The Silence Between Us

Lies, Lies, Lies

Chapter 16:

"Exactly where have you been and why have you not answered any of my calls, or texts, or anything! I had to resort to emails!" When I didn't say anything, and opted to stay in the silence, Mae leaned closer to me, screaming in my face. "Emails! Who even uses email anymore?"

I rolled my eyes at her. She was being way too dramatic per usual. I had only been gone from school for a day, it wasn't like I left the country and didn't tell her about it. She probably knew where I lived, thanks to Alex being my next-door neighbor. Mae could've come herself if she wanted to.

"You know, you're such a mom." I retorted, smirking smugly because I knew that would set her off.

"What do you mean!" She roared, alerting the whole school of our conversation. "I'm just making sure that you're alright and caring for you! Isn't that what friends do?"

"No." Finn said and I snorted in an attempt to stifle a laugh. "That's what moms do."

And then they were at it again, arguing with each other, trying to prove the other one wrong. It was a miracle to me that they couldn't see how crazy they were for each other. I mean, I had only been a part of their group for a week or two and I could even tell. Mae tried to play it off cool whenever he was around, but I could tell by the way that she was acting that she was trying really hard to keep everything in check.

"So, where were you yesterday?"

Clara took me by surprise, I didn't even realize she was walking with us! I sucked in a quick lungful of air before I realized it was her and not some other random psycho, but that breath tickled my throat which launched a full-scale coughing fit. Thanks to that sickness that I've had for a couple days now, I still wasn't feeling a hundred percent, so that cough lasted a while.

"Woah, chill." Clara said behind me, awkwardly patting my back as if that would help the cough go away. She handed me her water ang in a couple of seconds, I gulped it all down, happy that she had something to drink or else that cough would've lasted forever. "I guess that answered my question then. You sick?"

I nodded and cleared my throat as I attempted to speak again. "Yeah, I had to take a couple days off from school. Sickness doesn't really agree with me."

We walked in silence for a little while longer as we made our way down the hallway before Clara spoke up. "And what about Alex? Do you know where he is?" Clara asked nonchalantly, as if the question hadn't almost caused me to stop in my tracks.

Clara's question caught me off guard. No, I didn't know where he was. I thought he was at school for the three days that I missed. And now that I thought about it, our last conversation didn't go so well. Was that why he didn't show up? No, it couldn't be.

"I don't know..." I said, letting my thoughts wander off for a little longer before I returned back to the conversation. "You haven't heard from him at all?"

"Nope."

I let the wheels inside of my head spin for a little bit while I tried to process all the information. The only thing that I could keep thinking about was how Clara seemed not to care at all. I know it's not my place to judge others especially when I don't know them that well, but none of us knew where Alex was then for three days. Shouldn't that set off red flags? And it wasn't just Clara, why wasn't everyone else acting concerned? Why was it just me?

"You don't seem too worried about him." I stated more as a fact than an accusation.

Clara sighed as she stopped, turning towards me. "It's not like he hasn't done this before. Alex sometimes just disappears from school. We call him, text him, we even called his dad one time. We can never get ahold of him, no matter how hard we try when he just vanishes like this. And when he comes back, we always ask him where he was, what he was doing and he just shrugs. That's it. After three years, it gets a little repetitive."