may shatter on impact (tronnor)

3. Words & the Silence

My house is like ice - it's cold and silent and my heart seems to stop as I walk inside and no one's home. Back home in California, it was always warm and there was always noise. The tea kettle was whistling and our dog was barking and I would walk in singing and Tyde would have his music too loud and the washing machine would be going, and there would just be so much sound, and it would feel like home. I never really appreciated that home-sound until I didn't have it.

Which is really my fault, but I don't like to think like that.

It's really his fault. It was all him.

But I can't really blame him, can I?

Mum is tip-toeing down the stairs, skipping the creaky one, so that she can ask me a hundred questions that I don't want to answer. "Hey, honey. How was your day?"

Words. They all start to flow before I can make sense of them, they fall out in a jumble of meaningless contractions and subjects and verbs and everything's in past tense. They're rivers deep with meaning and clouds transparent with nothing on the inside but particles of rain that no one can bring themselves to love no matter how hard they try. They're the sun setting too fast for anyone to capture with a photo and too quick for anyone to process before I run. Because that's what I do, what we all do - run. They just tumble out like a child running down a hill, unable to stop, the wind rushing by and the air stinging his eyes, the words coming out before I can think. "I should've stopped him."

Mum's eyes grow wide, but she's the one who can't speak this time, the one who can't think because of all the pity in her mind, because of all the memories and fear and shame she's trying to forget. I rush past her and up the stairs, not bothering to skip the squeaky step because I'm already listening to all the noise that's going to get us all killed might as well add to the cacophony of sound.

"Troye!" Mum calls after me softly, wringing her hands in worry but too scared to see what a mess her son has become.

"I'll go check on him," Tyde says quietly.

I can hear him walk up the stairs slowly but surely, and he opens the door to my room, glancing around for me. There's only a bed, a desk, and a bookshelf here. Only furniture. There's no personality behind it, there's no heart and soul and tears and kisses in the dark and memories. There's only furniture, here, in this empty room, in this nothingness that I hide in.

"Troye..." he says softly, like we're kids playing hide-and-seek again. Like everything's okay and we're playing a game and once he wins it will all be over.

I've dropped my backpack onto my bed and wedged myself underneath the desk. The grains in the wood swirl before my eyes, turning into black glasses and a beautiful smile and a laugh that rivaled the sun in its brightness.

I'm shaking and tears have fallen onto my hands, little droplets of water and crystals of clear blue and translucent white and little glass pieces.

"No..." I whisper.

More glass is falling, ripping into two, shattering across my hands and staining my black jeans with the dirty saltiness of them.

"Troye," Tyde says softly, sitting next to the desk so that I could still get up if I had to, but he's there with me the way he wasn't before. He's hiding with me, hiding from before, screaming into the silence hoping no one will hear you because that might just be the end of everything. "Troye, you're safe now. We're okay, we're okay and we're safe and it's going to be okay, Troye."

Only his words are just more run on sentences in repeating times that I can't change.

We're safe.

We'll never be safe.

I can't slow my breathing, I can't speak but I am, and I can't shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up, it's time to be quiet, kids. We're going to have to be very quiet now. Don't make a sound. Not a single sound. No singing, no moving, don't scream, kids. We're safe. I promise.

"Tyde," I sob. My voice is hoarse and too loud, it's so loud. "Tyde, oh my God, oh my God, Tyde - "

"I know, Troye," he murmurs. "I know."