After The Accident

The Silence After the Storm

As Alyssa walked to the lunch table, the hollow sound of her crutches hitting the tile floors seemed to echo endlessly throughout the school. Her rhythm was uneven, fast paced, as she made her way to the cafeteria. Stress had been building slowly throughout the day, the amount of schoolwork from all of her AP classes piling on as May exams drew closer. Being crippled didn't change those deadlines, no matter how much she wished they would. Finally arriving at the cafeteria table where her friends were already seated, she placed her lunch bag down and began to hurriedly scarf down her meal, before noticing the strange silence that enveloped the table. Puzzled, she glanced around at her friend's faces, hoping for a clue as to this awkward tension that hung in the air.

Glancing at Emily's face, she grew startled as she saw tears in her eyes, and very solemn faces around the table. Alyssa started to form a question, the confusion very evident on her face to the other girls, but before she could get a word out Emily slammed her hands on the table, startling both herself and the rest of the girls at the table.

"How could you?" she yelled, tears now freely flowing down her face. The rest of the cafeteria had fallen silent at the new development. "How could you do that to me, to us? To everyone sitting here? Do you even know what you would have done?" Emily sobbed. One of the other girls at the table, Brooke Jewel, stood up and tried to calm Emily, whispering something into her ear before pulling her back down to the table.

And then, all at once, Alyssa understood what this was about. She couldn't believe they had discovered her secret. She wanted to ask how, why and when they had found out the truth, but judging by the looks on the faces of her "friends" she wasn't sure they would be willing to share. No one else dared to speak in the silence of the lunch table. They all were too afraid, and with a shocking gasp, Alyssa realized that it was her they were afraid of. They were so scared to say the wrong thing, make the wrong move, that they all sat, completely paralyzed. Totally unsure of how to fix the new problem that had just arisen.

Alyssa held back a bitter laugh. The ironic thing was, was that there was nothing they could do, nothing they could say anymore, that would cause that same type of problem. It was over. They just had no idea how to cope.

In all honesty, she didn't care. She didn't care how it affected the rest of the group anymore. She used to, but after the accident, that all had stopped. She had locked away the old emotional, needy and dependent Alyssa deep inside her own mind, never to see the light of day again. And nothing, not even the sight of her best friend crying in the middle of the high school cafeteria, was going to bring out the old her.

That wasn't to say that it wasn't difficult. The old Alyssa was putting up a difficult fight, struggling against the shackles of Alyssa's own new and improved mental state. But it was all for nothing. Taking one last sweeping glance at the rest of the table, who sat in a determined silence, Alyssa stood up quickly, using her crutches for balance, and in a swift movement that no one could have expected from the cripple in rehab, she left the cafeteria, and the high school, for the rest of the day.