Torn

Chapter 2 - The Power Behind A Broken Promise

“Oh, hey!” the brunette called out to me, sweetly.

I was in the process of sprinting back into the hell-hole I called home when she caught me in the act. I was only a few steps away from the front door and she just had to ruin it for me. I raised a hand in a simple wave, not even looking in their direction. When I had my hand on the doorknob, breathing a sigh of relief for the first time that I was almost inside and away from everyone else, Flynn called out to me too.

“Always running away, aren’t you?” he asked, chuckling again.

I turned around slowly, my hand dropping from the cool doorknob. He casually walked across the lawn separating our homes, the brunette still underneath his arm. Her smile was wide as he approached us, and she put out a hand for me to shake.

“I’m Olivia, Flynn’s girlfriend! I see you two know each other?” she questioned as I shook her warm palm. I only nodded in response as she smiled at me. There was something about her too, that I couldn’t place. The smile just screamed too good to be true, just like that said boyfriend of hers.

“This is Willow. She doesn’t like to speak,” Flynn added, squeezing Olivia’s shoulder briefly.

I was itching to scream at this point. He spoke with such a cocky air that it made my hands clench in agitation. Flynn knew nothing about me, other than the fact that I was in his English class. He had absolutely no right to joke about me like he knew what was going on. He didn’t know anything.

“What?” she asked, looking up at him in curiosity, then back to me again.

He nodded. “She doesn’t talk. To anyone. Trust me, I’ve tried,” he said, shrugging.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” she laughed nervously, looking back up at him again. “He’s kidding right, Willow?”

I didn’t bother to respond. If Flynn thought that making ignorant remarks and joking at my expense was enough to get me to speak, he was dead wrong. I’d spent years perfecting this, and he wasn’t about to be the one to change it. He didn’t deserve a word from me, nor did anyone for that matter. Although the fear of letting my secret slip was the basis of my silence, a bubble of annoyance pertaining to Flynn was still there to shut me up.

“See, nothing,” he smirked.

I clenched my fists at my sides, my nails digging into the material of my sweatshirt.

“Sweetie…are you…okay? Why don’t you speak?” Olivia asked, eyeing me with a wary expression.

I only shook my head, my blonde curls bouncing freely, before stalking off to my house. I distinctly heard something about the word ‘freak’ before they both became out of earshot as I closed the door behind me.

It was almost funny, the way that people judged so easily before actually getting to know someone. No seemed to think twice in this town before they jumped to conclusions and pinned you with a name, your signature until the end of time. Neither Olivia nor Flynn knew a detail into anything pertaining to me, so they clearly had no right to judge me. But that wasn’t enough to stop them from stamping me with words like ‘freak’ or ‘weirdo.’

I remembered a time when it was so effortless to talk to anyone who would listen to me. As a kid, my mom always used to say that I made friends with every kid in my class. I was always so sociable, so easy to get along with. It became like second nature to just walk up to a person in the room with me and make them feel welcome. I made friends faster than any kid in my elementary classes. That was, until my mom left and all hell broke loose in the Maverick household.

It was almost like he beat the words out of me. I was constantly threatened to not say a word, never let anyone know what was really going on behind that big, red door in front of our house. When neighbors complained about the racket, I’d been told to come up with a lie as I answered the door to complaints. Every time, I told them that our dog had gotten into something that he wasn’t supposed to, and my father had to chase him around the house to get it.