Speechless(17)

                “I forgot, okay?” I snap. “God. I said I was sorry.”

                Dad shakes out his newspaper and lays it flat on the table.                     “Don’t worry about it,” he says, standing up and coming over to me. He plants a                     kiss on the top of my head, and I hold my breath, hoping the three mouthwash                     rinses and obscene amount of Kristen’s perfume I doused myself with are enough                     to mask any lingering smell of alcohol.

                It must be, because he doesn’t comment on it. “I can make a                     grocery run,” he offers. Always the peacemaker.

                Mom sighs again, louder this time, and I take it as my cue to                     slink upstairs without further interrogation. I shut the door and toss my purse                     onto my bed. The issue of National                     Geographic comes tumbling out—I snuck it in my bag                     before I left Kristen’s. I couldn’t ask to borrow it because she’d think I was a                     freak, but I really did want to finish reading that article about the monk.

                I flop down on my bed and fumble through the pages until I find                     it. Being silent for sixty years—I can’t fathom it. Hell, I can’t fathom being                     silent for sixty days. Even sixty minutes would be                     tough. This monk guy, his silence is used to better himself. My silence about                     Noah—it’s the opposite. It’s because I’m a coward.

                I don’t want to think about this anymore, but even when I pull                     a pillow over my head and squeeze my eyes shut, I’m consumed with the memory of                     Noah’s eyes, the way they’d been filled with shock when I opened that bedroom                     door, and then panic as he realized what I’d caught him doing. And with whom. I                     wonder if that’s the same look he had when Warren and Joey kicked the shit out                     of him in that parking lot.

                When I found Noah—them—on the bed together, Noah’s mouth had                     opened like he was going to say something, but I’d turned and hightailed it back                     downstairs as quickly as possible. Maybe he was going to say “Wait,” maybe he                     was going to ask me not to say anything about what I’d seen. Or maybe he wasn’t                     going to say anything at all, realizing that kind of request was futile, even if                     I was there to hear it.