If We Can't Break The Silence, How Can We Survive?

Lunch time.

The part I hated most about the school day because there were too many people and I wasn’t one for being social. I was new here this school year and I didn’t have any friends, but I didn’t blame them. I mean, who wanted to be friends with a deaf-mute anyways?

It’s not like I had wanted friends anyway. I had more important things going on in my life that I had to worry about. Like the fact that I lost my dad about year ago. Since then I really didn’t care about anything because he was my everything, and I lost him. I lost everything. I didn’t have a mom either, but it didn’t really make an impact on my life because she died when I was three and I don’t really remember much of her.

A couple of weeks ago my parents’ best friends since high school took me in from the orphanage. They’re pretty nice people I guess. I didn’t really pay much attention to them. Their daughter, on the other hand, was a complete bitch. She gave me shit almost every day for a reason I didn’t know. Well maybe there wasn’t a reason. That was just the kind of person she was, considering that she is a cheerleader. And popular.

Speaking of Liz, she was sitting at a table diagonal from mine with all her friends. They were alright people, none of them were as bad as she was. Except for one. Vic. She was worse than Liz. But I guess that’s where Liz got it from because she wasn’t always like this.

Two of her other friends were Paul and Gerard. Let me tell you about Paul first.

He wasn’t an asshole or anything, but he acted like he was hot shit. Walking down the hall like he owned the damn place, thinking he can do whatever he wants as if he was somebody. There was a difference between being confident and cocky, and he, was cocky. He was also on the basketball team, making him a jock. According to the student body, he was the best player on the team, scoring most of their points at every game. But I wouldn’t know because I had never been to any of them.

And then there was Gerard who was very different from the rest of the group. He wasn’t a bitch like Vic and Liz, and he also didn’t have a big ego like Paul. I had never had an encounter with him, but I looked at him a lot. I was kind of infatuated with him. He was gorgeous, to say the least. And there was something interesting about him, but I didn’t know what it was. He was on the basketball team too, but no one had ever really mentioned him and basketball together. I guess Paul was the star athlete. But everywhere you went you heard someone talk about Gerard. I think he had to have been the most popular guy in school. Or maybe it was because of the incident that happened last year.

You see, there was this party that happened about…five months ago, in December. And there was this girl named Jessica who had a huge crush on Gerard and everyone knew about it, even him. Well, all night she had tried to get Gerard to go upstairs with her but he really didn’t seem interested. She didn’t get the hint though. She was drunk. And being the persistent little girl she was, she didn’t give up. This annoyed Gerard which caused him to lose it. As he grew tired with her he had yelled, “I’m not going to have sex with you so just stop it!”

He caught the attention of everyone at the party and they all started to laugh at her. She immediately ran out of there with tears in her eyes. Embarrassing her wasn't his intentions and he felt really bad, but he didn’t get to apologize because she ended up moving. It was that bad. Well, for her.

The only reason I knew this was because for several weeks, there wasn't a time when you would walk into class, the restroom, and lunch without anyone talking about it. But eventually, the news had gotten old and people were already over it.

So you’re probably wondering how I heard all these things, considering that I was deaf and all. Well between you and me, I’m actually not deaf. Nor am I mute, but no one needs to know that.