Chapter One #2
“Wait…Kenneth? No. No, that can’t be right,” I shake my head back and forth. Yet, I know it’s true. Somewhere in my psyche, it all starts to make sense. My pulse spikes as I rip off one sneaker and clutch it like a weapon, turning in circles though there’s nothing to see.
“Don’t come near me!” I shout, but even in my own skull, the sound feels far away as if I’m underwater. Every muscle in my body tightens, waiting for something to suddenly happen.
“Look, this isn’t what you think,” he says quickly, his voice trembling through the static hum of my thoughts.
“I have coffee and doughnuts. I’m going to come in, so we can talk, okay?
” On cue, my stomach growls, voicing its own agreement.
I mutter an uncertain okay, not even pretending that he didn’t get me at doughnuts.
Scanning the dark for even a hint of light, my eyes move frantically until a hand lands on my shoulder. I scream so loud, it reverberates around my skull as if the noise came from the inside. A pale blue light flashes in front of my vision, soft but unmistakable. My microphone clip.
“How did you—” I stumble backwards until the back of my ankles hit the mattress and I collapse onto it in shock.
Kenneth switches on his phone’s flashlight, the burst of white light searing my retinas.
I throw up a hand with a hiss like a vampire being dragged into daylight, my heart thrashing in my chest. When my eyes finally adjust, I see him kneeling there, seeming older somehow.
His posture is straighter, his gaze is colder.
He’s dressed differently, too. Dark pants, a zip hoodie open over a fitted white T-shirt, and expensive-looking sneakers instead of his usual frayed tennis shoes.
The whole look feels wrong, like someone else is wearing his skin.
If I didn’t recognise the voice, I would be able to trick myself into thinking this wasn’t him. That it’s not Kenneth sitting in front of me, with his hair slicked back and glasses gone.
“Where did you come from?” I ask, but he doesn’t answer, only slides a travel mug and paper bag across the floor toward me, the motion too smooth for the fumbling dork I knew.
Now I’m starting to wonder if I ever really knew him at all, and my consciousness awakens.
“How do you know I won’t throw that coffee in your face?
” I try a different tactic, pushing another button to see how he’ll react.
“It’s iced,” Kenneth replies flatly, and for some reason, his tone makes me feel even worse.
They say it’s better the devil you know, and I don’t know this man.
Snatching the bag before he can take it away, I retreat until my back hits the wall, hunger gnawing at the edges of my adrenaline.
Kenneth watches me without blinking, shadows cutting across his face, the soft blue light from the mic flickering against his throat.
“I didn’t want it to go like this,” he murmurs finally, his voice strange through the small speaker, too calm to belong to the same awkward boy who once tripped over his own words.
“How did you want it to go?” I raise a brow.
When he doesn’t move or respond, I hesitantly reach into the bag, my stomach taking over all decision-making.
If Kenneth wanted to drug me again, he could’ve done it when I was fumbling around in the dark.
My fingers find a sugary doughnut, and I tear into it like an animal, swallowing the sweet, stale dough without really tasting it.
All the while, I’m being watched in the phone’s light. The device is on the floor, tucked back by Kenneth’s ankle. He’d catch me before I even made it halfway. So I eat, and I wait for whatever comes next. Yet nothing comes next.
Kenneth doesn’t move, he doesn’t speak. For someone who used to fill every silence with nervous rambling, that stillness terrifies me more than anything.
I can’t fathom what’s happening in his mind, what he expects, what I’m doing here.
In an attempt to fill the void, I finish both doughnuts and down the iced coffee, before wrapping my arms around myself as the cold settles in my gut.
This is Kenneth, I remind myself. The geeky, harmless Kenneth who cried over a B-minus and once apologized to a spider. I can’t be scared of him. I’m just…unsettled. That’s all.
“Kenneth, we’re friends, right?” I ask, and when his eyes drop, he gives a small nod that barely counts as an answer.
I nod too, breathing harshly through my nose.
Relief seeps through me, thinly veiled but there all the same.
The Kenneth I knew is still in there somewhere, and if he’s still in there, then I can reason with him.
Clearing my throat, I lean forward slightly.
“Clearly, there’s been some kind of mistake,” I say softly. “Whatever’s going on, we can talk about it.” A sudden shift flashes within his eyes as they lift, the look cold and accusing.
“You’ve never wanted to listen to me talk before.
Everything you want to know now, I’ve already told you.
When Clayton left and you came to the dorm every night to curl up on his bed.
I confessed, I begged for your forgiveness, I pleaded with you to notice what was happening before it went too far.
But you’d turned your receivers off. You didn’t listen. ”
His words hit me as if I’ve been physically struck, my next breath punching outwards on a gasp.
He’d already confessed? I could have known this whole time…
but I shut him out like I do to everyone else.
My deafness is a barrier most people struggle to deal with, so they don’t try and I actively cut them off, telling myself I prefer it that way.
But not everyone wears their loneliness like a shield.
I should have known better. I should’ve recognized that same desperate need to be heard in Kenneth.
I’d tuned him out the same way people do to me every single day—eyes glazing over, lips moving too fast for me to catch, leaving me on the outside of every conversation like I don’t exist. I should’ve known better.
Instead, I turned my silence into a rejection.
I told myself he was fine because I was too wrapped up in my own issues to deal with his as well.
Now here we are, trapped in the dark, both of us paying the price.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, my throat tightening. “I got so caught up in... well, none of that matters. I’m listening now, I promise. As long as you leave the mic on.” I force a weak smirk in an attempt to lighten the weight in the air, but it feels brittle, cracking at the edges.
Pushing myself back onto the mattress, I cross my legs and pat the space beside me, a gesture that feels equal parts brave and stupid.
I could be inviting a maniac to sit beside me, but my gut says Kenneth won’t hurt me.
Not yet, at least. He has a story to tell, and all he’s ever truly wanted was a friend.
Maybe that’s all this is. Or maybe I’m about to find out the hard way just how wrong I am.