Marked with Silence

My mom and dad had gotten invited to a New Year’s party that was being thrown at the military base. So I was stuck at home babysitting Danny. But I didn’t mind. I wasn’t going to have someone to kiss when the ball dropped anyway.

I had spent the entire morning calling and texting Sapphira. I was even going to drop by her house again after the twenty-sixth time I heard her voicemail, but my mom told me that it would only make things worse.

I called Dylan for any kind of proactive advice.

“Hey.”

“I’m sorry, who is this?”

“Stop messing around, Dylan.”

“I’m surprised you remember my name.”

I sighed. Once I started dating Sapphira I let my friendship with Dylan slack remarkably. I guessed he was a bit spiteful.

“Come on, man. I’m sorry, okay? Look, I need some help.”

He clicked his tongue, “You sure know how to make someone feel used. You’re lucky I’m a good guy.”

I scoffed, “Yes. I am the absolute luckiest.”

There was a pause on his end. “Trouble in paradise?”

“How did you know?”

“You wouldn’t be calling otherwise,” he replied.

My throat tightened as I prepared to say the words. “I’m moving.”

“Seriously? When?”

“In about three weeks. North Carolina here I come.”

“Man, that’s rough.” I pictured Dylan shaking his head back and forth. “Are you worried about telling Sapphira?”

I shook my head, “No. That was yesterday.”

Dylan inhaled sharply, “She didn’t take it too well, hm?”

I took a second to replay yesterday night in my head. The crumble of her face. The force of her hands when she pushed me away. The width of her eyes as she cried.

“She won’t even talk to me,” I finally replied.

“Well, it’s only been a day. Give her some time.”

I groaned. “I can’t just sit around doing nothing while I wait for her to tell me if she wants to make this work. I need something to do. Is there any way that I can make this right?”

Dylan asked for a moment to think. I heard an imaginary clock ticking seconds away in my head. “What were you too planning to do about next year?”

“What, like college wise?”

“Uh, yeah,” he said in a patronizing tone.

“We want to pick schools that aren’t more than an hour a part. Luckily, a lot of the schools we were looking at are relatively close.”

“Did you two apply to any of the same schools?”

I thought it over, “Two, I think.”

“Well, you should probably up that number.”

“That’s good,” I said to him. “It would show her that we’d only be apart for a few months. I could come back after graduation for a little bit over the summer, and then we’d have the next four years together.”

“But the deadline for most schools is in like, four hours Jerome.”

I was slightly lost in a fantasy of Sapphira and me holding hands as we walked into a huge library, swiping ID cards to get into the cafeteria, keeping the door open as I visited her dorm room.

“Then let’s thank God for the common app. I need to go, I have supplements to write.”

So while other people were drinking champagne, I was typing like crazy. And when other people were socializing, I was proof reading. And while other people were waiting for the ball to drop, I was taking a deep breath and pushing “submit” buttons.

But even after all of that, I still felt like the worst boyfriend in the world.


I woke up to a fist pounding on my door.

“Mom, go away.”

I quickly picked up my head to find that it was before nine-thirty before groaning and dropping my face back onto the pillow.

“It’s not your mom.”

The voice was hers. It was steady, but slightly cold.

I jumped out of bed and went straight for the door.

“Sapphira,” I breathed in a sigh of relief.

“Hurry up and get dressed.”

When I took the time to really look at her I realized that her facade was the same as her voice was. Her face was almost completely calm and her eyes were looking straight at mine, not even deviating the tiniest of bit even though I was only wearing boxers.

I just stood there and stared at her.

“Unless you want to go in your underwear you should put some clothes on.”

Confirmation; she was still pissed.

I turned around and went to my dresser.

“Where are we going?”

“You’ll find out.”

“I have to tell my mom.”

“I already asked. She’s cool.”

There was no room for contestation. She was in no mood to be messed around with. I hurriedly put on my clothes.

“Ready?” she asked right when I was putting my shirt over my head.

I straightened it down by the hem and quickly brushed my hair. “Yeah.”

“Let’s go.”


I felt like a little boy, sitting next to her in the car. I felt like a little boy that was in the car with his angry mother, having just done something wrong but not knowing the punishment for it yet. I couldn’t remember feeling like that for nearly five years.

My hands were folded on my lap, my head was slightly down, and every so often my eyes would look up at Sapphira just in case her face had softened just the tiniest bit.

It hadn’t.

Twenty minutes into the drive, I noticed a lot of familiar signs and landmarks. “Are we going to Sussex?”

“Mhm.”

She couldn’t be taking me to Happily Ever After again, that just didn’t make sense. What place from the past would she want to take me to right now?

“Will you please tell me where we’re going?”

“You’ll know when we get there.”

Sapphira was making me feel so small. But I guessed I deserved it. I guessed I deserved anything she would want to throw at me.

I didn’t say anything else after that. For once, the silence was more bearable than her lack of words. If I was silent I wouldn’t have to hear the icy edge of her voice.

I started to pay special attention when I first noticed that we were taking a different route about forty minutes later.

We didn’t pass by that garden before, I said to myself. I don’t remember that shopping center from the last time.

When we passed by a church and she put her blinker on, I immediately knew where she was taking me. My whole body tensed up and I could feel my hands get clammy.

I was going to meet her family.

I always figured that she was going to take me there someday. But I never imagined that it would be under these circumstances. I pictured us approaching the tomb stones with her hand tightly clutching mine, her telling me in a faraway voice about the day of the funeral, her tearing up but being able to keep it together. But I couldn’t see any of that coming true today.

Sapphira pulled into a parking space directly in front of the beginning of the graveyard. The side we were on was less populated with tombstones than the far end. The graves were spaced out instead of being cluttered into tight rows. She walked a good five paces in front of me as she led the way.

We were halfway through the cemetery when she approached a massive tombstone. The dark granite had to expand at least six feet in length and was about three feet in height. I could see the name engraved on the back: Torres.

Sapphira stopped when she was about ten feet away from the front. When I saw the front I immediately understood why the marker was so large. It had four name spaces on it. The one on the left was blank.

“Sapphira,” I called as I turned to look at her. My eyes opened wide to find that she was crying, full force. Even though she wasn’t making a sound, her cheeks were so wet that they shined. Her face was scrunched up, and she was covering her mouth with both hands. Her shoulders were violently shaking.

“Baby…”

She walked up to me, stiffly but quickly. I expected her to crumble in my arms, so I was all the more surprised to feel her hands shove into my side as she knocked me to the ground. The only thing I saw when I brought my head up was the dark color of the stone.

“Tell them that you’re leaving me,” she said, her tone just a notch below yelling.

I didn’t say anything, so she continued on.

“Tell them that, even though they were unexpectedly ripped away from me, that you’re gonna knowingly leave. Tell them that you’re gonna leave me by willingly packing up your bags and willingly stepping into a car and drive away. Tell them that you’re leaving me all alone. Tell them that I was actually able to love someone, and that person is you. Tell them that you make me happy. That you took the broken pieces that they left behind and managed to construct a normal teenager. Tell them that there will be more pieces when you leave. Tell them that I cannot miss one more fucking person in this world, and that you’re gonna make me. Goddamn it, tell them!”

My mouth opened but it couldn’t form words, both of my lips just sort of quivered.

She squatted to the ground, hands holding her head, and she let out a high pitched cry. Even though she later straightened up, I didn’t. It felt as if I was frozen.

“I don’t have a choice,” were the words that my mouth finally said in a sad voice.

Her glare hardened. “There are so many things you could do. You’re just too scared to stick it to your father. If you really wanted to stay, you would find a way.”

“Oh, don’t give me that-“

“I’ll give you whatever the fuck I want to,” she snapped. “I think I earned that right, don’t you?”

“My dad won’t let me stay,” I reminded her in a fury.

She scoffed at me. “Just don’t go with them. Become emancipated. They won’t have any hold on you then.”

“That could take months to process,” I reasoned.

Sapphira threw her hands in my direction before turning away. The shaking had gotten worse.

“Look, I applied to every college that you’re going to. I did it all last night. I’ll attend whatever school you choose. And I’m gonna get my parents to let me visit you as much as I can over summer. And we’ll see each other over spring break. And I’ll even make it here on a three day weekend. I promise to talk to you every day. It won’t be that bad.”

Sometime while I was talking I had gotten up and walked over to her. I was standing a foot behind her.

She turned around. “Instead of putting so much effort into how we can be together while apart, why can’t you put half as much into us just really being together?”

“There’s no use fighting him Sapphira. It’s a losing battle.”

And just like that, she fell to her knees. She was right at my feet.

“Please don’t leave me,” she begged softly. “You can’t.”

Immediately mortified by her action I sunk to the ground too.

“I need you,” she muttered. “I need you.”

I put my arms around her as she buried her head into my chest. As soon I began to stroke her hair, she brought her head up to look into my eyes. She stared at them for a few seconds before her face welled up with anger and more tears fell down her face. She pushed me away and sprang up.

“You’re not staying,” she said in a defeated tone of realization as she took a few steps backwards. “You’re gonna leave me.” And then she turned around and full on sprinted towards the car.