Maybe She's Breaking?

Derrick caught me on my way out of the school today. He’s angry, and the look in his eyes makes me think that he’s thinking about hurting me. I shake off the thought though. Ellie and Derrick have been dating for five years, since they were in eighth grade. I knew him pretty well by this point, even though we’d never really had a decent conversation throughout that whole amount of time.

“Has Ellie been telling you anything about me lately?” he asked. If he didn’t relax pretty quick, his face might have gotten stuck like that.

“What do you mean?” I asked. I’d played the role of Ellie’s innocent, ignorant younger sister for as long as I could remember. Now that I literally was in the dark about everything that was going on, I was just that much more sure that I wasn’t going to accidentally break myself out of character.

“Anything.” He said. “I’ll listen to anything you’ve got to say. Hell, I’ll even humor you if she told you what color my boxers were the other night.”

I bit my lip. Even thinking about giving out information gave me this weird feeling. It didn’t matter that I didn’t have any to give or keep to myself in the first place, but it still felt incredibly weird. I was a listener. People never wanted to hear me talk. I blend in, and I only speak when spoken to first most of the time. The opportunity to talk only made me feel like I was melting.

“We don’t really talk as much as we used to lately.” I told him. This was some sort of information, even though I was sure it wasn’t the sort of thing he was looking to get out of me. I looked at my feet instead of even trying to look him in the eye like normal people did when having a conversation. Converse never looked so ugly to me as they did right in that moment. “Something’s been bothering her lately, and I think I’m the only one who really notices.”

“So, you don’t know what’s bothering her then?” he asked. I shook my head slightly. “Oh, okay.” This seemed to satisfy him enough and he walked away quickly without saying goodbye. It wasn’t a good thing for someone like him to be caught talking to someone like me around school, so it didn’t even bother me.

Actually, he was the first non-family member I’d talked to in two days. Sometimes I feel like if I don’t learn how to speak soon, I’ll forget how to talk altogether, but that’s okay with me. As long as I can listen, I think I’ll be okay.