Undone [Completed]

Undone: [One]

Wait, what? All Max had needed to do was talk before he could get out? Who’d have thought…never mind. Things were happening too fast – they’d just accepted he was depressed without, I don’t know, any test, and he was home free? It didn’t make sense and I didn’t want to even try and follow their reasoning, so I did what Mum had been suggesting and just went home.

*

“Dude, what took you?” Rodney, Ryan and the rest of our friends were already there by the time I got home.

“Yeah, we’ve been waiting for ages!” Ryan chipped in.

I shrugged. “Couldn’t help it guys. Something came up.”

Rodney picked on the message hidden behind my words, so he simply nodded, then, “But you’re here now. Let’s get this party started!”

Huh. Like they hadn’t already made themselves comfortable. The music was on and most of the food (and drinks) were gone.

I grinned.

*

“So, what happened?” Ryan demanded once everyone but he and Rodney had left. Mum had come a few hours after I had, but she’d retired early, as had Dad and Sam. It was about two in the morning, and the three of us were the only ones awake.

“It’s Max. I-I was at the hospital.” I stopped there, not sure of what I’d say next.

“No, you don’t say,” Rodney said sarcastically.

“He, well, spoke.”

Their bewildered faces were the reason I’d been unsure. They hadn’t known of how, after the trial, Max hadn’t said a word. I began to fill them in slowly – how, the closed-room trial had been the last time his parents, anybody, had heard him speak; how he’d been in hospital because of it; how he’d wished me a happy birthday; all the questioning I’d been at instead of being at home, and how  he could just be going home.

I skipped over him being depressed about his arm, however. Nobody but his doctors and parents had known, and the rest of the world had no business knowing, really. Mum had told me in confidence, I think, or I felt, anyhow, so I had no right to say anything. We hadn’t been at the trial, so we hadn’t seen his non-existent arm, only the judge, his parents and Mum, present as his doctor, had. I’d realized that anybody who’d visited him wouldn’t have known either, that his arm was a fake, like Maya, because he’d been hiding it. Hiding it really well, and that I saw it happened to be a fluke.

Plus, there was something about the way he’d looked down, looked away that made me feel like I’d intruded on his privacy; seen him in a way I wasn’t meant to . And because of that, it felt like I owed him silence in regard to his vulnerability.

“So, he goes home?” Ryan made me stop thinking.

“I don’t know, but Mum thinks so. I didn’t get the chance to ask her,” I responded.

A cloud of silence then formed over all of us as we thought about him – Max.

*

 I didn’t stop thinking about him in the few hours I slept. I was asleep, but my mind was on him, too. Which could explain the dream I had, but that’s irrelevant.

When morning arrived, there was one question in mind.

“Mum, what was the trial like?”

She was seated at the dining table with her breakfast in front of her. I’d just risen and brushed my teeth, then hurried to get to her before she left. I just had to know.