Broken Silence

Chapter 12: Friends

Ignored memories came crashing down on me as I sat in the barely-used janitor's closet on the other side of the school. I cradled my legs to my chest as the shaking took over my body. I took in the horrible smell of wet mops and moldy metal. It was quiet, except for my heavy breathing; and my lone thoughts...

Friends? What a joke.

Friends only hurt you in the end. Friends were not real. They were a lie created by humans to overcome mutual loneliness.

They pretend to care.

They pretend to understand.

But they do not care; they do not understand.

After I was adopted, I thought things would get better. I thought I would have new friends. I thought that maybe I would be loved again. Maybe, just maybe I wouldn't wake up in the middle of the night screaming so much that nurses had to come into my room and sedate me. I thought that I would have a safe home, far away from Him.

"We're best friends!" Lie. This was said by the same person who called me a crack-baby.

"You can trust me." Lie. After I trusted you, turns out you only feel bad for me.

"Don't worry, I'll always be here." Lie. You told me to die... and for a while I thought about it.

My parents were gone. He was still out there. My so-called "friends" treated me like a junk-yard dog. The Devils who adopted me didn't do it out of love; they did it out of pain.

Their eldest daughter had suddenly passed away because of a car accident and they needed to fill the hole that suddenly opened up in their miserable excuse for a heart. I knew all of this, and yet I still innocently thought they would love me like their daughter.

Until the thin thread of sanity that I had left was cruelly torn when their younger daughter said without hesitation, "You're nothing compared to my sister. I won't ever think of you as my sister. My parents won't ever love you, and do you know why? They're using you to make themselves feel and look better. Think about how good it looks that they have given a chance to a dirty little orphan like you. No one will ever truly love you. You could die and no one would even remember you."

A ten year old child should never hear that from anyone. Those words destroyed the little that was left of me. It confirmed everything that was happening to me at the time, and I believed it. I became distant and shut myself out from other people. I began to wonder why I was left alive in the first place; why I wasn't dead along with my parents.

Life suddenly was the equivalent of "What if I...?

What if I "accidentally" fell into that river? "Accidentally" drowning.

What if I "accidentally" cut my arm shaving? "Accidentally" bleeding to death.

What if I "accidentally" swallowed all those pills? "Accidentally" causing an overdose.

What if...?

What if...?

But I was stronger than that. I decided to stop my pity party once and for all. If no one would care for me, I would care only for myself. Friends would only bring me down; not to mention any romantic associations.

For seven years, everything was going according to plan; everything was fine... until, in waltzed Gabriel Edwards. Four days was all I had spent with him and already he was making me remember things I didn't want to. Already he was making me question whether the choice to distance myself was the right one. Did I really want to trust him? He treated me like I mattered... like I was important and it felt so right that... it scared me.