Evacuated

Silence Kills

Author's Note: The following content in this chapter is the continuation following "Sunday - Part Two" rather than "It Started Like This.." which was a break through chapter. Thank you.
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Sunday, April 17th 2016. The day that may have just destroyed everything that had any meaning to me at all. But the weekend was over now and that meant school. I had no choice but to focus my mind on things that didn't sound like Jess. I woke up that morning thinking things were gonna be far easier than they turned out to be. I really believed that my mind would mend its own cuts and that I could rely on it when I really needed it, like during school. But that, unfortunately, was not the case. I had such a hard time thinking that day. I'd spent a minute or two with my attention on the teacher or the kids' ridiculous taunts surrounding me but then my mind would manage to draw me back to Jess, sending me back to the place I had been trying to avoid.

The problem was, everything that was said, no matter who by, it always set my mind up to remind me of everything I had lost the day my innocent gesture led to the biggest mistake of my life. No matter what the topic, my obsessive intellect had to find a way to send me a message with "Jesse Aarons" written all over it. We'd be talking about something as light hearted as shirts and my thoughts would kick in; "I don't care much for shirts. Except that one Jess let me wear yesterday. I loved that shirt. I wonder why he hasn't worn it since. I was the last one to wear it. Weird. But Jess is weird. A good weird. I love good old Jess..." and that'd be the end of it. Try any topic, like food, who doesn't love food? Apparently me because this is what that conversation turned into; "I love food! Food is like the best thing ever. I'm always so desperate to have some sort of food, I'd take any of it. It's all I have left anyway. I've replaced my obsession with Jess for an obsession with food. Both look good at the time, but in the end they only make me hate myself more than I did when I started. Jess made that easy. But he does it in a cute way. Jess makes everything cute. He even breathes cute, legitimately. He's just...damn." So I decided that participating in conversation was not the best idea. Who knows, eventually I may have came out and started talking about Jess. Then everyone would know how damn obsessed I am. Then people would ask Jess about it. Then he'd tell them I oughta keep my goddam mouth closed because he actually hates me. Then everyone would tell me that and I'd just end up crying even harder. "I don't overthink too hard, do I?"

Every day was exactly the same from that day forward. I cried almost everyday. Jess ignored my existence. My tolerance for him shrunk smaller and smaller each day. He'd say one damn thing and I'd be ready to bash my head in the wall. It was getting really bad. Things were looking so far down, I couldn't see the bottom of the bottomless pit that was my life. For a while there, I thought things were getting better. I thought I was getting better. Wrong again, I was. I believed that time had been trying to heal me, before I came to realize the healing process had only been stopped for about two weeks.

Yes, that much time had passed. Weeks. My parents were supposed to be back from their business trip a week ago. I had received a text later in the week from my mom. My parents hardly ever texted me unless it was really important. I've copied the exact text from my phone, this is what it said: "Hey Leslie! We hope you're having a great time with Jess and his family! There has been a slight delay and we're stuck in Chicago. We don't know exactly when we're going to be back. We miss you very much though! Be good! We'll be home as soon as we can! -Mom ❤️" and that's when my world came crashing down. I'd be stuck in a small farmhouse with Jess for who knows how long.. The excitement and anticipated waiting for my parents arrival back to Lark Creek was the only thing holding me together. So naturally, I fell apart. Life was just beating the cross I had bared and I didn't know, with that said, how much more I could handle. My mom didn't text me again for a while, but I took note of the rare updates they posted on their Twitter page, @JudyBillBurke. Recently, my dad tweeted his favorite quote from Teddy Roosevelt. Then the next one followed a week later. They had initially only gone on this trip to gain inspiration and come back here to finish their book. But it turned out, they had decided to continue writing and FINISH the book before returning home! Goddamnit, what had I ever done to the universe to make it so mad at me?

It had been almost a month. I didn't hear much worth thinking about from my parents. Until one day, they tweeted on their Twitter: "Chapter Five of Twenty is finished! We're excited for release night." And I felt my heart sink a little in that moment. It took them a month to write five chapters. Which meant they had fifteen to go, at least. Which meant I had at least until the end of the school year left with the Aarons. "Five months! They're gonna be gone for five more months!" I ranted to the girl I had spent my last few recesses with. She wasn't like me at all. She was in fifth grade as well, another class. She was more open minded and considerate than most kids at Lark Creek School. She didn't start addressing me until I sprained my ankle running one day and came back to school on crutches the next day. Crutches I had walked on for only three days. It was a third degree sprain, but it didn't hurt that badly. Getting x-rays was reasonably fun and I didn't mind the idea of Mrs. Aarons pulling me out of school one day to get it checked out.

Things were pretty much the same everyday. There was no progress between me and Jess. Except for the one day he made cookies and threw one at me, which I took as a compliment.
I shouldn't have done that. Except I was told that it was "progress" because the next time he handed it to me without throwing it at my head this time. Progress was a little bit of a stretch, but I took it. Jess and I hadn't spoken a word to each other in a month, despite the fact that we'd be practically living together for the next five months. He didn't seem to care one bit, and that's what bothered me the most.

I found myself crying ever so often, and I never understood why I had become suddenly so sensitive. If Jess had maybe showed even a little bit of hurt or missing due to our fight, that would've comfort my broken pride. "It's not that we're fighting, it's that Jess doesn't care that we're fighting. That's what hurts the most." I eventually came to my senses and stopped being so stubborn and admitted I had a problem. I tried for so long to deny that things weren't that bad. But deep down, I knew they were. And I knew they weren't gonna be looking up anytime soon.

Part of me knew after so much time had passed, that if things between me and Jess were ever gonna get better, they would've by then. I really truly knew that it wasn't going to get better. Jess and I were a thing of the past, my mind knew that. But my heart refused to admit it. My heart truly believed that someday, even after time proved otherwise, that things were gonna get better somehow. I felt that maybe, just maybe, Jess would come to me one day, out of the blue and say "Leslie, I'm sorry. I had no idea how much I had hurt you and I want things to be the way they were" or something along those lines. I've imagined those words several times, but somehow when I write them out here, they don't sound nearly as heartfelt and accurate as they did in my head. Sometimes I'm so stupid, I think about Jess recreating me during class time at school. A knock at the door, interrupting the teachers' lesson and drawing the attention of every fifth grade kid towards the door. "Is Leslie there?" a voice from behind the teacher asked. I walked out into the hall and Jess' sweet brown eyes were glued on my green ones. "Leslie, I know this isn't a really good time, but I don't care. I miss you and us and everything and I just thought about it and stuff so I asked my teacher if I could go to the bathroom but I was actually--" and I'd stop his pointless rambling by embracing him so tightly in my arms before he could even get the actual apology out. He jumped at the sudden touch of my warm body up against his, my hand stroking through his hair, tears filling my eyes. "It's okay" I'd have said. "It's okay." And even though all he put me through was anything but okay, I wouldn't have hesitated to forgive him within seconds. It wouldn't have been hard for him, we both knew that. Some people are stubborn as hell and even when they know they want something desperately, when their chance is there to grab it, they push it away to see if the other person will fight for them or just give up. That was an easy way to test how much someone really cared. And Jess had failed. Big time. There was no doubt about that.