Marked with Silence

I told my mom not to pick me up, insisting that I would rather walk home from Sapphira’s house. I needed to clear my mind, and the sound of bubble wrap and packing peanuts wasn’t going to do it.

The last two hours had left me feeling so unsettled, the same tension my stomach gets when I’m on a plane at lift off. But this time, I had no clue what my destination was. There was no doubt about it. I liked Sapphira. As in liked liked. I mean, how can I not like that beautiful disaster of a girl? Clichéd, I know. But to me, she was every girls’ bad boy. I just couldn’t help it.

I had already worked it out in my mind—there was about an eighty-five percent chance that her family was dead; ripped away from her when she was only fifteen. I tried to tell myself that there were other possibilities: she was from another state, and wanted to study abroad, her parents were abusive and they were legally separated. But death made a lot more sense. This was the only time that I wish it didn’t.

When I was younger, I never understood why we had to move so much. A new home, a new school, sometimes even a new language. And I have to admit, more birthdays didn’t make it less hard. My dad’s job sucked—royally—but I would never want to not have them. Who did Sapphira have? An aunt and uncle that was probably forced to care for her.

Where does she get love from?

My back erupted in warm tingles, and I felt the familiar sensations of having a crush, but much stronger. What I would give for her to let me in.


I pulled at my hair, I would absolutely love to love her. I turned into my cul-de-sac, counting the street lights I passed by. If only she would let me.

“You look like shit,” was the first thing Dylan told me at 7:43 in the morning. A Monday morning especially.

I groaned, “Didn’t get much sleep last night.” Two flights of stairs were hell when running on three hours of sleep.

“How come?”

Shrugging, I replied, “I have a lot on my mind.”

“Does it rhyme with…Kaddirra?” He teased.

I shook my head, “You’re lame man, very lame.”

“Ease up. It isn’t my fault that her name is so hard to rhyme with.”

By that time I was struggling to enter the right combination for my locker.

I turned to him abruptly, “You know, you don’t have to keep hanging out with me just because you feel like you have to. I know my way around the school now.”

His eyebrows scrunched together, “I’m not still talking to you because I was your guide. You’re actually pretty cool.”

I blinked a couple of time, “Oh, sorry.”

“Unless you don’t want to be friends,” Dylan said while crossing his arms.

“No, no, it isn’t that. We’re just so different,” I replied, looking from his American Eagle shirt to my Volcom one.

He shrugged, “It doesn’t bother me if it doesn’t bother you”

We bumped fists. I had my first friend at Cadbury High.

“So tell me about Sapphira. A bunch of people saw you two leaving school together.”

I sighed, “I had to go to her house for the World Hist. Project.”

“Woah, you actually went to her house? What was it like? What’s her family like?”

I closed my eyes and my locker before turning to him. “Pretty normal,” I lied. “Just the same as you and me.”

What surprised me was how easy the lie felt on my tongue. Telling the truth didn’t even cross my mind, and I realized that I felt a strange obligation to protect Sapphira. I knew that she wouldn’t want anyone to know more about her than they already did, and even I wasn’t supposed to have the information that I had. I couldn’t tell anyone about what I knew, even if that meant deceiving new friends.


“So today, you’ll be working on the project again. But while you’re doing that, I’ll be going from group to group to make a note of your progress,” Mr. Grafter said at the beginning of class.

Yet again, I was the one to go to her. But this time around, she was biting her nails.

After pulling up a desk I put a rough draft of the speaking parts of our presentation in front of her. She didn’t even touch it.

Sapphira mumbled something.

“What did you say? I can’t hear you with your hand over your mouth.”

Sapphira’s gaze suddenly moved, and for the first time she looked straight into my green eyes, “Please don’t tell anyone about my family.” Her whispered voice quivered.

I feigned ignorance, “What do you mean?”

She glared, but our eye contact had yet to be broken, “I know you’re smarter than that, Jerome. You know that they’re dead.”

It was the first time she had ever spoken my name. Was it wrong that I found happiness when she said it when it was so clear that it took too much effort for her to even form the syllables?

“What happened to them?”

Sapphira made a short groan before closing her eyes. She placed a hand on her forehead, and then swept the bangs from her face. She was already hurting; I could see the pain she was trying to run from.

“Just don’t tell anyone, please,” she begged.

I knew that what I was about to do was wrong; lower than I had ever stooped to before. But curiosity got the best of me, and I told myself that I would make it up to her later, twice over even.

“I won’t tell anyone…as long as you tell me how they died.”

I hated myself when I saw it—the look of disgust that consumed her face. Was this information really worth my humanity? Was I really so fascinated that I put my own selfish desires over another person’s well-being? I despised myself even more when I found that I didn’t want to take my words back.

“Fine,” she managed to spit out. “I’ll tell you on Friday.”

Then she grabbed the bathroom pass and stormed away from me as quickly as she could.