What If We Weren't the Way We Are?

Everyone had always blamed the one with the big mouth, sympathised with the one who was often left unnoticed, admired the one with the insanely large amount of musical talent and befriended the one with the electric fingers.

Though things had been somewhat different as of late.

Everyone still blamed the one with the big mouth, sympathised with the one that could no longer walk, ridiculed the one whose fascination with the end of the world was bordering on obsession and shunned the one who was going to drink himself into an early grave.

As though they expected the big mouth to come up with some fairytale lie, one so elaborate and well spun that it would fix all the problems that had arisen as of late. But as of late the big mouth was unable to spin a fairytale lie capable of fixing all their problems. In fact, the big mouth was unable to utter a few simple words let alone a magical lie.

Someone had once told Peter that peace could be found in silence and he had always believed that. However, he was now discovering that there were two kinds of silence. The peaceful silence, a voluntary silence that offered an escape from the hustle and bustle of twenty first century life, and the dead silence.

The dead silence was forced and it was something that you couldn't escape from. It hung over Peter like a dark storm cloud. Peter's dead silence made itself most apparent during the night time when he wasn't sleeping. In the dark he liked to pretend that it was so silent that he could hear the silence; it was his way of remaining calm in the almost suffocating lack of life.

Nowadays, Peter rarely slept. He usually waited until daybreak before even allowing himself to close his eyes. Once he had found all kinds of darkness comforting but now the only darkness he trusted was the one behind closed lids. And even then, his mind sometimes wandered...

He often chose to side with the majority and blame himself. One of his friends was sitting in a wheelchair, two doors down, because of him. He reminded himself of this over and over again. There were other times when he reassured himself that it was not his fault at all; it could've been any of them, it could've been him.

Certain nights, when he was staring into the darkness, he would imagine the scene in his head, often preferring to watch it from an onlooker's point of view though sometimes reliving the event through his own eyes. The four of them were in their hotel rooms (unlike now they had only required two) on one of the topmost floors. The ground shook first, like an electric shock making its way up the building from the base. The low rumbling followed shortly afterwards. The sound and the action were out of sync though it was still hard to tell where the shaking ended and the rumbling began.

"Pete?" He hadn't even noticed that someone had walked into his hotel room. He made a mental note to stop leaving the door open.

He opened his mouth to reply, an automatic impulse, and then closed it again. His cheeks reddened instantly and he looked down at his shoes. Peter wondered if he couldn't or wouldn't. He hadn't figured it out yet but whichever it was, there was something holding him back.

"Do you want to get some take away or something? I'm starving and Andy's apparently not hungry. I kind of find that hard to believe seeing as he hasn't eaten anything in like three days. What's it gonna be? Chinese or Indian? I'm totally addicted to Chicken Korma right now."

Joe was upbeat, more so than usual. He now saw himself as needing to be strong and confident. The four boys had a friendship built on a foundation that had been ripped to pieces in a split second. Joe was trying to rebuild that foundation. You know what they say; if you want something done well, you've got to do it yourself.

Peter opened the drawer in the bedside table and pulled out a pen and a small notepad. His handwriting had somewhat worsened because his need to be heard made him write faster and the legibility of anything he wrote often suffered.

Chinese, I'll pay.

He hoped that it was casual because he'd forgotten what casual sounded like and he didn't know what it was supposed to look like on paper.

"It's okay. I can pay," said Joe, flashing a smile. There was sympathy and irritation hovering in the air. Both parties wanted to make up for something that they felt was their own fault. Peter didn't need words to make his point; his face stiffened and it was evident.

Walking and rolling along the streets of New York, the two friends didn't say a word. Each man was too busy thinking of what to say and what to do to make up for what they'd done and what they hadn't.

Joe decided to speak first. "It's not your fault." He almost expected Peter to reply and he almost looked up expectantly but caught himself before he did. "Really, it's not your fault. It could've happened to any of us. It just happened to happen to me. It's not that bad really. My mom didn't make me clean my room when I went visited last week. There are upsides."

The act wasn't working. Peter could see through it. It almost made him sick, that he had reduced his friend to playing pretend in every day life. He took out his pen and notepad and began to scribble. He ripped off the page and handed it to Joe.

It is my fault. I'd rather you hate me than lie.

"I'm not lying. When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. And I know that the lemons were kind of sour this time around but the world would be pretty boring if it wasn't for the zest. You just have to let go. It's not like I'm dead."

You can't walk because of me. I'm surprised that you can even look at me let alone talk to me civilly.

"Pete, you're my friend. Nothing is because of you. I can't walk because a ceiling collapsed. You didn't cause that earthquake Pete."

I should've been there. I shouldn't have left.

Joe knew that he wasn't going to win because Pete had already made up his mind.

"Oh look, we're here."