Silence ✔️

• Three

A year had passed, and Zelda was in the first grade now. School hadn't gotten any better for her. Her grades were fine as always and she genuinely enjoyed learning—it was just the kids in her class that caused her problems.

Especially the chestnut haired kid that she met in kindergarten, Link Forrester.

Everybody moved their mouths around, and Zelda soon discovered that this was called talking. She didn't know how to do it, and she never did.

One day, she tried to talk like the other kids in her class, but after she had felt her throat vibrate, everyone began to laugh. Zelda wondered what she had said wrong, because the looks on their faces didn't look like they were laughing with her—no, they were laughing at her. She couldn't hear them, but she knew what laughing was.

She immediately closed her mouth and told the teacher without using words that she needed to use the bathroom.

Zelda opened the classroom door, wearing a neutral expression on her face. The moment she shut the door, she dashed off to the bathrooms, holding her bathroom pass and feeling her hands begin to shake. What was she afraid of?

She made it to the bathroom, entering the ladies room and locking herself in one of the boring green stalls. Tears pooled in her blue eyes, but she knew good and well these were tears. She was just surprised—Zelda never usually cried or became this weak—she was stronger than this. She hated herself for getting this low.

But the way everyone looked at her when she had tried talking like them scared her so much. Especially the look on Link's face. He looked like he was relishing in watching her suffer emotionally.

Zelda closed her eyes tightly and let her tears gush out, feeling her nose begin to run and her body begin to shake as she stood there in that bathroom stall. She couldn't hear her cries, but she didn't know she could make small noises when she did cry.

When she had had enough of her tears, she wiped her eyes with the long sleeve of her blue shirt, taking deep breaths before exiting the stall. She went out to the sinks and looked in the mirror, noticing that her eyes were red and puffy. That usually happened when you cried.

Zelda kept breathing in and out at a certain pace, feeling her mind begin to calm down slowly but surely. And while she was calming herself down, the reddish color around her eyes began to disappear.

Looking at her appearance once more, she thought she looked better now. They wouldn't know that she had cried.

Grabbing her bathroom pass, little Zelda ran back to her classroom and threw a fake smile on her face before entering.

The other kids all stopped to look at her, a bit perplexed as to why she was smiling so happily. In reality, Zelda wanted to go home because of how humiliated she felt.

When recess approached, Zelda was the second person to exit the school building and run free on the large playground.

She hadn't made any friends yet, so she decided to just climb the jungle gym and play around in it. Maybe she could swing on the swings, too.

While she was climbing the jungle gym's ladder, Link pulled her down to the ground. Luckily, she had only gotten about two feet away from the ground, so the impact wasn't terribly bad.

Zelda gave him a weird look, and Link just snorted, although she didn't hear it. She shakily lifted up her hands and tried to sign to him—maybe he knew her language, too.

But when she began to sign, Link's eyes popped out of his skull in disbelief.

"What? So you can't hear anything?" Link teased, speaking as loud as possible to attract as much attention as he could. "I can say anything to you and you wouldn't even know!"

A group of kids had gathered around Link and Zelda, watching amusingly and awaiting whatever was about to happen.

Link had begun saying terrible words to her; not curse words, but terrible insults that Zelda would have cried over if she could hear them. But she couldn't, and only watched Link taunt her silently and feeling the eyes of others staring down her back and making her more uncomfortable.

Then Link began to laugh, and Zelda turned her head to see that everyone else was too. Once again, at her.

Zelda had already had enough of Link, and she wanted him to just stop. She had lost control of her body, and threw a punch at his nose. Looking around, everyone had their mouths gaped open in absolute shock.

Link stumbled back and fell onto his bottom, holding his nose the entire time.

Little Zelda cupped her hands over her mouth and just watched as Link struggled to stand back up.

What have I done? Zelda questioned herself.

She shook her head, feeling tears begin to brim the corners of her eyes again. She tried teaching her hand out to Link to offer help, but he immediately smacked her hand away.

Then, he began to scream.

The teachers rushed over and their faces scrunched up when they removed Link's hand from his nose and saw blood leaking out of it. Link pointed at Zelda, and that was the first time Zelda had visited the principal's office.

I shouldn't have punched him. What was I thinking? That wasn't me, right? No, something must've made me do that. I would never punch anyone, even if they were annoying me, Zelda thought as she awaited her mother's arrival in the principal's office.

When Mother arrived, Zelda felt her heart drop when she saw the somewhat disappointed look on her mother's face. When the talk with the principal was over, Zelda walked out of the principal's office with her mom. She was to go home early today because of what she did to Link.

Mother knelt down in front of Zelda and signed the words, "Why did you punch that boy?" to her.

Zelda wanted to admit the truth so badly. She wanted to tell her mother that Link and the others had been teasing her because she couldn't talk like them and because of the language she used. She wanted to tell Mother how she cried in the bathroom after everyone had laughed at her mistake, and how she had no control when she did punch Link. She wanted to say that she was not okay with all this bullying and her tears.

But instead, she signed, "I don't know, but everything's fine," to her mother.

And that was the first time Zelda had told a lie.

••

A/N: whoops this chapter sucked so badly sorry.

thanks for reading pls comment and vote I need some sort of motivation to write this.

also the school I imagine Zelda in is the elementary school I went to from kindergarten to fourth grade, because my town had an intermediate school for fifth and sixth grade, seventh and eighth was middle, and so on. so fifth grade doesn't count as a elementary school year in this book. but the physical appearance of my elementary school is what I'm placing this story in.

bye.

-Katy

[Edited May 1st, 2018]