Louder Than Words (25 page)

I hated myself for that act of cowardice. My brother could be in there getting himself into even more trouble. If I could speak, I could go in there and ask him! And then somehow the idea came into my head that I should try to make a sound while I was by myself. The thought came to me quite suddenly as I sat cross-legged on the bed:
Try to do it on your own
.

So I sat there and tried to do again what I’d done at Josie’s, to make any kind of sound at all. For over half an hour, I tried and tried to make
something
happen, but it wouldn’t. I willed my throat to open and work, but it remained stubbornly frozen. I fought back tears of frustration, hearing Andrea’s and Josie’s words in my head, hearing their voices of encouragement and trying to hold on to belief. But still there was nothing.

And finally I had to face facts. It wasn’t going to happen. If I couldn’t do it here in the silence and dark of my own familiar room, how could I possibly have imagined I’d ever be able to speak whole sentences out there in the world?

No. This was my life – silence. I should just accept that and stop torturing myself with visions of what could but would never be.

I lay down again, the cotton pillowcase cool against my frustration-flushed cheek. Even my brother had given up on me. He didn’t care any more. Never asked how therapy had gone. It would be no surprise to my mother that I’d failed. And Josie would learn that’s what I was – a failure.

I saw the letters in front of me, giant and red, like graffiti painted in blood.

FAILURE

I closed my eyes and cried until sleep came to release me again.

CHAPTER 48

‘What do you mean you’re giving up?’ Josie’s face was furious. ‘You are not! We are going to see this thing through.’ She stormed past me and past Silas making his way from the stairs to the sitting room, still half asleep. ‘Excuse me!’ she snapped at him as they crashed into each other in the doorway.

‘Sorry,’ Silas mumbled, trying not to yawn.

She stopped and fronted up to him. ‘Have you spoken to your sister recently?’

‘Eh?’

‘Rafi has just texted me to say she’s giving up on counselling and that she can’t do it any longer.’

I trailed into the sitting room after them, shrinking inside. If I’d known it was going to cause all this trouble . . .

‘Oh.’

‘Is that all you can say? Are you so wrapped up in your silly girlfriend that you don’t care about how Rafi is doing now?’

Silas’s face turned from bemused to furious. ‘What’s with the insults? You leave Lara out of this.’

Josie rolled her eyes.

‘She hasn’t done anything to you, you spiteful –’

‘Who’s calling names now?’

I wanted the feeling inside me to explode into noise, but of course it couldn’t, so instead I picked up the TV remote and threw it against the wall.

It smashed, sending shards of black plastic around the room. One hit Silas on the cheek and left a trail of blood running down his face.

I swallowed, nausea building as I saw the scarlet streak on my brother’s face. But they stopped screaming at each other. I ran out of the room and upstairs and locked my bedroom door.

Later, Josie told me what happened next.

‘She can’t give up now,’ Josie said, sitting down on the arm of the sofa wearily as if she’d run a long way. ‘Has she told you about how well she’s been doing?’

‘No,’ said Silas, leaning against the door and feeling his cheek. He stared at the blood on his fingers. ‘She hasn’t told me anything at all.’

‘Would you have been there to listen if she had?’

Silas glowered at her. ‘Maybe not. For once I was having a life that doesn’t involve my sister, but that doesn’t mean I don’t care.’

Josie stood up and set her hands on her hips. ‘At this point, I’m going to give you some unasked-for advice about your girlfriend. I’ve been there with the whole “obsessively wanting to see them all the time” business. Shutting your friends out for them. It took me a while to realise, but that’s probably why my so-called friends dumped me so easily when Lloyd started trashing me. I bet they secretly thought I deserved it for being such a useless friend. And that’s one mistake I’ll never make again.’

Silas folded his arms in front of him. ‘What are you trying to say?’

‘That you’re doing the selfsame stupid thing I did. You’re cutting everyone else out so she’s all you’ve got. And I’m telling you because I know – it’s a really dumb-ass thing to do. Let’s just hope that’s the only dumb-ass thing you’re doing!’

Silas was so furious he missed the meaning of her last point. ‘Yeah, well, somehow I doubt she’s going to post naked photos of me over the internet.’

Josie drew in a breath. ‘That was low!’

‘Maybe. But I didn’t ask for your advice or your criticism.’

‘Yeah, I know that, but someone needs to say it to you. And Rafi can’t!’

‘Obviously.’ Silas huffed out his breath angrily.

‘When was the last time you saw your friends?’ she demanded.

Silas ran his hand through his hair and didn’t answer.

‘See?’

‘Shut up.’ But when he looked at Josie again he was calmer. ‘OK, so you said Rafi was doing well . . . so now I’m listening – fill me in.’

Josie told him about my last few appointments and how I’d made progress, how I’d started to make noises, and then about the hum.

‘So why’s she giving up now?’ Silas asked, frowning.

‘I don’t know. I was trying to get her to tell me when . . .’

‘When I got in the way?’

‘I was hoping you were going to help.’

He thumped the doorframe with his fist. ‘I should have sat her down with you and talked to her. I know that. I don’t know why I didn’t.’

‘I told you,’ Josie said. ‘You’re too wrapped up in that girl.’

Silas stared back at her miserably. ‘I
want
to argue with you.’

‘But you know I’m right.’ Her voice softened. ‘Look, it happens. I know that better than anyone. But that doesn’t make it good for you or her or anyone around you. I swear to God, the next time I go out with a boy, it’s not going to be like that. I’m gonna keep it balanced.’ She frowned. ‘I’m gonna keep
myself
. You know?’

‘Yes,’ Silas said in a small voice.

Josie eyed him, not quite sure if he was agreeing with her to shut her up or because he meant it. She went with the latter in the end simply because he looked so deflated she decided he must be genuine. Deflated was pretty much how you felt when you realised you were making a complete loser of yourself over another person. She didn’t say that to him of course, but she added in her head: ‘And one who doesn’t love you nearly as much as you love them either’.

She expected him to mooch off and think about it. Or perhaps get angry again. Boys could be unpredictable like that, frustration blowing out of them in raised voices and smashed things unexpectedly just when you thought they’d calmed down. Not like her dad. Her dad’s anger was slow to flame, but so much more terrible because it was a fire more difficult to extinguish. There was no shouting at her and never anything broken, but the part that was hardest to bear was the look of disappointment that came with it. Thank God . . . no, thank Silas really . . . that he’d never found out about Lloyd. She wished she’d never lied to him about it now because Lloyd was in no way worth it, but it had been a season of temporary insanity, her love for him.

‘It wasn’t really love,’ Josie said slowly. And it must have been to Silas for there was no one else there to hear her. ‘I don’t think love is really like that. Do you?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said finally, ‘but I do know I wouldn’t waste another second of my time thinking about that moron.’

She nodded.

‘Do you think we should go and speak to Rafi?’ he suggested. ‘Present a united front?’

Josie nodded again.

‘Come on.’

He knocked on my door. ‘Rafi, open it, please. We want to talk to you.’

It wasn’t opened instantly. I was busy and it took a little more persuasion than that, but eventually I unlocked it and they walked into my room.

Silas stared, his mouth open, shock written plainly on his face. ‘Rafi, what are you doing?’

CHAPTER 49

I clicked the lid back on the permanent black marker as Silas stared at the white wall on the other side of my bedroom, now disfigured with black scrawl.

‘If you don’t understand my silence, how will you ever understand my words?’ he read aloud in a dazed voice.

Josie raised an eyebrow at me, and then marched forward and grabbed the pen. She uncapped it, selected a fresh bit of wall and wrote in her own distinctive scrolling hand:

Courage is fear that didn’t give up.

Tears welled up in my eyes.

‘What? What is going on?’ my brother asked.

Josie understood my silence. Better than anyone ever had.

‘It’s Rafi’s truth wall,’ Josie replied.

Silas walked over and sat on my bed. ‘Look, I don’t get any of this. Can someone please tell me what is going on?’

Josie went and sat next to him. ‘It’s Rafi’s thing – she collects quotes. Things that are like the big truths in life. She’s very into that stuff. She keeps them in a book. We swap our favourites.’

‘You do it too?’

‘Kind of. I have a thing for Pinterest. You know, ten minutes where I’m bored and there’s nothing doing, I get my phone out and scroll through the quotes page on there. Pin my favourites. So when I found out Rafi liked that stuff, we started swapping.’

Silas pointed to the wall. ‘So what is this?’

Josie grinned at me. ‘This is Rafi shouting, that’s what this is.’

I stumbled towards her and hugged her. I hugged her for knowing.

She spoke to Silas over the top of my head. ‘Rafi doesn’t shout enough. That’s her problem. She lets herself disappear and not be heard. If you ask me, this here –’ and she nodded to the wall ‘– is one hell of a good thing.’

‘Right.’ Silas still sounded more than half confused but I heard the lid on the marker pop again and he got up.

When I looked round, he was writing on the wall too:

One word spoken by you is more important than a thousand from others.

He capped the pen and tossed it back to me. ‘I love you,’ he said.

‘Who said that?’ Josie asked, pointing at his writing.

He looked me straight in the eyes. ‘Me,’ he replied, and then he went out and closed the door gently behind him.

Josie shook her head slowly. ‘You know, there’ve been moments when I’ve thought your brother is practically a saint, and others where I’ve thought that he’s a whole new level of dumb. But right now, I totally get why you think he’s a genius.’

And there she lullèd me asleep,

And there I dream’d – Ah! Woe betide!

The latest dream I ever dream’d

On the cold hill’s side.

(John Keats – ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’)

CHAPTER 50

Dear Dad,

I don’t know how to make sense of anything any more. Just when you think you have it all sussed out, then . . .

Rafi. And Josie.

So this morning, Josie goes crazy at me for neglecting Rafi when she needs me. I got mad because I know she’s right. There was no need for her to be bitchy about Lara though – it’s not her fault.

But Josie asked me this question about her and her dick of an ex. She asked me if what she felt for him, what I feel for Lara, is really love. Now how would you answer that?

Anything with half the intensity of what I feel with Lara can’t be anything other than love. Josie’s thing with Lloyd might have been a crush. My thing isn’t. It’s like that garbage poetry they make you read in school – two souls entwined, all of that. Maybe that stuff isn’t as much garbage as I thought when they made me study it.

But I can’t understand why Josie wanted to confide this in me. She sounded . . . sad . . . in a way I haven’t seen her be since just after the Lloyd incident. I haven’t really told you much about Josie. I’ve never spoken much to her in depth, just regular ‘heys’ and ‘how are yous’ unless it’s about Rafi. But I’ve got used to her face around the place. She smiles a lot. She laughs a lot. I hadn’t realised until just then, when I saw her so far from smiling as she remembered that jerk that it made me unhappy too. She’s like a weather forecast, Josie – mainly sunshine with the occasional shower. It’s only when the showers come that you know you miss the sunshine.

And then, weirder than all that, just before we went upstairs to see Rafi, I gave her a quick, one-armed, friendly hug. I just wanted to take her sadness away. I would have thought it would feel like hugging Rafi. But it didn’t.

I keep trying to block it out, how she fitted perfectly into my shoulder, that she was so warm and soft, that she smelt ever so faintly of peach or mango or something else I couldn’t identify. On another girl it might have been sickly, but on her it just smelt right. I just don’t understand why I noticed that stuff at all.

I want Lara. Only Lara.

Would you know? I guess you would. You left Mum for another woman after all. This will sound horrible, but I don’t want to be like that, Dad. I don’t want to have inherited that side of you.

I went over to Dillon’s later and I felt
guilty
when I saw Lara. They were being kind of weird over there too, which didn’t help.

‘So how do we top that?’ Dillon leaned back on the kitchen chair as he posed the question.

‘You know they’re after us now, right?’ Jez propped his chin on his hand.

‘They won’t find us. Our boy here knows how to cover his tracks.’

They looked at me and I smiled and nodded.

‘What do you think we should do next?’ Katrin asked with that barbed tone she always uses with me. And only with me. For whatever reason, she doesn’t seem to like me much.