Tainted: Listening to the Silence (Book 1)

ONE

Oliver

“I know this last interview wasn’t really great but don’t let it get you down, alright? Someone will adopt you soon, don’t worry. Oliver? Are you listening to me?” Mrs. Croxton, the woman in charge of the orphanage where I had lived for the last nine years and seven months, said.

                I just nodded. To be sincere I hadn’t been listening to her. I’ve lost the count of the interviews for adoption I’ve had and the times I’ve heard her say the same thing over and over again in the same fake cheerful tone. I had no need to listen to her because I already knew what she was going to say.

“Oliver, look, I know it’s been hard on you, I know you haven’t had it easy, with what happened and all that, but you need to go on living. You need to change your perspective of live, you need to talk to people, you need to relate, or…”

                No one’s ever going to adopt me. I already knew that. Don’t take me wrong, though, it wasn’t like I wanted to be stuck here for the rest of my life but it was just that people didn’t seem to like me, my issues, or my past. For the first year or so I had actually been hopeful that someone would adopt me, but by now I really didn’t think anyone would adopt me.

“You just need to let go of the past and start living in the present Oliver. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

                I nodded again and she sighed. I don’t think she’s mad at me for not talking, I think she’s just frustrated that it’s probably why no one ever wanted to adopt me. Well that and the fact that I was going to turn eighteen this year. No one ever wanted to adopt kids that were that old. She left the room and I sighed sitting in front of my piano again and just kind of feeling the keys without playing anything. I have always loved music. Since I was in my mom’s belly, till now, music has always been a part of my life. It’s hard to explain it, the connection I feel with music. It’s like music is just a part of me, a part of my life, of every single second of it. You see, I’m what you could call a prodigy.

                Since I was very small I had an affinity with music, I was always making music with something. My parents decided it would be good if I put all that talent into something. They wanted me to play the violin, because you know, violinist have some sort of prestige or whatever, but I never liked it. Instead I always looked longingly at the piano. I watched the other kids playing the piano and it looked… amazing. Wonderful. Melodious. Better, than the screeching violin. I loved it. I decided to play the piano instead of the violin and my parents got mad at me. In the end they accepted to let me play the piano if I played the violin too and I accepted without a second thought. I haven’t played the violin in quite a while, though, nine years and six months and twenty-nine days to be exact.

                My eyes focused back on my piano. It was the only thing I’d decided to keep, well at least with me. The rest of the stuff was in storage somewhere and someone was paying it with the money I had inherited. I probably needed to know those types of things since I’d soon have to take care of it myself, but I just, wasn’t ready. I had a hard time with just my own memories, if I saw all the stuff it would just be worse. I grabbed the stave paper where I had written my notes the last time I’d been playing and started to play it from the start.

                It was a particularly sad piece as I noticed when I played it again. Well, everything I composed lately sounded sad. It was my way of expressing my sadness since I didn’t really find a point to talking anyways. That piano was the only one I ever talked to. Not verbally of course, but through music. I always thought music expressed emotions far better than words ever did. I continued playing until I got to where I’d stopped the last time and then I continued playing the music flowing through me and to the outside through my fingers. I took pauses to write what I added to the song but in general the music flowed easily. I remember mom used to tell me I played the piano so well that someday I’d be a famous pianist, and I believed her back then.