Look at Me

Beep… beep…beep…
Paige slammed her hand down on her alarm clock and rolled over. As she breathed in deeply and smothered a yawn, she realized something. She was alone. She snapped into a sitting position and her eyes darted around the room, but it was empty. Hayden was already gone.
Closing her eyes again, Paige tried to remember him leaving. It almost seemed like she’d talked to him at some point in the night. Hayden must have left then. But what had he said? She thought she remembered something about seeing him again at school.
So, Paige crawled out of bed and went to put on the first thing she could grab out of her closet. Then she walked slowly down the stairs, trying to hold her head high, trying not to admit she hoped that she wouldn’t see her mother before she left the house. But there was still a small sigh of inner relief when she walked through a completely silent house and then made it to the curb. Crossing her arms impatiently, Paige waited for the bus. But, (Of course) it wasn’t quite that easy.
A way too familiar piece of shit car drove up beside her and stopped. Then Terry Finchly rolled down the drivers side window and said, “Get in.”
Oh, God… she thought. This is going to be bad. She bit her lip and tried to think of an excuse not to.
Then Terry said, “Seriously. Get in like NOW. Unless you want to ride in the trunk. You can, but it might be a little cramped.”
Paige walked around to the passenger side and opened the door. Her friend was polite enough to wait until she was actually in her seat before she started the interrogation.
Spanish Inquisition? Ha!
Those guys didn’t have shit on Terry Finchly.
“You’re going to explain, in clear lucid sentences, what happened last night and you’re going to do it right now,” Terry said as she gripped the steering wheel so tightly her knuckles shone bone white. “I waited for you to come back downstairs, but you never did. Then I hear you and you mom screaming so I stepped outside and waited for my ride. Now I want to know what the fuck happened!”
Terry’s hand lifted off the wheel briefly to motion wildly at the last sentence. Her pale freckled face turned the color of a boiled lobster and her hair looked impossibly frizzier. In short, she was pissed.
Paige realized that, and it was understandable. But she still had no idea what she was going to tell her friend. Once again, it all came back to the truth. Exactly how much, if any, was she willing to tell.
***

The silence. That’s what Hayden noticed the most. When he walked past the few other run down houses on his street, everything was completely quiet. There were no sirens, no alarms. Nothing to betray what had happened. He half expected one of the neighbors to run out on their lawn screaming and pointing. But then he didn’t really live in that kind of place. A few semi-close huts in a heavily wooded area didn’t exactly have the neighborhood watch. Things happened behind rotting walls and no one ever knew.