Marked with Silence

When we heard the apartment door open Sapphira immediately swatted my arms away and crawled over to her door, trying to open it quietly.

“Sapphira, I’m home,” her aunt called from the foyer.

“Start eating the pretzels,” she whispered as she wiped under her eyes before hurriedly scooted back over to me. I got on my knees and grabbed the pretzel bag that I had left on her bed, opened it, and shoved one in to my mouth. Sapphira just got her hand in the bag as her aunt stepped in front of the doorway.

“Hello, Jerome,” she looked at me.

I greeted her back.

“How is the project coming along?”

Sapphira was back to not talking.

“Uh, we hit a little snag and decided to take a break,” I lied.

Mrs. Chadney nodded, looking over to her niece before walking away.

“She didn’t notice you were crying,” I pointed out.

She gestured to her face; no puffy cheeks, no red eyes.

That’s a convenient attribute, I guess…

The next minute was filled only with the crunch of pretzels.

I was debating whether or not I should say anything about what she told me. Too much time had passed for me to say ‘I’m sorry’—about her family and about blackmailing her to tell me about them. But I wanted to talk about everything that she had just disclosed.

“Sapphira, I—“

She cut me off by getting up and making her way to her computer.

“What, are you gonna act like the last hour didn’t happen?”

She didn’t respond.

I walked over to her, and stood as close as the arm of the chair would let me.

“You just told me about your family. You just told me why you don’t talk. I just had my arms around you and my hands in your hair not more than two minutes ago. My shirt is still wet with your tears,” I pointed to the wet spot on my shoulder. Don’t treat me like I’m anyone else at school,” I begged.

Sapphira wouldn’t look at in my direction, “You threatened me.”

I sighed, “That may be true, and I apologize for that, but don’t you feel better now that you got all of that off your chest? Don’t you feel even the slightest bit closer to me?”

“Why do you care so much?”

I forced myself to say the words before I could regret doing so, “I like you.”

She turned her head, scanning my face before stating, “You’ve known me less than two weeks.”

“So? Crushes can form quickly.”

Sapphira scoffed and looked back at the computer keyboard, “You like my body. You like my face.”

It felt like I had just swallowed a knife. I shook my head, “That’s not true. I like you ‘cause you’re different.”

Did I really just say that? Is that the best I can come up with?, I asked myself.

“Me saying that I didn’t want anyone to miss me…it wasn’t an invitation for you to serenade me,” she spat at me.

“Why are you being so cruel?”

She replied with a question, “What part of ‘I don’t want anyone to miss me’ did you not understand?”

Finally, she had acknowledged that she had confided in me. But I doubted that that was going to do me any good.

“Shouldn’t people have the decision to miss you?”

She shuddered, as if an icy wind just pricked ever bone in her body, “You don’t understand.”

Sapphira picked up her hand and drew indistinguishable doodles on the computer desk with her index finger. And for a while I just stared, until she flattened the whole of her palm against the surface. That action knocked me out of my trance.

“I wanna be friends,” I insisted.

Her lips remained shut.

Anger hit me. I jumped to my feet. If she would be cruel, so would I. “You’re pretty conceited anyway,” I said before marching to her bed and slinging my backpack over my shoulder, “thinking that dozens of people could miss a heartless bit-girl like you.”

I closed the door behind me and managed to say goodbye to Mrs. Chadney. My hands were running through my hair the entire time I was in the elevator ride down. I replayed what I had said to her moments before, and I wondered why I stopped myself from calling her a ‘heartless bitch.’ It wasn’t like I hadn’t said the word before, or only said it when I absolutely meant it. I tried to tell myself that I didn’t want to hurt her feelings, but I knew that I chose the words that would be easier to apologize for. God, I was already thinking of ways to salvage my connection with Sapphira.

And after the immature anger faded away, I was left with a very heavy heart. As unmanly as it might sound to admit, Sapphira’s words had really hurt. The fact that she could mistaken my crush as something as shallow as lust was just…

It burned.

Moving so much had had such a negative effect on my love life. And in a twisted way, I was kind of like Sapphira. There was this one girl, Melinda. We were both fourteen and in London at the time. I liked her so much; she was the first girl I had asked to become my girlfriend. And then one week later, my dad tells me that he’s being re-stationed in Arkansas. It was then that I learned that breaking a girl’s heart was the single most difficult thing that I had ever had to do. I didn’t enjoy being an asshole, even if the situation couldn’t be helped.

Ever since then I hadn’t let anything get too serious. Sure, I went on plenty of dates and fooled around a bit, but long before Melinda came into the picture not getting too attached had become second nature. Before it was just with friends in general, and now it especially applied to romantic interests. My mindset was almost as screwed up as Sapphira’s was, but the cause not as tragic.

I took out my cell phone to check the time as I excited the apartment building, it was thirty minutes earlier than I had told my mom to come and get me. I looked through my contacts until I found my recently updated home number, which I’ve yet to memorize.

“Hello?” My little brother Danny picked up.

“Give the phone to Mom.”

“Hello?” came my mom’s voice a few seconds later.

“Hey, mom. Uh, Sapphria and I got done with the project early. Do you think you could pick me up, like, right now?”

“Early, huh?” My mom sounded skeptical. “So you’re not going there next Friday?”

“Uh, no. Actually what happened was—“

She laughed, “Don’t lie Jerome. I’ll be there in ten, and we’ll talk about it in the car, okay?”

I sighed, “Alright. I love you, Mom.”

“I love you two, sweetie,” I heard just before I ended the call.

I had a sickeningly close relationship with my mom. Many times in my life I was called a ‘mama’s boy,’ in three languages in fact. But I loved how I could talk to my mom, when most guys my age had barely existent relationships with theirs.

My feet were tracing a very oblong oval on the sidewalk when my mom pulled up in our silver station wagon. I got in with an enormous sigh.

“What have you messed up?” she asked accusingly.

I didn’t even bother trying to make something up, “Sapphira and I got into this little tiff.”

My mom got back on the road, “About the project?”

I shook my head, “No.”

“Your fault, I’m guessing?”

I hit my head against the headrest, “Completely.”

Glad that she didn’t push for further details, I leaned over and tried to find a station that I like don the radio.

“How are you going to make it up to the girl?”

Even though I had been thinking about any and all possibilities of that ‘how’ while waiting for her to arrive, I wasn’t able to come up with anything useful.

“I was thinking of falling to my knees and kissing her feet until she forgave me.”

My mom let out a chuckle.

Confusion set in when she passed our street, “Uh, Mom, you missed the turn.”

She shook her head, “I decided that we’re going to the mall.”

I stared her with eyebrows scrunched, “Why?”

And as we took the turn on to the highway she said, “Because with the perfect mood at the right time with the precise words, you might be able to find your apology on a store shelf.”