Speak

by Laurie Halse Anderson

It is easier not to say anything. Shut your trap, button your lip, can it. All that crap you hear on TV about communication and expressing feelings is a lie. Nobody really wants to hear what you have to say.

“This is where you can find your soul, if you dare. Where you can touch that part of you that you’ve never dared look at before.

This closet is abandoned—it has no purpose, no name. It is the perfect place for me.

I wash my face in the sink until there is nothing left of it, no eyes, no nose, no mouth. A slick nothing.

It is getting harder to talk. My throat is always sore, my lips raw. When I wake up in the morning, my jaws are clenched so tight I have a headache. Sometimes my mouth relaxes around Heather, if we’re alone. Every time I try to talk to my parents or a teacher, I sputter or freeze. What is wrong with me? It’s like I have some kind of spastic laryngitis.

This is how I have felt since after 8th grade.

I’m sure I was a huge disappointment. I’m not pretty or smart or athletic. I’m just like them—an ordinary drone dressed in secrets and lies.

Maybe I’ll be an artist if I grow up.

"If i grow up" ?

I open up a paper clip and scratch it across the inside of my left wrist. Pitiful. If a suicide attempt is a cry for help, then what is this? A whimper, a peep? I draw little windowcracks of blood, etching line after line until it stops hurting. It looks like I arm-wrestled a rosebush.

The whole class yells at Rachel/Rachelle in the hall. That’s what you get for speaking up.

“You don’t like anything. You are the most depressed person I’ve ever met, and excuse me for saying this, but you are no fun to be around and I think you need professional help.”

“I was the only person who talked to you on the first day of school, and now you’re blowing me off because I’m a little depressed? Isn’t that what friends are for, to help each other out in bad times?”

When people don’t express themselves, they die one piece at a time. You’d be shocked at how many adults are really dead inside—walking through their days with no idea who they are, just waiting for a heart attack or cancer or a Mack truck to come along and finish the job. It’s the saddest thing I know.”

TEN MORE LIES THEY TELL YOU IN HIGH SCHOOL 1. You will use algebra in your adult lives. 2. Driving to school is a privilege that can be taken away. 3. Students must stay on campus for lunch. 4. The new textbooks will arrive any day now. 5. Colleges care about more than your SAT scores. 6. We are enforcing the dress code. 7. We will figure out how to turn off the heat soon. 8. Our bus drivers are highly trained professionals. 9. There is nothing wrong with summer school. 10. We want to hear what you have to say.

why does everyone make such a big hairy deal about me not talking? Maybe I don’t want to incriminate myself. Maybe I don’t like the sound of my voice. Maybe I don’t have anything to say.

Tennis is the only sport that comes close to not being a total waste of time.