Chapter Eight
Aurora
I leaned back, eyes closed, on the same bench I sat on with Aly yesterday, letting the wind brush over me. It was cold, but not enough for me to care since Aly said to meet her here.
“Hey, Aurora.” A soft voice came, making my eyes shoot open. “Right?”
I looked up and saw a girl. Familiar…
She’s the little blond one with blue eyes. I call her little because she’s shorter than me but taller than you.
Jennie, I think.
My fingers curled tighter around my jeans as I nodded, slow, cautious. Guarded. I knew she was Aly’s friend. I knew they walked the halls together, laughed together, shared brief looks that only real friends could understand.
But I also knew that just because people were friends, it didn’t mean they were the same. They may say they wanted to be my friends, but they didn’t know me. Not the way Aly did.
Aly knew the silence, the pauses, the way I froze up when words scraped against my throat like glass. Aly had sat through my silence and didn’t care, carried on a whole conversation and never thought I was rude.
Jennie hadn’t.
So maybe when she did, when she got close enough to see the cracks, the pieces of me that never fit right, maybe then she’d change her mind. Maybe worse, she’d change Aly’s mind, too. Because people always do.
I bit the inside of my cheek as I watched her rest her bag on the bench beside me before unzipping it. She then pulled out a paper bag and held it out towards me. I looked down at it before shifting my gaze back to her face.
Her usual confident self was now switched with a shy one, as if she wasn’t sure if she could be in my presence.
“I’m not trying to win you over with some stupid dessert, but I heard you were meeting up with Aly today.
She told us she got you lunch again. I wanted to be a part of it, so I dropped by the bakery this morning.
I don’t know what you like, but I got a little blueberry muffin for you,” she said, softly, almost too quiet for me to catch.
“I’m not doing this to force you to do anything, but Layla and I will be waiting. ”
I blinked down at the little paper bag in her hand, my throat tightening. A muffin. Something so small, so ordinary, yet it felt like the heaviest thing I’d ever been offered.
People didn’t do this for me. Not unless they wanted something in return. Not unless it was a setup for the punchline later. But she wasn’t smirking. She wasn’t teasing. She was just… waiting. Almost like I was the one who had the power to embarrass her instead of the other way around.
I didn’t know what to do with that.
I pressed my lips together, lowering my gaze back to the bag, the faint smell of blueberries seeping through the paper. It wasn’t my favourite fruit. But it didn’t matter. She didn’t know that. She didn’t know me. And still… she tried.
My chest ached at the thought. But I still didn’t move. I wasn’t sure why, but I hesitated, and she seemed to have noticed.
“I’m sorry if what I said offended you the other day.” Her head lowered, voice laced with guilt. “When I asked if you could speak or not… I didn’t mean for it to come out rude. I was genuinely curious and—” She lifted her other hand up and signed.
Signed.
Her hands moved. Hesitant, a little sloppy, but clear enough that I understood.
I’m sorry. I wanted to help, not embarrass you.
The words she spoke didn’t matter half as much as the shapes her fingers carved into the air. My chest tightened, and I had to bite down on my lip to keep it from trembling.
I wasn’t even sure what stung worse, that she felt the need to apologise or that she was actually trying to meet me halfway instead of pushing me into her world without asking.
I glanced at her face again, the way her cheeks flushed pink, her eyes flicking nervously as if she thought I’d laugh at her. As if I’d throw it back in her face. She didn’t know. She couldn’t know. That little gesture…it was everything.
My throat felt too tight, my voice nowhere to be found, so I lifted my hand and signed back with shaky fingers.
Thank you.
It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t even close to enough. But it was all I had. Her face lit up almost immediately, and she lifted the paper bag up in front of me again, offering. A small smile tugged at my lips as I took it.
“Uh—” She faltered, and the tiny hitch in her voice made me tilt my head without meaning to. She always sounded like she was about to spill something good. Curious. “Do you have social media?” she asked, bright and hopeful.
Social media?
I shook my head. I didn’t, I barely go on my phone, so I have nothing on there.
She bit her lip, thinking, and for a second, I thought she might leave it. Then she glanced back at me, that grin of hers splitting open into something almost mischievous. “Can I have your number, then?”
My number? Aly hasn’t even asked for my number yet, and I’d already sat under a tree with her, shared lunch like it was the most natural thing. But Jennie, someone I barely knew, was asking for it?
The thought should’ve made me shrink, should’ve made my hands clammy and my chest cave in like always. But the way she asked… it wasn’t sharp, it wasn’t demanding. She didn’t box me in like so many people did, corner me until all I could do was nod, obey, surrender.
No. Jennie’s voice was soft, the kind of soft that left room for me to say no. The kind of soft that felt like an open palm instead of a fist. It was…a choice. A real choice. And not many people ever gave me that.
I slowly nodded, and the next thing I knew, her phone was already in my hand. I typed my number quickly, too quickly, because I didn’t want her standing there waiting.
After I was done, I pushed the phone toward her with trembling hands.
She smiled, taking her phone back, eyes lighting up at the screen. “I won’t disturb you much, don’t worry.” She typed something, probably saving my number.
I signed, small and clumsy, it’s okay. You can text.
Jennie’s face lit up like someone had handed her the sun. “Yes!” she squealed, then softened immediately, as if she was afraid of startling me. “Thank you, Aurora. I’ll text. Promise.” She tucked me into her phone like it was a precious secret.
She slipped the phone back into her bag and lowered herself onto the bench next to me. “Can I stay until Aly comes?” she asked, her voice quiet, almost hesitant, as if she hadn’t already made herself comfortable.
I nodded anyway. She didn’t need to ask; I didn’t mind.
“Can I ask you a personal question?” She leaned in, her shoulder brushing mine, and I instinctively turned to face her.
I nodded, careful, wary. She bit her lip, rolling the words around in her mouth like she was afraid they might taste wrong coming out. That alone told me what kind of question it would be.
“You’re… mute?” she asked finally, her voice soft, cautious, as if one wrong note might shatter me. Her question hung in the air, heavier than it had any right to be. Mute. The word tasted familiar, almost safe compared to the truth.
My fingers twitched against my jeans. My throat ached, but not with words… just memory. When I was a child, I spoke. Not fluently, not fast, but enough. Enough to give them something to tear apart.
Kids at school would repeat everything I said in mocking voices, bending my words into weapons. They laughed because it was easy. Because I was easy. Fragile. A glass window they could throw stones at and watch shatter over and over again.
The fear settled deep in me, so deep it rewired my body. I started to stutter, not because I couldn’t speak but because I was terrified to.
Terrified of the sound of my own voice.
Terrified of giving them something to rip into. And that stutter gave them more fuel, more cruelty. They had their fun, and I learnt the only way to survive was silence.
So no, I’m not mute. I want to speak. I want to be free. But the moment I try, my throat locks, my muscles betray me.
My own body cages me in.
I turned to Jennie slowly, forcing the words back into the box they belonged in. With a small shake of my head, I answered her unspoken question.
“Is it SM?”
My face twitched at the sound of it. SM.
What was that?
Some sort of label?
A name for something broken inside me?
I shook my head slowly, hesitantly, unsure if I was denying it or just admitting I didn’t understand. My brows pinched together, and Jennie noticed.
“Selective mutism,” she clarified, softer now, like she knew she was stepping into fragile territory.
“My parents… they run a private school just uptown. It’s mostly focused on kids with special needs.
Deaf, blind, autistic, nonverbal… you name it.
I grew up around all of them.” Her voice was calm, careful, the way someone would explain a bruise that wasn’t theirs.
“Some of them had SM. They could talk, but their bodies didn’t let them.
Their fear kept their voices locked inside. ”
My chest tightened. Fear. Locked. She spoke like she’d crawled into my head and put words to things I couldn’t. I stared at her, blinking too fast, my throat suddenly dry.
No one had ever… named it before. To everyone else, I was mute. Easy. Done. Case closed. But Jennie didn’t say mute. She didn’t say broken. She gave it… letters. A name.
I hadn’t been diagnosed. No one cared enough to look deeper. I lowered my gaze, fingers gripping the edge of my folder until it bent. Maybe I wasn’t just silent. Maybe I was something else.
I stayed quiet, staring at the ground, the word SM still pressing against the inside of my skull. Jennie tilted her head, watching me too closely, like she could feel my silence getting heavier by the second. Then she leaned back, voice softer than before.