Kaylee's POV
The door slams behind me, an excessively loud noise in the quiet morning.
I step out into the damp air and walk down my porch steps, the frustration in me hardly containable. I was about ready to burst.
My mom didn't understand anything. She didn't understand how hard it was to communicate when you were a mute.
The cold, biting air hits me in the face with a spray of mist as I wrap the circle scarf around my neck, trying to trap the little warmth I had left in me.
I was using my hand signals to try to communicate to my mom that I wanted to quit therapy. I was fine now, so why go anymore? It wasn't like it was going to help me forget anything that had happened six years ago. It was in the past now. And unless it was possible to bring someone back from the dead, what had been done was done that night.
Plus it did nothing but make me remember in vivid details what had happened. I didn't understand the point of therapy, and my mother didn't understand the point of me fighting it.
My feet take me in some direction that I don't know of. I wasn't sure where I was going, but I just decided to trust my feet, which most people would find weird, but once you can't trust your voice, it's hard to trust your brain and your heart, so you go with your feet.
I walk with my head lowered, watching my feet to make sure that I didn't trip over any strange cracks in the ground. While I walked, I shoved my freezing fingers into my pockets to warm them up, shivering as I bent down to try to pull my brown boots up higher.
I turn a left around the sidewalk street corner and hurry up the front steps into a white, colorless building.
I walk past the receptionist, Brooke, who casually smiles and gives me a small wave as I walk past her. I lift my hand up for a small wave back at her, too.
I turn left into a long corridor and keep walking until I reach the last door, labeled: Dr. Joseph's Therapy Lessons.
My hand grazes the door as I almost turned it so that I could I could start our therapy lesson, but then I stop when I hear shouting.
"No." a boy's voice says.
"No what?" I could hear Dr. Joseph asking the boy.
"'No what?'" I could hear the boy mocking Dr. Joseph's voice. "I don't need these fucking 'therapy' lessons! I'm nineteen! It's been years," he stresses, "if I wasn't better then, what makes you think I'll be better now?"
"Will, please sit down, and please don't use that kind of language here." I could hear Dr. Joseph calmly say.
I didn't mean to eavesdrop, but there was something about the boy's voice that drew me closer.
"No! I'll fucking do what I want." Will replies loudly just to spite Dr. Joseph.
"Will, have you taken your medicine today?" Dr. Joseph asks patiently. I didn't know how he remained that calm, if it was me, and I wasn't a mute, I would've shouted my face off.
I lean in even closer without noticing it.
"Medicine? What am I? A psychopath? An insane human being?" Will is starting to sound hysterical.
"No, Will. You are none of those things you listed. But you need to take your medicine," Dr. Joseph says.
"You know what? You don't get beat up everyday because everyone thinks that you're a psychopath. People aren't scared of getting hurt by you. You don't have to go these fucking therapy lessons to 'get better' at controlling your anger. Your dad doesn't beat you up so that you have less strength to hurt someone else." I could hear Will breathing loudly, panting a little from his little speech.
"Will," Dr. Joseph said slowly. I imagined seeing Dr. Joseph shifting in his chair, "Is that a new bruise I see there?"
"What? No. Why?" Will replies a little too quickly, that even I could tell that he was hiding something.
I hear movement behind the door and suddenly the doorknob turns and I come face to face with the most beautiful, rough looking boy.
His angry face completely softens when he sees me, and I quickly move out of his way, afraid of his reaction.
"Were you here the whole time?" he asks me quietly, the first time that he hasn't shouted or yelled.
I nod. And then he turns his face away from me and nods, leaving me alone with Dr. Joseph.
"Hello Kaylee," Dr. Joseph says out of breath. He must've rushed after Will, but Will must've been too quick for him.
I nod and I let him lead me back to the room. And for some reason, the presence that Will was here just a second ago, frightens me.
"I'm very sorry about that," Dr. Joseph nods at the door and then at me. He opens a drawer at his huge wooden desk and slides a pad of paper at me. I shake my head and take off my book bag, shuffling through all my stuff and pulling out a pad of paper in the shape of a heart.
He nods and opens his drawer again, putting in the pad he gave me and taking out a pencil instead.
"Go ahead and write about your day," he says.
I take the pencil and think about what had happened to me today besides eavesdropping on things that I shouldn't have heard.
Nothing really happened besides my mum telling me that I still had to go to therapy even though I begged her with my notepad that I didn't need to go anymore.
So I wrote exactly that and then after I finished, I slid the pad to Dr. Joseph who glanced at it, flipping through the pages of my writing from previous conversations with other people.
I quickly take the pad back before he can read anymore. Some things inside there was private.
"Sorry. It's private isn't it?" he says, reading my mind like he always does when I come for my lessons.
I nod again and put my pad on my lap.
Dr. Joseph stares out the window, and I wait for him to speak.
"That was Will. Will Malik. He still hasn't gotten over the fact that he has anger management issues. He's a tough nut to crack," he chuckles slightly, still blankly staring out the window.
I nod for him to go on. Nodding seemed to be the only thing I've mastered in my life.
"His parents don't really help him. I've met them once, and they seemed like the kind of parents who were careless with what they did with their kids." he continues. "And that meeting was on the first day they brought him here."
I take out my pad and write: How old was he?
Dr. Joseph nods at me and says, "Six."
Oh. I became mute when I was six. I guess six was just the age for things to happen that would completely change everyone's life.
Dr. Joseph continues, "He was such a sweet little boy back then, because he didn't let his anger overtake him most of the time. Most of the time, when his anger did surface, they were just little fits that little kids had. But then came high school, and that's what broke him apart."
I continue to nod along with him. High school was when the popular group started asking me so many questions at a time and then laughing at me because they knew that I couldn't answer them directly.
"Hey, 'mute' girl. Tell me how you became mute," a boy laughs at me, and a girl who I assumed was his girlfriend, kissed him on the cheek, smiling at me wickedly.
"Yeah, tell us," someone else says, shrugging on their leather jacket and slinging an arm around another girl who was very pretty.
A girl laughs and I turn her way, "You guys are so stupid! She's mute!" she puts her face right up to mine, and says, "Guys, don't even bother, she's just a stuck-up bitch who can't take a joke."
The guys laugh around her, the girls laugh, too, still too distracted making out with the boys next to them. I kind of doubted that they even knew the guys names.
I remembered thinking, wannabe.
I wish I could've told it to her face and make her shut up with a bitch slap, too, but I can't. Instead, I just ran out of their tight knit circle group and went to the nurse, pretending that I wasn't feeling good. Then she sent me home with no questions asked. I sometimes wondered if she knew what happened to me everyday, or maybe my parents had told her to go easy on me. Be all sympathetic for me like every parent or adult was.
I hated it so much. I just wanted to be normal and be happy with nothing to worry about.
"What are you thinking about?" Dr. Joseph's voice brings me back to reality.
I sigh and take out my pad again, this time writing: I was thinking about high school.
"Oh." he didn't press me any forward. "Would you like to end our lesson right here for today?" he asks me.
I was just about to take out my notepad again, when I heard glass shattering and people screaming.
Dr. Joseph moved faster than me, making it out of the door with me trailing behind him, wondering what could've caused that sound.
He turns back to me, "Stay here. It's safer." I nod, and then he leaves. After a few minutes, I followed after him again. I was old enough to take care of myself. I certainly didn't need a babysitter to tell me what to do.
I jogged down the corridor and turned left, where it lead me back to the where the front door was.
My hands were just pushing the front door open, when I heard another loud sound, and then the glass door shattered on top of me.
Crouching down with my hands wrapped around me, scared as hell, I looked up.
And saw Will.
~A/N: So much drama and it's only the first chapter! Me and my amazing friend, @IBelongWithBrits, is going to be writing this with me! So please Comment, Vote, and Follow if you like it! We would love to know your thoughts.
~Forever_Yours_Too