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.

My bed is sending out serious nap rays. I can’t help myself. The fluffy pillows and warm comforter are more powerful than I am. I have no choice but to snuggle under the covers.

My goal is to go home and take a nap.

There’s not enough time for a nap, so I check out a stack of books to make the librarian happy. I might even read one.

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.

The whole point of not talking about it, of silencing the memory, is to make it go away. It won’t. I’ll need brain surgery to cut it out of my head.

I want a nap.

How can I answer? I don’t have to. They don’t want to hear anything I have to say.

She has figured out that I don’t say too much.

I have no friends. I have nothing. I say nothing. I am nothing.

I lean into the mirror. Eyes after eyes after eyes stare back at me. Am I in there somewhere?

Mr. Freeman thinks I need to find my feelings. How can I not find them? They are chewing me alive like an infestation of thoughts, shame, mistakes.

I crouch by the trunk, my fingers stroking the bark, seeking a Braille code, a clue, a message on how to come back to life after my long undersnow dormancy. I have survived. I am here. Confused, screwed up, but here.

IT happened. There is no avoiding it, no forgetting. No running away, or flying, or burying, or hiding. Andy Evans raped me in August when I was drunk and too young to know what was happening. It wasn’t my fault. He hurt me. It wasn’t my fault. And I’m not going to let it kill me. I can grow.

The bruises are vivid, but they will fade.