quiet | stenbrough ✔️

new town, new life

' 𝐧𝐞𝐰 𝐭𝐨𝐰𝐧, 𝐧𝐞𝐰 𝐥𝐢𝐟𝐞 '

"we are here, honey." the words played in his head like bubbles, exploding with no energy left in them. bill fiddled with his feet, closing his book, after placing a bookmark inside, and looking out of the window. his new home.

it was bigger than before, which didn't bother him at all, and white with grey windowsills. a humble home he would have to get used to. and he would.

it was better than his last house, that house smelt off death, grief, guilt, blood, and tears, nothing he wanted in his life again.

"c'mon billy." bill heard, snapping him back to the reality he was forced to live in.

he lifted his head up to glance at his little brother, georgie. the one he treasured more than everyone. everything. he wore his normal yellow raincoat in the rainy, foggy weather, and his normal smile on his face.

normal.

a word bill could not comprehend, because it simply wasn't him. he wasn't normal, he was morning but a boy that wouldn't talk. a boy that hadn't spoken a single word in five years.

bill rested the book on his side, exiting the grey mini van, and glanced at his house once again, then back at georgie, who was jumping up and down in glee, as if this was... fun.

bill stiffened, seeing a boy walking out of the house next to him, golden curls bouncing in his hair. he couldn't see his eyes but he imagined them being the colour of oceans, one the pacific and the other, atlantic. the boy was yelling at someone in the house, and bill found it particular that georgie or his mother hadn't turned around from the noise.

bill watched as the boy hopped on his bike, tears welling in his eyes, and rode away, without exchanging glances with him.

maybe his silence had made him invisible.

georgie pulled him into his 'humble' home minutes later, the chilly, old house foreign to bill's style. bill looked down the hall to a small room, with white walls and a grey door, and immediately saw it as his.

his mother had a room upstairs bill had not yet seen, and georgie had one as well. bill would never go up the stairs. to others, the fear of stairs might sound weird, but to him it was perfectly normal.

one reason why he would never share his thoughts to anyone. one reason to stay quiet. he thought life was more than talking, socializing. and to him, it was. but after 'the tragedy' as georgie called it, life would never be more than socializing and talking. that's all it was to him now, just a mess of words on a timeline of life.

he walked into his room, placing his novel on the ground and leaving his phone in his back pocket and his brown, skinny notebook, along with a simple black pen he found in the back of the car.

2018 had nearly just begun, and tomorrow time, he would start school at derry high, a place he dreaded to be since he found out he was moving to maine from indiana.

he had been homeschooled his whole life, but without the help of his dad, his mom couldn't handle it much more. it was time for a change.

so, he had to begin school in the hardest academically challenged public school in derry. if bill said he was frustrated by this, that would be an understatement.