Speechless - Hannah Harrington

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nothing to do with her. I can tell she doesn’t believe me, though, by the way she’s staring like I’ll crack under the pressure of her intent gaze if she just waits long enough.

      I sigh loud enough to get my father’s attention and roll my eyes, just to garner some jeez, this isn’t a big deal, must be Mom’s time of the month again, huh? solidarity. It works like a charm. He cracks a small smile at me.

      “Isn’t sighing almost the same as speaking?” he teases.

      I scribble on the whiteboard Ms. Kinsey gave me—the one I’ve resolved to cart around with me at all times—and show it to him. My vow, my rules.

      He chuckles. “Fair enough.”

      “Frank,” Mom says warningly. She hates when he humors me. She’s not big on humor in general, really. She’s into managing a floral shop, which is what she does for a living. And being a florist is very serious business in her world. God forbid you don’t discuss the art of flower arrangements with the utmost reverence.

      “I don’t see the big problem,” Dad replies. “I think it’s important to nurture creativity, and if this is how Chelsea decides to…express herself, then we should be supportive.”

      I smile at him to show I appreciate his principled stand, even though I was banking on it all along. See, Dad has this stiff office job where he wears a suit and sits in the most depressing cubicle ever for eight hours a day and tries to sell office chairs over the phone to people who don’t want to buy anything in this economy anyway. He’s got to hate it. I’ve seen pictures of him when he was my age; he rocked long hair and wore these crazy sunglasses and played drums in a band. There’s even this cassette tape of their recordings he keeps in his closet. I listened to it once, but it was all endless jamming that can only sound genius if you’re seriously stoned. All of the lyrics revolved around a) getting high and b) sticking it to The Man. He’s still a hippie at heart, and as someone who went from fighting The Man to working for him, I’m sure he secretly thinks my vow is “rad” or whatever slang word he thinks is hip.

      “‘Expressing herself’? How? By not expressing herself at all?” Mom harrumphs and drops her forkful of tofurkey. I swear I’m the only kid not on television who is actually subjected to the evils of tofu on a regular basis. My mother’s been having a two-year-long love affair with organic foods. It’s tragic. For me, I mean. “That’s it. I’m scheduling an appointment with Dr. Gebhart tomorrow,” she declares.

      “Irene, come on. It’s just a harmless social experiment,” Dad says. “It’s a phase. She’ll get over it soon enough. Why not let her have a little fun?”

      “This isn’t her ‘having fun.’ It certainly isn’t healthy behavior,” she insists.

      I really hate how they’re talking about me like I’m not in the room. I pick up the board and write, I’m sitting right here you know.

      Ooh, on second thought, maybe not a smart move. Because now that Mom is looking at me, she’s really looking at me.

      “If you choose not to act like an adult,” she says with a cool stare, “you do not get to partake in adult conversations.”

      And you know, that’s the last straw. There’s only so much condescension one girl can take in a day before reaching her breaking point.

      I slam my chair back from the table so hard all the dishes rattle, and then storm up the stairs to my room, making sure to stomp as hard as I can on each step. It’s very six-years-old of me, I realize, and probably won’t help my “please stop treating me like a damn child” case, but I’m too pissed and upset to care. God, everything just sucks today.

      As I go to shut my door, I hear Mom and Dad downstairs, arguing. I listen just long enough to hear my name thrown around before flinging myself dramatically onto the bed and staring at the ceiling. When I was thirteen, Dad painted it dark blue and stuck on those glow-in-the-dark plastic stars, so when all the lights are off, it’s like being in a planetarium. A pretty crappy imitation of a planetarium, but whatever. I count each one and list something that is pissing me off: Lowell. Derek. Mrs. Finch. Tofu. My mom. Jell-O shots. Warren. Joey. Whoever invented markers. The list of everything I hate at this very moment could fill an entire galaxy.

      I can’t help but wonder what Kristen is doing right now. And how she is, really. Is she upset? Is she worried about Warren? Has she cried? Is she thinking about me? Or was I ever really only a placeholder, someone completely disposable, like Natalie said?

      I’m not great at a lot, but I’m good at being Kristen’s friend. Or, I was, until I messed it all up for myself on a stupid whim. I liked it, being in her orbit. Girls wanted to be us. Guys wanted to date us. Even those who hated us wanted a look. I loved that, loved that I mattered, that people were jealous. I loved turning heads. It didn’t matter if most of them were looking at Kristen; I was in their line of vision, and that totally counted for something. Being on the radar at all. It made me more than average. It was everything to me.

      I don’t know who I am without Kristen. I don’t know if I want to find out.

      I’m interrupted from my thoughts by a knock at the door. Obviously I don’t answer, so it opens on its own. I twist around to see Dad in the doorway.

      He hovers for a minute and then clears his throat. “Hey, kid. Can I come in?”

      I nod. He walks across the room and sits at the foot of the bed, pushing my feet to one side for room. I lie there and look at him. His shoulders have this tired slump to them, and there are tired lines around his eyes. He looks old. Drained. It makes me wonder how he ever had the energy to do things like paint my ceiling.

      “How was school?” he asks softly.

      I shrug, pulling my sleeves over my hands. I’m not going to burden him with my problems. This is my hill to climb alone.

      “Don’t worry about your mother. I talked her down from siccing Dr. Gebhart on you. You have to understand, she’s just worried,” he says. He puts his hand on my shoe and squeezes. “And I worry, too. Things have been stressful lately. For all of us.”

      Is Noah’s father doing the same thing right now, sitting by his bedside and offering comfort? Did he even know his son was gay before I said anything? Does it matter to him?

      I fish the whiteboard from the floor where I’d dropped it.

      Would you care if I was gay? I write.

      Dad blinks a few times. “Are you? Is that what this—?”

      I tap the board again with my marker tip. I want to hear his answer first.

      “No,” he says quickly. “Of course not. Who you love…that isn’t important. It doesn’t change who you are, or how much we love you. Nothing could change that.”

      I knew that’s what he’d say. Still, it feels nice to hear it regardless.

      I erase the board and write, I’m not gay. But I’m glad it wouldn’t matter.

      He looks at it and smiles a little. “We just want you to be happy. You know that, right?”

      Yeah. Yeah, I know.

      I nod, and he drops a kiss on my forehead, sets his palm flat on the top of my head for a moment before he starts to leave. “Stay sweet,” he says on his way out, the same thing he always says to me. He hesitates, lingering at the doorway. “What happened to that boy… You did the right thing, Chelsea.”

      I feel like such an idiot. I don’t even care if I did the right thing—it doesn’t feel like the right thing. It feels like I screwed myself over. One stupid moment of fleeting conscience and I’ve lost all I care about. Maybe I could try groveling for forgiveness, hope it would get me back into everyone’s good graces, but the thought of it alone is nauseating. Natalie might think I’m just Kristen’s little minion, but I’m not.

      I don’t know exactly what I am, but I’m more than that. I know that much.

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