Silent

Scene 1 - Mei

The world assaulted her on a regular basis. She had trouble filtering things that were going on. The lights in the classroom hummed, and the sunlight filtering in through the windows was too bright. She vaguely caught that a new student was being introduced to the class, but she absorbed herself into drawing, looking up only once to see what he looked like. Blond hair, white T-shirt, blue jeans. She made note that he didn't have a backpack with him before turning back to pencil and paper.

The sound of footsteps and eager chatter could have been overwhelming, but her drawing grounded her. She glanced over at the sound of the seat next to her shifting. He was sitting down at the desk and the class was starting to quiet down.

Now she could start hearing individual voices, mainly by those who always seemed to whisper to one another during class. Strangely, it was something she had gotten used to and learned to hear around most days. It vaguely occurred to her that the new boy had said something to her and was holding a hand out to her. Her mind froze and she just turned back to her drawing.

Somewhere through the sound of chalk against chalkboard she heard, "don't bother with her. She doesn't talk to anybody." It stung, but they were right. She didn't talk at school. Couldn't talk. When she was younger, people thought she was just shy and would grow out of it. But it was high school now, and she hadn't yet.

Then she saw a slip of paper and a hand at her desk. She blinked in surprise and watched as the hand left it there.

It read: 'Hi, I'm Sean. What's your name?'

For a moment she actually forgot her name, but as she recalled it, she wrote in neat cursive in return: 'Mei'.

She looked slipped the piece of paper back on Sean's desk, smiling faintly. She looked up at him, now nervous about this little bit of communication. He read it, and looked back at her, seeming surprised that she had actually responded. She finally noted, ever so briefly, that his eyes were blue.