staples // h.s

chapter two // shattered silences

chapter two

Dark days, dark nights. They were all the same to me. That day was probably the lowest that I'd reached at that point. Nothing made sense. I ambled aimlessly through the motions and felt as bottomless as I ever had before.

I couldn't lose myself. However hard I tried to transfix my gaze onto something, I couldn't.

I even tried desperately hard not to acknowledge the body that had seated itself beside my at lunch. The food on my plate - a plentiful helping of fruit salad - suddenly appealed to my interest greatly. My fork impaled and stabbed several pieces of the fruit on my plate before the silence was broken.

"There's a new boy today, you know? I think they said that he's rooming over the hallway from you." The voice spoke. I looked up to see a slender girl at the chair beside me. Her bones jutted out at odd angles and her skin held a pale white tinge. I'd seen her around the centre various times, but she'd never made any attempt to speak to me before then.

"That's nice," I replied distractedly, noticing the light pink hair that framed her angular cheeks.

"They also said that he's in for the same thing as you, so you'll be in the same therapy group." She added, smiling slightly.

I felt a little unsettled that the girl knew my diagnosis. Nothing about any aspect of my life had been shared with a single other person in the centre.

"H-how do you know this?" I asked, burying my arms further into the sleeves of my sweater.

"I'm next door to the office. They really should build the walls in this place a little bit thicker." Her laugh bounced lightly through the room, not enough to break through the thick volume of everybody else's conversations but enough so that it filled my ears.

"Oh."

"I wonder if he's cute. None of the boys in here are really to my taste, which is so boring." She continued on, her azure blue eyes catching the harsh lighting of the room.

"Who?"

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