Silence Says | ✓

Chapter 1

Toby straightened out his books along the top of his new dresser for what seemed like the hundredth time. It was actually the sixth, though — he'd been counting.

If there was one thing that Toby had been looking forward to about summer vacation, it was being alone. He didn't have friends. Didn't need them, wasn't very good at making them, so it worked out. His foster parents, unfortunately, disagreed. That was how he'd ended up at summer camp.

Or maybe they had just wanted to get rid of him, just like his real parents had. Nobody wanted a kid who wouldn't look at you and only had complaints on the rare occasions he spoke because things weren't just so. Who would get inconsolably upset over seemingly insignificant things.

The one saving grace of this whole ordeal was that Toby would only have to share the tiny cabin with one other boy. Or perhaps that was a bad thing. No witnesses. Toby had always been an easy target for bullying and, because of his poor communication skills, never really knew how to ask for help.

The door banged open and Toby leapt backwards, landing on his bed, his hands reflexively going to cover his ears.

A boy around Toby's age — sixteen — stomped in, his eyes on Toby but his path taking him towards the empty bed on the opposite side of the room. Toby met his gaze, taking in ice blue eyes and short brown hair, then quickly averted his eyes back to the bed.

"Noah," the other boy said.

Toby stared down at his bedspread, a faded blue thing covered in cartoonish white stars, as he decoded the meaning of the word. "Oh. Toby."

Noah made a sound of acknowledgement before dumping his things at the end of his bed. "So, what are you in for?"

Toby glanced up because he didn't want to make a terrible first impression if at all possible. Look at people when they talk to you, that's what the psychologist he saw every month was always saying. "What?"

"Why are you here?" Noah clarified, an edge of impatience in his voice. "You don't look any more excited about this whole summer camp thing than I am."

"Oh," Toby said. He hadn't spoken this much in weeks, but he was trying, really trying, to make Noah not hate him. At least not within the first five minutes of meeting him. "Because nobody wants me around."

It was the more melodramatic answer, Toby supposed, but it was the shortest one he could think of. The right one, too, perhaps, because Noah grinned. "Hey, me too!"

That was, apparently, the end of the conversation, as Noah turned away and began unpacking. Toby straightened his books again. He'd knocked them out of alignment when he'd been startled by Noah's entrance.

#

By the time the lunch bell rang, Toby was thoroughly absorbed in a book and Noah was doing something on his phone. Texting, probably. They seemed to have made a silent agreement that socialisation was unnecessary. Still, when they left for lunch, they left together.

The cafeteria was large, noisy, and lit with fluorescent lights. Toby was tempted to walk out the moment he walked in. The sensory input felt like it was pressing in on him personally, like the sound of someone laughing a few tables away was right up against him.

Noah was behind him, though, nudging him through the other teenager boys congested around the doors, leaving Toby with little choice but to continue inside. Reluctantly, he joined the queue for food.

Somehow Toby had managed to forget one of the biggest issues with this whole ordeal until it was right in front of him. Food. It looked as bad as the food the cafeteria at school served, but Toby had never actually had to eat that. Every day for lunch he'd had an apple and the cheese sandwiches his foster mum had made him on bread no more than a day old. That had been the way he'd liked things. He didn't want mac and cheese. He didn't want chicken nuggets. He did not want any stale, soggy potato wedges, thank you very much.