Sounds of Silence
Candace Wondrak
© 2020 Candace Wondrak
All Rights Reserved.
Book cover by Victoria Schaefer at Eve’s Garden of Eden – A Cover Group
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Chapter One – Bree
Chapter Two – Mason
Chapter Three – Bree
Chapter Four – Calum
Chapter Five – Bree
Chapter Six – Mason
Chapter Seven – Bree
Chapter Eight – Calum
Chapter Nine – Bree
Chapter Ten – Mason
Chapter Eleven – Calum
Chapter Twelve – Bree
Chapter Thirteen – Mason
Chapter Fourteen – Bree
Chapter Fifteen – Calum
Chapter Sixteen – Bree
Chapter Seventeen – Mason
Chapter Eighteen – Bree
Chapter Nineteen – Bree
Chapter Twenty – Mason
Chapter Twenty-One – Calum
Chapter One – Bree
It’s funny how everyone thinks you’re okay as long as you’re smiling. Grin and bear it, they say, not knowing and not caring whatever it was you were feeling inside. People might say they care, but their actions and their words always proved differently. I’d come to learn that in my life.
Only twenty years old, and yet I felt so much older. Mentally, physically, you name it. Just drained, watching the world pass me by, waiting for my life to really start while wondering: is this it? Is this what my life will be like?
And then, the even bigger question: what’s the big deal?
People always make such a big fuss about life. It’s this precious thing that means so much more than anything else—it’s why we have funerals when our loved ones pass, because we’re sad they’re gone. To me, though, life didn’t seem worth celebrating. It wasn’t fun. It just…was.
Life was something that was unavoidable, something I was forced to get through just because my parents got together and decided they wanted a kid right then and there. Susan and Andrew Stone. They were good enough parents, I supposed. They fed me, bought me clothes when I needed new ones, kept a steady roof over my head while never beating me or abusing me. A lot of kids had it worse growing up, I knew.
No, the strange thing was I didn’t have a bad life. I had a family who said they loved me, and up until a few years ago, I had a few friends, too. Now they were off in college, having gone to specialized schools for their majors while I floundered about in the local community college, not knowing what I wanted to major in still. But hey, at least the local college was a hell of a lot cheaper, right?
I guess, deep down, I was hoping for a sign, something to either tell me what to major in, what to drown the rest of my life in…or hoping for something to just end it. I mean, if I was dead, I wouldn’t have to worry about what I was going to do with the rest of my life.
Depressing, but true. If you stick around, you’ll find that a lot of the thoughts that come into my head could fit under the subject of depressing.
I laid in bed for what felt like forever, wide awake as I stared at the ceiling. The alarm clock hadn’t rung on my phone yet, so it wasn’t time to get up. Not yet. I realized a while ago that if I was up before my dad, he asked too many questions.
Feeling all right? How’s school? Make any new friends?
The answers to those questions remained the same, as they always did, which was why I hated it when he asked me. No, fine, and definitely not.
So I instead took to laying in bed for as long as I possibly could before I had to get up, get dressed, and go. I’d spaced out my classes enough during the day at the college to have to spend all day there; there was no point in driving home between them, because in less than thirty minutes, I’d have to turn around and drive back. No point in wasting gas. I usually spent my time between classes either sitting in the library, working on homework, or waiting for time to pass in any of the lounges in the campus buildings.
I knew some people my age loved college. Some enjoyed going to the parties, hooking up with strangers, getting plastered and forgetting to write their papers until the day before they were due, but that wasn’t me. I didn’t go to parties, never hooked up—still a virgin, not that it mattered—and I never touched any alcohol in my life, unless you counted the wine they served you at your First Communion. Not sure that counted.
What did I love? I’ll get back to you on that.
When my phone began to buzz under my pillow, I reached under it and pulled it off the charger, swiping the icon on its flat screen aside. Getting out of bed was a chore, but when you were already wide awake, it was made a lot easier. I hardly ever got sleep anyways. Always interrupted, fitful. Couldn’t remember the last time I got enough solid sleep to have a dream.
Since it was early fall, the weather outside was growing a bit cooler. Not cold exactly, but getting there. Soon enough the world would be encased in snow and ice, and I’d be white-knuckling it to the college in all sorts
