Silence is Golden

Prologue

The very first day of kindergarten, Emma and Henry were an inseparable pair. They did everything together, no matter what it was.

This is still the same even nine years later when they are in the ninth grade.

It was the beginning of the summer. Emma and Henry had planned out a special day in the mines. With bags full of everything needed for a trip I to the mines, they raced each other there.

"I'm faster than you are!" Emma shouted to Henry who was behind her.

"Not true!" he yelled back. "I'm letting you win!"

Emma laughed. He always said that but it wasn't true.

After a mile and a half run, the two made it to the mines. Taking out their flashlights, they entered cautiously.

"Some people say that when people trespass, ghosts of dead workers set off bombs," Henry told Emma in an attempt to scare her.

"Yeah, and then they feast upon the bodies of boys named Henry!" she quickly replied. "Lucky me!"

"You would be killed in that explosion along with me," Henry retorted.

"At least I wouldn't be eaten."

"You would be dead and your happy about not being eaten?"

"Yeah."

"Why?"

"Dead or alive, that's gotta hurt."

The two laughed extremely loud, causing the nearby walls and poles to shake. Suddenly without warning there was a large boom, sending the kids flying throughout the mine shaft and knocking then unconscious.

When they woke up, they found themselves lying in hospital beds. Henry looked over at Emma and said, "What happened?"

But Emma couldn't hear Henry. And Henry couldn't hear himself.

Fear set in when they realized what happened.

That explosion...

It made them deaf.