Silent

Chapter 18

Luke was suffocating me. Ever since my appointment with Sonya, he's been following me around everwhere and randomly checking up on me. He just wouldn't go away. Honestly, I was going insane. It's what I get, though, for telling him I want to die. He probably thought it was just a spur of the moment type of thing, but I've actually wanted to die for years now.

"Jai, are you okay?" Luke asked for the millionth time today. Sighing, I rolled over on my bed to face away from where he sat on the floor. I've tried to tell him to leave, but he just won't.

"No, Luke. I'm not okay. I simply want to sleep, but my annoying twin brother insists on asking me if I'm okay every five seconds!" I snapped out of irritation. Luke was quiet for a moment, and at first I thought he was finally going to leave. Then, the first sniffle came.

" I'm sorry, Jai. It's just...you slit your wrist right in front of me. Every time I close my eyes now I feel like I'm going to lose you. I can't help but be worried." Luke whispered brokenly. I bit my lip. Truthfully, I wanted to try again. Life just seemed so hopeless and I didn't know what to do.

"Come here, Luke." I rolled over to face him and made room for him to lie down next to me. Luke reacted immediately, snuggling into my side like he would do when we were a lot younger. Whenever one of us were hurt or had a nightmare, we would cuddle like this. Mum and Beau were always too busy to put up with us, so we relied on each other. We haven't been that close in years.

"Promise me you won't try to leave me again, Jai." Luke looked up at me with teary eyes. I bit my lip. I couldn't promise him anything, and he knew it.

"Luke, I can't...you know that." I squeezed my eyes shut, not wanting to see the disappointment glued to his face.

"Jai, I just wish you could get better..." Luke sighed, burying his face in my shoulder.

"I wouldn't know how to begin, Luke. I've felt this way since we were 13. It's not going to easily go away." I admitted. Luke threw his arm across my waist in a silent form of comfort.

"I know it's not going to happen as soon as you'd like, Jai. But, you could at least do things to take your mind off of everything. Let yourself start to find joy. I promise you, it will be worth it in the end."

I thought about it. Could I really let myself be happy? No. That was impossible, but the way Luke was looking at me made me want to try.

"How?"

~

"Jai, I know it sounds crazy, but once you get back in the swing of things, everything will start to get better!" Luke spoke loudly, almost as if he was mostly trying to convince himself instead of me.

Luke had the brilliant idea of starting to film videos again. I could sort of see his logic behind it. At one point, I loved making videos for our fans. It was the thing that made me happiest, but somewhere along the line I lost that and myself.

"I just don't know if it's the best thing for me to be in the public eye right now, Luke. I just attempted suicide and Twitter is already going crazy with all of the hate from that." I reasoned, nervously. I was scared. I wasn't sure if I would be able to take the hate that I would receive from ultimately messing something up in the video.

"Hey, relax. It's not a Janoskians video. We're going to start out small with a TwinTalktime video. I'll be with you every step of the way. I promise." Luke tried to comfort me, but I still wasn't quite sure if it was the best idea. Who knows what could go wrong?

"Hey Guys, we're TwinTalkTime!" Luke and I said in sync, after Luke started the camera. Luke quickly took over the video, realizing I was in no state of mind to do so.

"So we just wanted to check in with you guys. Um, a hated recently got close to Jai," Luke looked at me to make sure it was okay for him to continue. "She made his feel lower than he's felt in a very long time, and he...tried to end his life right in front of me."

Luke looked down as he tried to control his emotions and get his thoughts together.

"I'm okay now, though." I spoke up, surprising Luke. "It's taken a really hard toll on me, but I want to get better. I hated myself so much for making Luke cry, and I'll probably never forgive myself for that."

"It's okay, though." Luke smiled. "We just wanted to let you know that before we really started the video."

"Yeah," I took over again, "Today, we're going to put our friends and family to the test. Luke is currently holding the object that will help us do that."

"What I have here is some concealer we stole from our Mum's room. Hopefully we're a similar color." Luke laughed.

"We're going to put the concealer on our freckles to hide the marks most people use to identify us." I continued.

"Like the one on my nose and underneath Jai's eye. Then, we're going to go downstairs and see if anyone can tell us apart or if they actually really know our faces!" Luke got excited. We'd been planning this video for awhile and figured it would be awesome to do.

"On with the video. I'll do Luke first." I said, taking the concealer from Luke and applying some to his nose. I added more and more until you couldn't make out the freckle on his nose.

"Okay, and now Jai's turn!" Luke took the concealer and rubbed it on the two freckles underneath my eye. "Now, the side by side comparison."

"Wow, we do look pretty identical..." I noted as we stared in a mirror at our faces. We still had some differences, but the main ones were gone.

"Okay, let the pranking begin!" Luke and I cheered in unison.