completely black when I was really sad, reddish brown when I was angry, and almost unnaturally green when I was looking at something (or someone) I was really passionate about. So that was me. Plain ol' little me, walking down the street with my books in my thin (but slightly muscular) arms and my lips spilling someone else's words in rhythm to a beautiful melody. As I sang softly, I watched the leaves stir slightly in the small breeze that the autumn had brought while the squirrels and birds frantically prepared for the winter. It was a normal enough day in my small town. I turned a corner and came upon the park I mentioned earlier. As I reached the park, I stopped.
Something wasn't right.
There were no kids playing and no one in sight, which wasn't unusual since we didn't have many people in our town, but there was a bike-an expensive one, too-thrown carelessly upon the ground. I looked all around me, but saw no one. That's when I heard it. It was faint and light, but definitely there, definitely real.
"Help," it called in a volume of a raspy, desperate whisper. That's when the whole picture came into view for me. There was someone there, hidden under a light layer of red leaves (I couldn't tell if there was blood on them, if they were actually red colored, or a mix of both) next to a big oak tree. The color drained from my face as I realized what had happened-they had crashed their bike and were unable to move or get help. I immediately dropped the books I had been carrying and rushed across the barren street, then knelt down next to them, my hands shaking as I fumbled to get my cell phone to call an ambulance.
"Hey, can you hear me?" I stuttered, frantically dialing 911, brushing the leaves off of the human being (I then found out he was a guy), and trying to think of the medical shows I had watched to see if there was any information I could use.
"Yes," he spoke softly in a hoarse whisper. His helmet was still on his head, but I could see blood trickling from under it and cracks on it from the impact, and his heart was racing as he tried to grasp his breath. His face was retorting in pain as if he were laying on an electrically charged bed, and his breaths were raspy and violent. I desperately reached in the depths of my thoughts to find any piece of information that could help me, and all I could think was 'he has to stay awake'. As I put my phone up to my ear and waited for the emergency dispatcher to pick up the other line, I said the only thing I could think of in a panic.
"C-can you tell me the lyrics to your favorite song?" I said, panic overtaking me. He took a raspy breath and started, not even questioning my strange methods.
"Eyes of gold, lips of red,
but the cries that escaped them were much too cold,
for her warm aura," he started reciting through gritted teeth in the same raspy whisper, taking breaths almost every other word. I urged him to continue while I talked to the dispatcher so he'd stay awake. He continued without protest.
"Little boy among the grain,
run to a new land and watch the color from her face drain.
Little girl, scared and young,
won't comprehend the words that roll off his tongue.
Christmas lights that once would glow,
now sit in the attic and rot like the girl in the house below.
You've killed her flowers, you've killed her light,
You've killed the one place she ran to when things went bump in the night.
She used to want him to smile and nothing more,
now she dreams of him walking through her door.
Eyes once full of light
now seem bright as a cold winter's night,
and lips once red as fire,
grow pale and void of all desire.
Moments once held near to her heart
she now wishes she could tear apart.
Tears stain every inch of the floor that they once shared,
and curses fill the air from the lips of a girl who wished she'd never cared.
Eyes blank, tears hollow,
She lifts the pill to her face and swallows." I hung up the phone with shaking hands and convinced him to say it again. And again. And again. Until the ambulance arrived. I wasn't paying much attention to the lyrics because I was focused on keeping him awake, so it was meaningless, but I had to keep him awake. There was no way I was letting him die on me. When the lights finally arrived and the siren's blare came closer, I let out a shaky sigh of relief.
"They're here now, sir. They'll take good care of you, okay?" I said, knowing that this was where we would part ways since I didn't really know him. A short, muscular woman and a tall, scrawny man leaped out of the ambulance, grabbed the stretcher, and rushed over to us. I backed away when they arrived, knowing they needed room to work. They didn't really acknowledge him or I, and it was a blurred rush of panic and noises from there; noises of pain from him, talking from them, and radio transmissions cutting in and out from the walkie-talkies on the EMTs shirts. They carried him into the ambulance, then left the doors open.
"C'mon! Get in here! We don't have all day!" the woman said to me, tightening her dark pony tail.
"But I don't even know him," I said back.
"You have to come-you're the only one who can speak for him," she protested. She had a very valid point. Without me, they wouldn't have any information at all-at least I had a little. So, doing the only thing I could do in that situation, I hopped in the back of the ambulance not knowing how much it would affect my life.