The Language of Silence

by Tiffany Truitt

  She had to be taking Advanced Placement Psychology. Or maybe she was a huge Dr. Drew fan.

  “Girls?”

  She swallowed and nodded her head.

  I couldn’t help but laugh a little. “You are not gay.”

  “How do you know?”

  “How do you know you are?” I countered. “Have you ever thought about being with a girl, kissing a girl?”

  “No. But I don’t really think about sex at all. The whole thing kind of makes me nervous. Maybe I haven’t wanted to have sex because I haven’t kissed a girl.”

  “You’re being silly, Sophia.”

  She fell silent. Sophia took a deep breath and looked down at me. “No. I’m not. You should let me kiss you.”

  “Wait. What? No. I’m not gay.”

  Sophia sat back down on the bed. “You owe me,” she charged, determined.

  “This is ridiculous.” I did owe her. I owed her anything she wanted.

  “No. I need to do this. I mean, you’re pretty. I can see that. Why not you? It doesn’t matter if you’re gay or not, right? I’ll still feel something if I am. Besides, I just need to see. I need to understand how I could love something like that.”

  I cringed. I wanted to leave the room right there and then.

  “I’m sorry. That came out wrong.”

  She was desperate. I could see it. I could feel it. Darn it. “Okay,” I muttered.

  Sophia closed her eyes and began to count to ten, willing herself to kiss me. The whole thing was beyond idiotic. I didn’t wait for her to make her move. I took her face in my hands and pressed my lips against hers.

  She froze. I closed my eyes, trying to shut out the awkwardness of it all. But then my lips were moving against hers. Somehow, I convinced myself that it wasn’t Sophia I was kissing. I convinced myself it wasn’t a girl. I just wanted to be kissed. I wanted to be touched. I wanted someone to reach for me and comfort me. I wanted someone to sacrifice some part of his or her dignity so I felt better.

  The door to the room opened and Kevin stumbled in. Sophia pushed me away, wiped her hand across her mouth, and began to cry. “What the hell is this?” asked a stunned Kevin.

  “Get out,” I mumbled.

  “This is my room,” he said, shutting the door behind him, a lopsided grin taking over his face.

  “Not going to happen,” I yelled, grabbing Sophia’s hand and pushing past him.

  All the way down the stairs, all I could think was how f-ing crazy my life was. I just shared my first kiss with my dead, gay brother’s girlfriend.

  ****

  I manage to get Ed back to his car. I open the driver’s side door and help him in. As I take a step back, he leans over and spits blood onto the pavement. He takes a deep breath before looking up at me.

  He looks like Hades.

  And I am to blame.

  No.

  He is.

  If he was with me like he wants to be, neither of us would be in this mess. He’s scared, and I’m tired of it. “I assume you can get yourself home?” I snap. I don’t wait for his answer before turning and walking away. I’m not sure how I’m going to get home. I rode here with Sophia, but I can’t stand to look at him for a second longer.

  The door to Ed’s car slams shut.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he yells after me.

  I can hear his footsteps echoing mine. The music from the party taunts us in the background. “Go home, Ed,” I yell back, refusing to face him.

  “You are unbelievable. What? No thanks?”

  I stop and turn on him. I turn so fast I feel dizzy. “Am I supposed to thank you for getting your tail whooped and bleeding all over me? Really? I’ve had it, Ed.”

  “You’ve had it? You’ve had it! You’re out of your freakin’ mind!”

  “Leave me alone,” I say through my teeth. He’s been trying to leave me alone since day one. Why care now?

  He pushes his hands through his hair and clenches his jaw. “Get in the car, Brett.”

  “No.”

  He laughs, sounding a little crazy. “Really? We’re having this fight? God, I’m getting the complete high school party experience now, ain’t I? Fight. Girl refusing to get into the car…”

  “Don’t forget the dry humping the prom queen part,” I reply. I don’t want to be anywhere near him. Kevin’s an a-hole, but he’s harmless. He could never hurt me like the boy in front of me. The boy who won’t acknowledge what I’m going through.

  The self-centered prick.

  The tears begin to fall, and I feel ashamed that I’ve cried so much in a short amount of time. Which only makes them fall more. Something changes in Ed’s expression. He takes a step closer to me. His bloodied hand reaches for me, and I smack it away. “Now? Really? Do you know what it’s been like for me the past couple weeks? Do you even care?”

  He closes his eyes. “Please. Just get in the car,” he begs.

  I’m tired of people asking so much from me. “I kissed Sophia,” I blurt out.

  “What?”

  “I f-ing kissed Sophia. My first kiss and it’s with a girl. A girl!”

  “I don’t understand.”

  We’re not yelling anymore, and for some reason, it makes everything worse.

  “She wanted to see something, so we kissed. Want to know the real messed up thing about it? I liked it. Not because she was a girl. I just liked being kissed. I’ve been dying here waiting for you.”

  “I didn’t ask you to wait,” he mumbles.

  I laugh. I’m almost sobbing now. “No. You’re right. You are too busy fucking anything with a vagina that would let you. Not caring that I have to sit back and watch.” It might be the first cuss word I have said in my entire life.

  “I don’t owe you anything.”

  “Yes, yes, you do,” I say, shoving him further away from me. I want to hit him. I want to punch him right in his mangled face. “Just keep on pretending, Ed. Keep pretending till you can’t even recognize yourself anymore. Pretend you don’t feel his death. Pretend you aren’t sickened by the way you keep giving yourself away to those vultures time and time again. Pretend you don’t feel anything for me. Soon, you’ll be nothing. You’ll just have yourself, and by then you won’t be able to stand to look at yourself in the mirror.”

  We’re so wrapped up in each other, screaming at each other in the middle of the road, that we don’t see them. Kevin and a bunch of his goons attack before we can even open our mouths to object.

  We’ve been Wendalled.

  It happens sometimes at these parties. Some jerk does something stupid, something to kill the buzz at the party, and they get Wendalled. Basically, the guy gets cornered and all the party’s trash—food, cigarette butts, half-filled beer cups, and sometimes puke—gets thrown at the poor kid.

  We’re just lucky it’s sans puke. Kevin high fives his friends and they run off laughing. Neither Ed nor I have the energy to go after them and fight back. We walk silently back to his car. We get in and drive away. We don’t say a single word to each other.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Ed:

  I don’t bother to see if Brett has followed me in the house. In fact, if I don’t see her again for days it might be a good thing. I silently thank my mom for kicking out Mr. Yates the morning after the first night Brett crashed at my house. She’s been sleeping on the couch ever since.

  Thank God.

  I’m so beyond pissed at her that it’s not even funny. Though what’s so funny about being pissed, I simply don’t know.

  In the morning, I plan on demanding Brett go back to her own home. I just can’t look at her anymore tonight. How dare she? I got my face pounded in for her! And for what? Her experimenting with Tristan’s girlfriend? And that whole diatribe outside my car!

  Fuck.

  Fuck.

  Fuck.

  I slam open the bathroom door and begin to bandage my crazy ass face. I take a shower and still find myself cussing out Brett Jensen.

&n
bsp; Have I really ever been this mad?

  I know I’m a dick. She’s always known that too. She can’t be mad about it. What? She thinks because her brother died that she has the right to change me? She couldn’t change him! She couldn’t convince him that this life was worth a damn. He ran his car into a damn treerather than deal with her for one more second.

  I stop. I tuck my head between my knees. I feel like I am going to vomit. I can’t breathe. Am I having a panic attack? There’s too much going on inside me. I can’t stop moving. I hop up from my bed and head into my mother’s room. I know where she keeps her Valium. I pop two of the pills. I hope it sets in soon. I’ve never taken her pills before, and I’m not sure how to tell if they’re working. For someone who never really touched drugs before, I’m becoming a real public service announcement.

  I hear the shower turn on and assume Brett is cleaning off.

  I could kill Kevin. Not with my fist. Of course not. I think I proved that tonight.

  I try reading to calm my nerves, but it doesn’t work. The shower’s still running, and I wonder if Brett plans on using up all the hot water.

  I try watching television, but still, I want to punch something.

  She’s still in that damn shower.

  What? Now she can run up the water bill?

  Enough.

  I march to the bathroom and pull open the door. I don’t care about being polite. I want her out of this house. I need her out of my life.

  She’s not even in the shower. She’s standing in the middle of the bathroom, looking at herself in the mirror. She reeks of trash. She hasn’t even bothered to pull the lettuce out of her hair. Her eyes are red from crying, but she’s not crying now. She’s just staring forward. She doesn’t even notice I’m here.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Brett:

  My secretly gay brother committed a hate crime at a party just like the one I left, a party where I was called a dyke. Granted, I had been caught kissing a girl, but the term was still inappropriate.

  Rude.

  But expected.

  These parties were like our very own therapy sessions. Being Wendalled was like the ultimate vent fest. The others literally purged their disgust at whatever you did all over you.

  We should thank our English teachers. The kids in our town really understand the idea of symbolism.

  I was there the night Donnie Wallace got Wendalled.

  Everyone knew Donnie Wallace was gay. His dad owned two of Wendall’s most popular restaurants, so people tended to pretend like they didn’t know about young Wallace’s sexual orientation. The town had enacted their very own Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy. Occasionally, an older member of the community would drop off a pamphlet on the Lord’s views on homosexuality at the restaurant, but the harassment never got worse than that.

  Until a few weeks ago.

  Donnie had visited some family in San Francisco, and when he came back, he was a changed man. I’m not sure what happened there, but whatever happened, he wasn’t afraid anymore. No longer was he able to keep who he was from the world. He pasted a rainbow patch on his book bag, and hand created a t-shirt with a nametag on it stating: Hello. I’m The Fag. Underneath the nametag was a picture of a bundle of sticks. Get it? Fag—meaning bundle of sticks. Nobody said anything to him at school. Well, except me. I asked him if the shirt came in small. As a fan of handmade t-shirts, his beat mine hands down.

  There was a rumor the guidance counselor called him in to talk about his life choices, but that seemed to be the extent of the reaction he was going to get from Wendall High.

  When he showed up to the party a few weeks back, he got a whole new reaction. Wendall’s students were out of their cells and filled with booze and illegal and prescription drugs. Everyone shunned him the minute he walked into the door. If he touched a chip, they dumped the bowl out. If he sipped from a cup, they sprayed it with cleaner. Kevin ran upstairs and hastily drew on a white t-shirt: Hello. I’m a Fag Hater. Underneath his words, he drew a crude picture of two males going at it.

  I told Tristan I wanted to leave. He wanted to stay. I didn’t understand. Only a month before, he’d come out of the closet to me. How could he stand by and watch this? The more I insisted we leave the party, the more he talked less to me and started joking around with Kevin.

  I just couldn’t fathom it. I knew my brother didn’t want the rest of Wendall to know he was gay. I understood that. It was better to stay quiet. We had only ever talked about him being gay once, but his need to join in on the teasing of Donnie seemed almost cannibalistic.

  When Donnie left the party, he got Wendalled. Instead of taking it like all Wendall students had silently agreed to do, Donnie threw a fit. He cursed and yelled. He promised to press charges. This incensed the crowd of morons. Fine. He was gay, but he didn’t have to flaunt it. Keep it to yourself. That’s what they all thought.

  But Donnie didn’t, and he had to graciously accept the punishment for that. And when he didn’t, they beat him for it.

  My brother helped.

  I watched with the rest of the partygoers. I didn’t stop them. When we drove home, my brother and I didn’t talk about what happened. Donnie missed three days of school, and he never reported the incident. He stopped speaking altogether.

  I kept waiting for my brother to speak of that night, but he never did. Neither did I.

  Tonight, no one but Ed spoke up for me at the party. Why is it so hard for us to speak? Thinking back on Donnie, I feel sick. What I went through tonight was nothing compared to his experience. I had not spoken that night. I had not asked for them to stop. I stayed silent.

  I was Wendall.

  Ed’s yelling at me to get in the shower, but I can’t move. I keep staring at myself in the mirror. Trash still covers me. It’s really rather fitting symbolism.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Ed:

  “Brett, get in the shower,” I yell.

  She doesn’t move.

  “Enough of the damn dramatics. Get in the shower. You smell like trash.”

  Completely still.

  I yank back the shower curtain and put my hand in the water to check the temperature. It’s fine. I grab her by her upper arms and plop her down into the tub. She yelps. It’s the first sign of life I’ve seen from her.

  She’s staring at me, and I feel like I’m being ripped apart. The defiant piece of lettuce begins to trudge its way down her hair. The water causes her hair to stick to her face. The whiteness of her dress is no more. I can see her skin. I can see her body. I can see the outline of her bra and underwear.

  She tucks her head against her thighs.

  I need this to be over.

  “No. You stand up. Take a shower, and then I am taking you home.” I meant to sound in control, but my voice is choked with emotion. I don’t know what’s happening to me. Before I know it, I’m in the shower too. I’m on my knees in front of her. The water is rushing down my back and spraying onto her.

  She looks up at me, and I feel like my blood is rushing so fast through my veins that I must be dying. We’re both breathing heavily now. I can see the water rushing in and dribbling out of her mouth.

  God, she is beautiful.

  I want to kiss her so badly it’s physically painful.

  “I don’t want to go home. I want to be with you,” she chokes out.

  I grab her by the arms again and pull her toward me. We’re both on our knees now. I’m so close to her. So damn close. A moan escapes my lips. I’m not even kissing her and I’m so freakin’ ready.

  I can’t stand it anymore. I can’t stand this for one freaking second longer.

  I press my lips to hers.

  She comes alive.

  Her mouth opens and her tongue slips onto mine.

  I’m dying.

  Whoever said the orgasm is a little death was right on the money.

  I pull away from her. I’m breathing so heavily that it’s embarrassing. I gently push her so her back i
s leaning against the tub. I shift and brace one of my hands against the far wall of the shower so I’m leaning over her.

  This is so beyond dumb.

  We’ll regret this.

  I know it.

  I press my forehead against hers.

  Damn it. Why can’t I breathe?

  I feel her legs open slightly. My fingers rest against her ankle. She lifts her body up and kisses my neck. I’m moaning again like some complete and utter schmuck.

  Now she’s the one breathing like someone dying. She closes her eyes and leans her head against the wall. The water hits her neck and runs down her chest. My hand moves up her leg. I can feel her body tense with anticipation. I don’t stop. I keep going.

  If there’s one thing I know about Brett Jensen it’s that she knows what she wants. If she wanted me to stop, she would tell me.

  Her legs open a little wider, and I find her.

  When we’re done, I leave her alone to finish up her shower. I still haven’t seen her naked, and it felt weird hanging around so she could wash her hair.

  I don’t hesitate to pull her close to me in bed. Maybe it’s my bashed in face or the Valium, but I want to enjoy this. I’m going to pretend this night has no consequences. I’m just going to do what I want. I want her in my arms. Her hair is still wet, and her face is flushed. We don’t talk about what just happened.

  Brett lays her head against my chest.

  And for a few hours, everything is right in the world.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Brett:

  For the second time in less than a week, I find myself pretending to be asleep in Ed’s bed. I once again fear waking up and realizing everything that happened the night before no longer matters. Last time, it was because we cuddled. This time, it’s because of a little more.

  Wow.

  What a night.

  I didn’t expect any of that.

  Ed’s arms tighten around me. “Are you awake?” he asks. It’s only a whisper, but I’m afraid of what comes after it. Can we really be together? Is that what last night meant? Or was it merely some weird thing that happened between two people who needed someone?