The Silence Between Us ✓

[1] Isombard

"And Via and Noah can be the last pair." A shock ran through my body and I was surprised when Noah didn't sigh or roll his eyes at his mates. Why was Mrs Fields partnering me up? I thought she had got it like all the rest of the teachers did?

I stayed rooted in my chair, not wanting to draw any more attention to myself. It's moments like these that I wondered how different my life would be if I was normal. Sometimes I thought about it was like a parallel universe – that somewhere a totally normal Via would be chatting happily with her friends and definitely wouldn't be trying to appear invisible.

"Ok then – do you all want to move to your partners and perhaps start brainstorming ideas?" Before Mrs Field betrayed me (snake), I liked how much freedom she gave us, allowing us to work at our own pace and not tying us down to certain ideas. Now I just felt upset. Why was she making me do this? Surely she understood that me working on my own was the best idea for everyone?

I looked up and saw Noah giving me a painful grimace as he walked over to my desk. I could have told you he hated me even before that look. I could have told you he hated me before I even came to this school, to be honest. Just not in a conventional way – that's the problem

Whilst thinking about all of the things that made Noah hate me already, I'd forgotten that we still had at least ten minutes before the lesson ended. That was 10 minutes of either silence or being talked at. This day really couldn't get any better, could it?

He sat awkwardly opposite me, his arms spreading the length of the desk, kind of like how you'd expect an octopus to. Great, now I was thinking about Noah with octopus tentacles, and keeping a deadpan face with that is surprisingly hard, let me tell you. Not that I would have had to explain the joke to him or anything, but I didn't want him to think I'm even weirder than I am.

"So..." He said giving a face that looked awkwardly constipated. He barely looked at me, instead focusing his gaze on the display behind me about the GCSE syllabus we had to do by the end of the year. On there somewhere was the independent coursework element that, it turned out, wasn't quite as independent as I thought. I saw his friend glancing in our direction and laughing smugly. Harrison Taylor was never going to be polite about this; he's too obnoxious for that. At least I didn't get paired up with him, a little voice inside my brain said, but I instantly regretted it looking back at my partner.

I rested my chin on my hands and tried not to think about octopuses (or octopi depending on how you say it). Why did I have such an octopus addiction today? I had no idea. Noah was definitely not an octopus anyway – they're far too clever - octopuses have primitive problem solving and pattern recognition skills. Scientists don't actually know if they're capable of communications with others, so if anything, I'm more like an octopus than him.

It turned out that daydreaming about how many hearts an octopus has (three by the way – it's very cool) was an overall positive thing as, glancing at the clock, I worked out we only had five more minutes of this hell left. I didn't have a plan after that, but at this point, all I wanted to do was get out of this classroom and then Noah could make comments about how annoying I was and I wouldn't have to hear them. The thing was I needed a good grade in English – I really needed a good grade in English - and that meant that I needed to pass this coursework, which, at this moment in time, seemed pretty impossible.

I decided the best thing to do was to just write my number down on an empty page of my exercise book. It was a risky move, but at least he actually had a chance of talking to me then. Dreading to think about who he could share it with, I handed it to him after ripping it out just as the bell rang. He sprinted out like he always did of course, but he didn't drop it in the bin like I thought he would.

I waited for the mass of people to leave the room before making my way to the door, as I did every lesson; it meant that people are less likely to notice me. I like people ignoring that I exist because that means they won't try to talk to me or say anything mean.

"Are you ok Via?" It was rich coming from her. I turned around and nodded at Mrs Fields meekly before turning back and walking out of the door. That's what people want isn't it? To feel like I'm shy and harmless because that's the cute stereotype of someone who doesn't speak. People are ignorant to the fact that I don't have selective mutism and people that do aren't usually like that anyway. They don't seem to be able to understand that just because they can't hear what goes on inside my head, that doesn't mean that I'm totally brainless or stupid. If anything, I probably have a louder inner voice than most people that can speak.

I made my way up the stairs to the learning support corridor. Speed-walking is an amazing thing sometimes – it showed people that I was busy and definitely not in the mood to talk to anyone. Elliot would probably have disagreed with everything I've just said, but that's because he's Elliot and thinks that I'm so much more confident than I really was. I couldn't wait to see him tonight to tell him everything; he's always so dramatic with these things and makes me feel important again.

Although lots of people have always assumed I needed learning support, I only came here at break and lunch because frankly, I had nowhere else to go. Having no friends in high school has to be the worst feeling in the world but I counted myself lucky that I didn't have to show everyone that in the canteen. My pastoral officer, Mrs Porter, had said that I was allowed to use this room because she 'understood my struggles' and 'hoped this would be a safe space for me'. Either way, it was barely used and basically my own small part of the school that I could escape to.

I put my bag down on one of the desks after shutting the door and took out my phone. I know – I was such a rebel going on my phone in school hours! Seriously though, nobody came in here normally and if a teacher did catch me, it's not like they would ever dream of punishing me; I was 'poor Via' in their eyes. I knew the teachers all knew the truth immediately – you could see it in their eyes, the sympathy and the fact that they'd basically let me do what I want made it obvious. I didn't understand why Mrs Porter thought it would be ok to tell the teachers and then forbid them to tell anyone else but it's not like I could complain. Sometimes I wondered if things would be any different if the people in my class knew the truth about me but I had a feeling that things would be exactly the same.

I unlocked my phone to discover that Elliot had already texted me, which undoubtedly meant that his maths class was as boring as ever; he always messaged me when he had maths. Apparently his teacher didn't know what fun was, nor had any time for it when solving simultaneous equations according to Elliot.

How's it going?

It was always nice when Elliot texted me at school because after essentially being invisible for the whole morning, I always ended up feeling like I was watching some shitty high school drama as part of the audience. The fact that someone was concerned about how I was doing was refreshing.

Pretty shit – how about you?
What happened to my little ray of sunshine?!
Shut up – how's maths?
Pretty shit. My teacher's trying to explain why the equation of a circle is the most exciting thing you've ever seen.
HAHAHA, fun!
What are you doing?
Hiding from the world – it's break so no lessons for me for another 15 mins!
Honestly! I miss you so much
SAME!
Ok, so the guy sitting next to me is the weirdest?!
How?
He's like you – convinced that Nutella is meant to be put on EVERYTHING
Quite right.
Oh shit, I've got to go – My teacher nearly caught me!
Bye!

And then I was back to reality where I'm stuck in this place. Honestly, have I mentioned how annoying school is already? I didn't know how I was going to survive a whole year of this - especially with this coursework. It was all such a mess, but it was about to get a whole lot more exciting.