The Language of Silence (5 page)

“You’re being ridiculous. She’s just a kid.” I started to sweat.

He clutched onto my jacket harder and his face became red. “See, this is how it will always be. Lies. Lies. Lies. That’s what she meant with all those quotes. I get it now.”

I felt a wave of resentment fill me. How dare he lecture me on lies, especially with what I knew about him? I shoved him off me. “Don’t. I’m sorry you’re in a crap mood, but get over it. I didn’t even want to come here!” I warned, pointing a finger into his face.

It was a miracle he had convinced me to come at all. I never went to these things. I only went ‘cause he was having a hard time. Even though Tristan seemed to have been doing a little better since the breakup, I still worried about him.

It was then I saw her. I have no idea how long she had been there, or what she had seen or heard.  Brett sat there in that ridiculous burnt orange bridesmaid dress staring at both of us, her arms crossed. She raised an eyebrow. “Now, now
, boys, what is this?”

Neither of us answered her. I found myself unable to look directly at either of them. She made her way toward me and I froze. She reached her hand inside my coat pocket, and I thought I might just suffocate from the closeness of her. She pulled the flask out from my pocket. Our eyes met for the briefest of seconds. I wasn’t prepared for the infinite sadness I saw lodged there. She brought the flask to her lips and took a long swig. She handed it to me, turning back toward the reception hall. “Let’s go
, boys. We have people to please.”

That was the last night I saw Tristan alive.

Chapter Nine

Brett
:

School is somehow easier than my early morning confrontation with Ed. Sort of.

It’s my first day back, and I can’t help but feel a little bit of relief that people stay clear of me. I know it’s unfair of me to benefit from my brother’s death, but I can’t deny myself this small consolation. Of course, I still stand out. All the robots around me are wearing black
, as if they really are sad he is gone. They only worshipped him because he was a son of Wendall, and it was asked, demanded, of them.

One of them could very well be his murderer.

Murderer? Maybe it wasn’t intentional. Maybe someone found out and took some joke too far?  It wouldn’t be the first time something like that has happened in this town. My mind feels like a bad episode of
Law and Order.

I’m going to have to rely on television for all of my information about solving this mystery. There’s not a lot of crime in Wendall besides the sporadic domestic dispute. Even the sketchy places in Wendall are covered up with a polished veneer
—part of the Clean Up Our Neighborhoods Project.

They voted a few years back to rezone the town limits. Rather conveniently, Lewis St. and Bakers Lane were left out of the new town limits. Say goodbye to subsidized housing in the town of Wendall.

Ed lives in the sketchy part of town—the dreaded middle class section. It’s not such a horrible place to live.

****

I spy Georgina down the hallway. She’s standing next to Ed’s locker. His attention is focused intently on anything but her as he rummages through it for some mystery item. She keeps talking to him, but he remains deep inside the locker abyss. She’s wearing a black knit sweater dress and black stockings. Her hair is tied back with a black ribbon. I can’t help but glance at myself in the window looking into the office—torn jeans, Ed’s oversized black t-shirt, my black hair curling wildly because I didn’t bother to straighten it. I cringe.

Despite my many complaints about the hierarchy of Wendall High, I’m one of the selected. My parents ensured that. My last name gives me whatever I want. It was the same with Tristan. As far as appea
rances went, we both belonged.

When I was eleven, the middle school asked my father to be the lead speaker at career day. The guidance counselors spent weeks planning the event. A real to-do. You know how goal orientated middle
-schoolers are. Food catered from the best restaurants in town. I even heard rumor of a cocktail hour. The morning of the event, I came down with the flu. Not wanting to miss an opportunity to get our family in the paper, my mother convinced the school to postpone the event. The food went to waste. The other speakers had to rearrange their schedules. But for a founding family, no expense was spared.

Georgina spots me and I realize I have been staring. She snaps something to Ed
, who tears his eyes from the locker to me. I can’t help but blush remembering our earlier meeting. Georgina walks toward me, a stack of pamphlets in her hands.  Ed mutters something and follows quickly behind her. She stops in front of me and smiles. I match hers. It catches her off guard, and she frowns.

I wonder if the rumors about her and Ed are true. I’ve been out of school two weeks and heard everything about the two of them before reaching second period. I don’t feel jealous. Even if they had sex in the bathroom, I know it’s outside of him and me. And while I’m not jealous, I feel sorry for him. I feel anger for him. I feel desperate that he’s so willing to give himself away to people like Georgina.

Ed moves closer to me. He clears his throat loudly before casually putting an arm around my shoulder. I don’t get excited about it. It’s not for my benefit. He does it to tick off Georgina. Apparently, all is not well in paradise.

“Hey there, Brett. What? Are we doing our best Kristen Stewart impersonation today?” he asks as his eyes roam over my appearance.

Ed has always had an addiction to trash television programs like
Access Hollywood
. If anyone asks him about it, he will quickly deny it. While he makes fun of my love of movies and television, he can drop a pop culture reference quicker than Joel McHale on
The Soup.
It’s really rather astounding for someone who considers himself so highbrow.

I’m willing to take part in his game. I reach up a hand and run it through his t
ousled hair. Obviously, my morning visit left him more rattled than he would like me to know. He looks disheveled. “Nice hair. What are you trying to be? My very own Robert Pattinson?”

Georgina begins to tap her foot. It kills her that we’re ignoring her. She couldn’t care less about our fake flirting. “Here,” she says, thrusting two pamphlets into our space.

“Friends don’t let friends drink and drive,” Ed reads aloud.

It’s the first time I have ever wanted to hit someone. She and the rest of them are making Tristan’s death about them. They make it about their crusade
, their need to prove they are morally upright citizens of this town. I know there are so many others like her, but something about the way Georgina stands there holding her ideologies in my face makes me fume.

My brother is more than a warning to others. Even if I find out he was drunk, I can’t let them have him. Ed removes his arm from around my shoulder as if he can sense what I am feeling, as if he wants nothing to do with it.

Georgina sees more than I give her credit for. She takes a step closer to me and pulls an obnoxiously bright pink ribbon from her purse. She pins the ribbon right onto Ed’s Clash t-shirt. I vaguely hear Ed inhale deeply as the blood rushes in my ears.

“We’re wearing them in honor of your brother. So
that we all remember that his death was not in vain,” she chirps.

Bright pink? Is this a joke? Did they all know?  I somehow manage a smile and mumble a
, “Thanks.” I walk away without another word.

It seems as if everyone has shown up for school today. None of them want to miss the assembly. They don’t want to miss the freak show. What is it about the human race that so loves to watch the grief of others?

They all want a piece of Tristan. They all want a piece of him that they can twist and distort to fit their own needs. I sit and listen as Georgina and other members of the student council read off facts about teenagers and drunk driving. I sit and listen as members of the faculty talk about what potential my brother had. All any of them talk about is loss.

I search for Ed in the mass of students. He’s not too difficult to find. Like me, he chose not to wear black today either. He sits in the upper section of the bleachers in a light blue t-shirt and dark jeans. He sits in the midst of some of Wendall’s finest
—a hodgepodge of debutantes, cheerleaders, and football players.

Wendall High’s dumb-
A royal court.

Georgina may have been his way in, but he doesn’t need her anymore. He
has his place there now, and all of them are fawning over him. I can see it in the way the boys mimic his movements, and in the way the girls toss their hair when they talk to him. Even their fawning is predictable.

I know what Georgina intended to do. She wanted to be the one to break through his pain. If she could do that, if she could make herself mean more than the grief, she would be untouchable. But he used her. All of Wendall High knows it. Even if it goes unspoken. There are some things we just don’t speak of.

Something happened with our parents and their parents. There’s a need to protect our own born within us. When your family has known another family for years and years, you become protective of them because their history is mingled with yours. When almost every family knows each other in a town they have all lived in for generations, the town becomes the shared history. We all want, despite knowing something inside of us is suffering, to protect each other. Even from the truth.

Ed’s eyes meet with mine from across the gym. I raise my hand and give him a weak wave. He squints briefly and turns to whisper something into Evelyn Goodwin’s ear. She nods and begins to rub his back. I’m unable to stop watching as the scene unfolds. She shifts closer to him and continues to whisper something in his ear. He nods, his face grave. He’s so darn good at this that I wonder if it will all backfire on him
—will he keep giving himself away till he has nothing left?

I’m not sure who hated each other more before all this. Them or him. But now he has lost himself in their world, and I can’t help but remember that I gave him the idea. Whatever reason he gave himself for doing all this, I know the real reason. He wants to be punished. I’m just not sure why.

I want to stand up and go to him. I want to drag him from this place. I want to save him because I had a brother who I didn’t save. Maybe Ed doesn’t want to be saved. I feel a dull ache take over my chest.

Ed slides his hand up Evelyn’s thigh. She leans her head on his shoulder. She arches her back so her face is close to his. I watch as his lips touch hers. His free hand slides into her hair. They are making out right in the middle of my brother’s memorial/condemnation. Everyone around them pretends not to notice their kissing. They pretend not to notice because they have each made Tristan’s death about what they need, even Ed.

I realize I am alone.

Chapter
Ten

Ed
:

There is a part of me that wonders if I will be able to do this, let myself be consumed by the best of Wendall. Hell, I still don’t know why I want to do it in the first place. Why is it so important for me to be in their world? A world I hate.

I treated Georgina Fritz terribly. Like scumb
ag, douchebaggery to the extreme terribly. But she wasn’t blameless. Never has been. She was using me just as much as I was using her.

Does that make it right?

Do you have to sink deep into the dirt and shit to destroy the villains? Maybe destroy isn’t the right word. Maybe I just want to understand them. But as I wash my hands after taking a piss while Georgina’s friend, Evelyn, is waiting for me outside the bathroom, I’m finding it harder to look at myself in the mirror.

Things with Georgina were too easy. In less than a week, we hooked up at school. Really. We did. The blue ribbon banner doesn’t fool me anymore. I had no idea about the kind of shit that goes down in the nooks and crannies of the student population in the nooks and crannies of the school.

The first few days, I let her talk to me on and on about our Lord and savior. How he could ease my pain. I wanted to tell her how much of a hypocrite she was, but listened intently. I even let her bring me to Bible study one night. I sighed and kept my eyes down as the room offered me their condolences. I was aware of the looks of approval thrown at Georgina from the adults. She was a saint for helping someone so beneath her.

That night
, she let me touch her boobs.

The next day, I ventured with her to the local homeless shelter. I helped her pass out food to the needy
and waited outside of the bathroom as she threw up, rather selfishly if you ask me, her lunch. Of course I acted like I didn’t know.

That night
, she gave me a blowjob.

I gave some and she gave some.

And when I texted her that I wanted to accept the Lord Jesus Christ as my savior one morning, we had sex before fifth period.

Glory halleluiah.

We had sex in the boys’ bathroom during lunch.

A teacher caught us walking out of the restroom. Georgina slumped her shoulders and looked up at Mrs. Henderson from under her bangs. She began to utter an explanation, but Mrs. Henderson held up her hand. She looked to me, and I knew it pissed Georgina off.

“Are you alright, Ed?”

I inhaled deeply.

Henderson smiled as if she actually sympathized with me. “Why don’t you two get going to class?” she said good-naturedly. Who wants to be the teacher who writes up the kid who just lost his best friend in a drunk driving accident? Certainly not Mrs. Henderson, whose been vying for Teacher of the Year.

I nodded and walked down the hallway. I didn’t bother to say goodbye to Georgina. I ignored her phone calls after that. I was done with her. I wanted her to know she was expendable. Nothing. No different than the boy who was rotting in his grave.

I wanted to damn her for trying to own him too.

But like I said
, looking in the mirror is getting rather hard.

I close my eyes
and search my memory for every feeling of hatred that I can connect to the girl I was now feeling sorry for.

And I remember the night she almost destroyed Tristan.

The night she found out his secret. The night she forced him to take part in the crimes against Donnie. Tristan never forgave himself for that, and I would never forgive Georgina.

I wonder
when this is all done if I will ever be able to forgive myself.