The Silence Between Us ✓

[2] Idle Town

Hi?

It was from an unknown number, which scared me at first, but then I remembered that I did give Noah my number earlier. I hadn't expected him to text so quickly – I hadn't expected him to text at all to give you the truth. He was part of the collective group of classmates that thought I was some weird psycho bitch they enjoyed talking about a lot. I had known this would happen when I joined the school, but my mum had insisted that I go, so I went anyway. She probably still believed that I could make normal friends that could get over the fact I couldn't speak despite the obvious communication barrier. I wasn't in the same state of mind.

Hi?

Some part of me knew that this would be some kind of trick – that Noah couldn't possibly have texted me at five o'clock the same day that I gave him my number without bad intentions. I'd heard just about every nasty thing he and his mates had said about me so why would that suddenly change?

It's Noah – this is Via right?

Yup that's right

Great

Ok

As you can see, I was very talkative at this point. To be honest, all I could think about was how Noah was going to trick me into saying the wrong thing, or at least something he could laugh about with his friends. He was by no means here to talk about the coursework; from what I'd seen, he hated school and didn't care whatsoever about grades. He must be up to something – I just hadn't quite worked what that was yet.

So... the coursework

Yeah – have you had any ideas about that yet?

So, the thing is – I don't read?

I had a feeling that was the case

Did I just do that? Was I actually stupid? That was asking for people to be mean to me, Noah included. I was such an idiot.

What's that supposed to mean?

Shit shit shit shit shit shit. I was internally screaming at how bad this had already gotten. And it was all my fault as well. UH fuck this. I might as well commit, mightn't I?

You seem to be the athletic popular type that has more muscle than brain?

My heart felt like it was beating five times it was meant to and for some of the time it took for Noah to respond, I was certain I'd stopped breathing properly. My life was officially a mess and it had only taken a few texts – I know I was really cool, right?

Fair enough

Of all the responses I was expecting, this wasn't it. Why was he suddenly being nice to me? The voice in the back of my head reminded me that it was most likely some kind of ploy to make fun of me and not to trust him, but for some reason, I didn't want to believe it. I don't know why I was being so stupid – Noah would never even want to speak to me if this wasn't a trick.
I looked at the text again. What should I do now? Should I just leave it or say something else? I had no idea. See this is what I like about not being able to speak; you never really have to think about what to say so hard. Before I overanalysed the conversation anymore, my phone pinged one more time.

Why don't you speak?

I knew my brain was fucked up as soon as my first instinct was to tell him the truth. Telling him the truth would be the epitome of bad ideas – and that wasn't an exaggeration. I only had to remember the people that he hung around with to know that much. That would definitely sink in tomorrow when I went back to the hellhole that was school. I would see him with his friends, and all the nasty things would come rolling back to me and I would see, once again, that he's not a person to be trusted, nor would he ever.