Silence

Chapter Ten - Sinking Ships and Illnesses

"Love is blind; friendship closes its eyes." – Friedrich Nietzsche

Chapter Ten – Sinking Ships and Illnesses

"Get in the wardrobe!" hissed Jaron, urgency on his tongue.

"Jaron! What? It's just your parents."

"And what are they going to think when they see me at home, with a girl in my room? Especially since the school would have informed them that I wasn't in class today."

Kira's eyes widened at the thought. "But they know me. They know we wouldn't have been doing anything like that."

"Were you not listening to everything I just told you? Including the part about my parents!"

The footsteps passed Jaron's bedroom, walking towards his parents' room.

"We have less than a minute Kira! Just get in the wardrobe, we'll figure something out later. There's no time for anything more elaborate!"

Kira looked like she had more to say. But she slowly closed her mouth, shooting a look at Jaron. He helped her into the wardrobe, closing the doors behind her. But they burst open again almost instantly and a soft black something flew into his face before he could react.

"It's a jumper. " whispered Kira, "you might want to hide all of that." She gestured to his bloodstained school shirt and the cuts and bruises running up his arms. She glanced back up at his face and her jaw dropped. Kira leapt from the cupboard, hands outstretched.

"Woah, woah, woah, what are your doing?"

"There is a bruise the size of a fist on your face," Kira hissed as she began to comb his fringe down over his cheek, "I'm just covering it up."

"I'll do that, get back in the wardrobe!" Jaron pushed her away.

High-heeled clicks emerged from their bedroom, getting closer and closer to Jaron's door. He dumped a few crumpled tissues on the floor, rolled onto his bed and pulled the covers up to his neck.

Just as the door began to open, Jaron forced himself to go limp and closed his eyes as if he was sleeping.

Mrs Pierce knelt down next to his bed, lightly shaking his shoulder. Slowly Jaron 'awoke' from his imitated slumber.

"Jaron? What are you doing in bed? Asleep?"

Putting on his most convincing congested sounding voice, he croaked, "I didn't feel too good"

"The school called, they said..."

"What!? What time is it?" He scrambled past his mother, tumbling off the end of his bed. Jaron hobbled towards his desk, making the motion of reaching for his phone.

"Jaron! It's three thirty."

He faltered. "I only meant to sleep for a little bit."

"Well obviously you didn't. As I was saying, the school called. They said you weren't in any of your classes today. They would have called the house phone, but they said it was disconnected." Jaron cast a swift look at the drawer in his desk. "I told them I had left before you went to school. So, Jaron, is there anything you want to tell me? About where you were?" She pushed herself up and perched on the edge of Jaron's bed, patting the section of duvet beside her.

Slowly, while imitating a slight loss of balance, Jaron stumbled along the few feet's distance to his bed. He left a few inches between him and his mother, but she didn't seem to notice.

"I woke up this morning, all dizzy and stuff," which wasn't totally a lie. "I think I started to get ready but I really needed to lie down. I got back in bed and woke up just now."

"So you were sleeping all day?"

"I guess so."

She smoothed down her skirt, running her long slender fingers across the fabric, before getting to her feet. Jaron's mother did not look him in the eyes. "Right, well, next time try to let me know before you just skip school like that." She walked over to the door of Jaron's bedroom, leading against the doorframe, watching him.

Jaron was surprised at his mother's response. While she wasn't notorious for screaming at him, she never usually just let him off like that. She appeared to be the complete opposite. Way too calm. Eerily even. The calm before the storm kind. The kind that acts as a passage from anger to inescapable rage. Possibly, the scariest kind of all.

Jaron's thoughts trailed off and his bedroom fell back into focus, revealing his mother still waiting expectantly.

He nodded solemnly in response, crawling along his bed to bury himself in his covers once more.

Satisfied, Mrs Pierce slipped away, the door beginning to close behind her. Jaron let out a huge sigh of relief. He began to creep out from under the covers, but the door burst open again his mother's head popped in.

"You know, I don't know why I didn't think of this before, but Jeffery was here the whole time, I wonder why he didn't just call the school." Her voice had the sickly sweet tone that Jaron was so used to. But before he could even begin to string words together to form an excuse, his mother's head retracted and the door closed softly behind her.

Jaron sat, dumbfounded amongst the mass of ruffled sheets and blankets, staring at the door, the image of his mother's toothy grin etched into his memory like a knife to wood. As the sudden realisation of what his mother's words had meant clicked into place, a timid voice called his name.

"Kira, you have to get out of here." He didn't turn his head to face her, fearing that if his eyes left the door, his mother may remerge once more. "They know I wasn't at home."

"Well maybe I can help convince them otherwise." Kira's trembling voice took away any hope of her dialogue's certainty but Jaron appreciated her efforts.

"Don't you get it," Jaron seethed, suddenly defensive, "they're starting to suspect something's up with me. Maybe they already know that I know about the situation. The point is, you cannot connect yourself to this."

"Jaron, that ship sailed when you decided to tell me what was happening-"

"What? Like you gave me a choice!" Jaron leapt to his feet, leering over Kira.

"No, I didn't give you a choice, because I want to be involved with this." She jabbed a finger into his chest, unfazed by Jaron's advance. "Whether you like it or not, this doesn't sound like something you can do alone. And congratulations, you've got a volunteer."

"Kira. This isn't signing up for a jolly good quest; these are concepts that I don't even understand. This isn't like one of those books you read. This is real life, with real deaths. Consequences and an aftermath. I don't expect to come out of this without losses and repercussions, and I simply can't allow you to be one of them."

Kira made to argue, but Jaron's heightened hearing caught onto a conversation, situated near the bottom of the stairs. With his mind being preoccupied, he couldn't focus on the exact words but Jaron caught the general gist of it.

"Look, Kira, we're going to have to reschedule the remainder of this...discussion. In the meantime, you have to get out."

"Get out where, Jaron? I don't exactly have a lot of choice regarding exits."

"The window."

Sighing profusely, Kira whispered, "I don't know why I ever decided to become your friend, Jaron Pierce."

***

Lets just skip to the apology. I don't have a good excuse. This chapter was hard and it took me a long time to find, not only motivation, but also the words I wanted to use. I have hated this chapter for quite a while, only really coming to love it towards writing the second half of it which took a day compared to the two months the first half did.

But I like how it turned out, and at least for the next chapter, I have a relatively clear idea of what will happen next.

Just don't hold me to that...