"I can still hear his screams! It's all I hear and it just gets louder and louder until I can't tell if they're his screams or my own! I just need it to stop! Please just make it stop."
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5 things you can see.
4 things you...
//Italics are flashbacks in case you get confused//
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The first day of school was uneventful as expected. I barely paid attention in my classes and tried my best to avoid freaking out. At lunch, I sat with Jake and Oli along with some of their other friends. I didn't really have much choice in the matter. Oli practically dislocated my shoulder pulling me over to their table. I think they had accepted the fact that I wasn't going to talk to them much or at least I wasn't ready to yet. Aside from my occasional one-word responses, nods and shrugs, I hadn't really taken part in any conversations. It wasn't that I didn't want to, it was just that every time I tried to speak the words disappeared before they reached my lips. The nerves were making me take several steps backwards. The knots in my stomach led to skipped the actual eating part of lunch but no one noticed or questioned this.
As soon as I walked through the door after school my mom was ready to give me the third degree.
"Hi, honey how was your day? Do you like the new school? Did you make any friends?" Her questions were dizzying and I sighed.
"It was fine. I guess I made some friends. School is school, it's the same everywhere you go." I brushed by her and made my way up to my room.
I knew I was hurting them, my family, I mean. The only reason we moved was that I couldn't get my shit together. After what happened I had stopped speaking, at first out of shock and grief, and then later because there was simply nothing to say. I'm slowly working on that. The only people I actually have conversations with are Officer Tommy and my family. I had basically stopped functioning. I just thought it wasn't fair. I shouldn't be the one that's okay.
I would lock the door on my room and shut myself in the closet, completely in the dark, with my music turned up to a deafening volume. It was the only way the thoughts would stop. My parents let me be, said I needed time, but my brothers knew what I was doing. They always saw right through me and they constantly tried to reach me. At first, they'd come to the door, try to get me to acknowledge them so they at least knew I was alive. Then they got more worried, more aggressive. They picked the lock on my door, and not knowing I was in the closet, started to panic that I had run away. It was my oldest brother Noah who found me though, laying on the closet floor staring into nothingness and wearing the same clothes I'd been wearing for a week. He just sat me up and held me in his arms, telling me he loved me. They tried everything to get me to function like a normal human being. I just wanted to die.
It was during a particularly rough day that Officer Tommy had stopped by. My other brother Nathan had asked him to come by and try to get through to me. When he had arrived Noah had been attempting, yet again to get me to at least acknowledge him, but I just kept turning my music louder, wanting to drown him out along with my thoughts. Officer Tommy walked in to see Noah on his knees in front of me, pleading with his life, while I, as usual, was curled in a ball in the closet.
"Jesus Christ please Nick just say something, anything, please!" I kept my eyes trained on the ceiling unable to meet his gaze, which I already knew were glassy with oncoming tears. "Please Nick, I can't keep doing this. I can just sit here and watch you waste into nothing, please. Baby brother I'm scared."
