The Silence Between Us ✓

[16] Sororicide

It was Saturday and I had absolutely nothing to do as always; my mum was at work and Theo was on his Xbox, shouting happily to his friends about how unfair it was that he got killed on some stupid video game. I didn't get the appeal myself – it all just seemed so repetitive, but to be fair to him, I hadn't ever really tried it so I couldn't give knowledgeable judgement as such. It was easy to say that I was bored and upset that Noah was still being weird. The day before he hadn't acknowledged I was there most of the time and kept daydreaming in the middle of a conversation.

And the thing was I was adding to the awkwardness because I couldn't get an image of him and Mackenzie together or ignore that he was probably being weird because he knew about Harrison. It was safe to say that telling him about that was a big mistake and telling him everything else wouldn't help.

I flicked through my books on my bed, attempting to find non-existent motivation that I knew wouldn't come. Mrs Porter was already going crazy about revision, adopting the phrase 'little but often' and screaming it at just about every student that admitted to doing anything else after school. I didn't get it – I was exhausted after coming home from school – why would I ever want to extend that by doing even more? Though I guess I only wanted to pass English so all the other subjects I had the joy of taking were irrelevant, no matter how good I was at them.

It was then that I passed Katie's number in my notebook. Should I text her? Was she serious? Did she actually want me to text her or was it just because I was nice to her?

I was glad that I at least had an excuse not to call her, because that would be so much more awkward. No, at least she could just not reply to me instead of actually telling me that she didn't want to speak to me. I decided that realistically I didn't have much to lose and with Noah being weird, I had the risk of going back to being friendless at school. I took a deep breath as I typed her number into my phone. Why was I making this into such a big deal? She was only a person after all – it's not like she was going to murder me if I said the wrong thing. And it was her that gave me her number after all.

Hi this is Via?

And then I stared at my phone silently for some unexplained reason. Well, it could be explained through the logic that I was desperately hoping for her to reply immediately but you know, that makes me sound like an even bigger freak than what I already was. I knew she probably wouldn't but that wasn't what I wanted to hear at that time. I wanted to be told that I might have a chance at making friends at my school so that I didn't feel so lonely all the time. I was finally hoping for what my mum hoped for every day after school when she asked me how it'd gone, and it made me feel even worse about myself than before.

Screw this, I thought to myself, and threw my phone over to my desk where I wouldn't be tempted to obsess over it again.

XXX

Ping! My phone rang loudly, and it filled me with anxiety. What if she told me to get lost or something worse? What if she just spoke to me  because she was upset and now doesn't want to? I realised too soon that I was
hyperventilating and probably the only way it would stop would be to actually look at my phone.

I crawled over to my desk, hating that it was 11 o'clock and I was still in my pyjamas; I'd had breakfast and then just gone back to bed because I had nothing to be getting on with. My heart was beating fast in my chest and I crossed my fingers.

Oh hey!

When you realise how stupid you've been because you've been stressing about a text that read 'oh hey'. Yeah, Via, you're really smart. My phone vibrated again