The Silence Between Us

One Step Forwards, Two Steps Back

Chapter 25:

I didn't hear from Alex that day. Or the next day. Or the day after that.

I would be lying if I said I wasn't extremely hopeful. I felt that maybe, just maybe that last text I sent him could work. Or at least, get him to start wanting to talk to me again. Except he didn't. Now I had no other ideas left and I felt like the only other thing I could do is wait.

Time was not my friend. I grew restless as the days went by. Things passed in a blur; nothing really important seemed to be going on. School at Westview seemed incredibly useless and it felt like I wasn't learning anything at all. And English class was incredibly dull without Alex there.

Precalculus was also incredibly boring without Noah. I missed him too, but I wanted to give him as much space as he needed to figure things out. The last thing I wanted to do was intrude and cause another argument that I didn't mean to happen.

That's why I didn't text them or call them or do anything the next few days. I wanted to give them space. I knew I was in the wrong for what happened, and I didn't want to push it too much. If they weren't going to talk to me, then I didn't want to drive them away even more by being incredibly annoying and clingy. I was going to give them space, even if it killed me.

So right now instead of trying to think about them which obviously wasn't working, I was hanging out with Mae, Clara, and Finn. We were lounging in the library, something that Finn had heavily protested against because he said and I quote 'Libraries are full of stuck of snobs who don't find the joy in laughter'. Mae and I took offense to that statement as avid library goers while Clara agreed with Finn. That little traitor.

We were supposed to be studying. Exams were coming up right around the corner. They were all one week away and Christmas was the week after that so we didn't have that much time left to cover an entire semester's worth of material. Except what we were doing was hardly called studying. I was reading The Book Thief while Mae and Finn were throwing food in each others mouths and Clara was fidgeting with some papers in her hands.

Let me just mention food was banned in the library. But the only way that we could get Finn to come in with us was to bring along some snacks so here we were breaking the rules like a band of rebels. It was funny because with Mae and I over here, we were the complete opposite.

I set down my book for a second, stretching out my arms. This was something that I rarely said ever, but I was actually bored with reading. It wasn't providing a good enough distraction for me and my mind kept wandering.

So instead of continuing to read pointlessly since I had to keep rereading the page over and over, I turned to Clara. "What'cha got there Clara?"

She shrugged as she stopped fiddling with the papers and turned to face me. "Nothing important."

I frowned. Nothing important? Really? "Well it seems pretty important due to the fact that you've been shuffling them around for the past forty-five minutes."

She said nothing at that and that's when I knew they really were important to her. Actually, she was acting nervous, something that I've never noticed from her before. All of the other members of our group were usually pretty easy to read since they either had all their emotion in their voice or their body movements. But Clara's emotions were shoved so deep down that it surprised me that I saw her even just a little bit vulnerable.

"What are they, Clara?" I asked her. I didn't want to pry, but now she really peaked my curiosity.

"Well..." She didn't finish the statement for a couple seconds and based on her constant shifting in her chair and fidgeting with her hands, it really seemed like she didn't want to tell me the rest. She did anyways.