Hear No Secrets

Hear No Secrets Chapter 3

Chapter 3

               That night when I got home I didn’t bother exercising. Peter gave me my daily massage and ice pack and I sat down in the middle of the floor in the gym. After an hour it turned into me laying down staring at the ceiling. During the second hour I heard the door open, but didn’t bother to get up to see who it was. I figured it was Peter. He usually comes in to talk to me and give me advice, but it wasn’t him.

“Chloe?”

I shot up as fast as I could and saw Grant standing there. Since I had the ice pack on my knee I couldn’t get up, but Grant walked across the gym and sat next to me just like earlier in the hallway.

“What are you going here?” I asked him.

“I knew something was wrong.”

“You need to drop it,” I practically yelled, “For good. I told you not to say anything.”

“You think your mask really works?” he asked.

“What are you talking about?”

“I may be partially deaf,” he said, “But I’m not stupid. I knew after the day we had yesterday that something was different about you. You realize how much people stare at you right?”

“Yeah,” I muttered, “I know.”

“So?”

“I’m still not telling you,” I snapped, “So you can just give up now. Friends or not, I’m still not telling you. It’s not like you’re being completely honest with me either. Trust is a two way street you know? You can’t just push me to tell you what’s going on with me if you’re not going to bother telling me anything about you in return. So I sure hope that wasn’t your only reason for wanting to be my friend because you’re wasting your precious time.”

“Other people have problems too you know?”

“What’d you just say?”

“I thought you could understand me?” he asked.

“I can. It’s just… someone else just asked me that same thing yesterday.”

“Good to know you didn’t understand what he said.”

“Shut up!”

“If you didn’t listen to him, maybe you’ll listen to me. There are other people out there who have it worse than you do. People who have been through really hard times and have to deal with things a hundred times worse than what you go through in a day. I don’t need to know what’s going on with you to know that. Maybe it hurts to talk about mine like it hurts to talk about what happened to you. So I wouldn’t go walking around being all judgmental when you get to school tomorrow.”

               Without saying another word he left. I angrily took the ice pack off my knee and stormed into my room. I was too angry to do anything else so I just climbed into bed and fell asleep. I woke up nine hours later having severe pains in my back. I yelled for Peter as loud as I could and he came running into my room a few minutes later. He carefully spun me around on my back and tried massaging it. When that didn’t work he connected one of the machines in my room to my back and turned it on. The machine sent electric waves through my back to help the pain. He rested an ice pack over it and let me lay there.

“Doesn’t look like you’re going to school today Chloe.”

“Nice observation, Sherlock.”

“Just because you’re having a bad day doesn’t give you the right to snap at me Chloe,” he said before leaving the room.

               I do this to everybody. I always yell at them and cause them to leave the room upset. I know my attitude’s been horrible since the accident, but I can’t help it. Nobody here is ever going to know what it’s like to see your dream crashing down right in front of you. It took so long for me to recover in the hospital because I was so depressed over it. Part of me didn’t want to get better because I didn’t know what was going to happen. The only thing I’ve ever thought of is gymnastics and suddenly that wasn’t possible anymore. Now there are days like today where I just have to lie in bed and wait for the pain to go again.