Replaceable.
Too much, in all the wrong ways.
The silence settles, heavy and awkward in the extreme as my leg bounces nervously. I can feel him watching me, probably thinking I’m completely out of my mind, but I can’t help it. In any other situation, I’d be embracing the silence, letting it speak to me, but now… sitting on a moving train and being surrounded by it, all it’s doing is opening a door. And once that door is open, my mind starts slipping.
I wish he’d stop staring at me like that.
“My name’s Adeline, by the way,” I say softly, and slightly desperately, in an attempt to fill the silence because it’s too loud otherwise. “Do you… live around here?”
He doesn’t lift his head, doesn’t turn. Just exhales through his nose. “Do you have a particular reason you’re pestering me? Or is this a performance of some kind?”
I blink.
A performance?
What did he mean by that?
Does he think I’m pretending?
Maybe I am.
Not forhim, though. For me. For the tightness in my chest. For the way the ground keeps feeling like it might slide sideways. For the way I’ve learned to fill silences, so they don’t turn into spirals.
I don’t answer his question. I’m not sure I could.
So I fixate.
His hoodie. Brentwood.
“I couldn’t help but notice you’re wearing a Brentwood hoodie. Do you go there?” I venture, because if I don’t, the quiet will pull me back to that moment. And I can’t go there. Not again, not now. And so, I internally beg this poor guy, who’s probably counting down the minutes till he can leave (I am too), to say something.
He says nothing but shifts his arm just enough to glance down at the faded letters stretched across his chest, like maybe he forgot he was wearing them.
He finally gives a short nod. Nothing else.
“My sisters and I—we just got offered places,” I ramble, twisting my fingers together in my lap. “It was all really sudden. Sort of unexpected.”
Still, no real response. Just that impossible stillness. The kind of quiet that makes you aware of everything you’re doing wrong. The way you’re sitting. The way you sound. The way you’re breathing.
I press my back against the seat, trying to ground myself, but the floor feels like it’s swaying. The air feels like it’s thinning.
“So… Brentwood’s supposed to be pretty amazing, right?” I say, the words scraping out of me now. “The school, the people, the campus. The reputation. All of it. Practically flawless.”
He lets out a short breath, like maybe he’s going to say something, but doesn’t.
“A perfect school,” I continue, eyes fixed on a smear on the glass, but then a thought forms on my tongue. One I’m not even sure where I get it from. “But then again… nothing real ever looks perfect up close.”
His shoulders tense, almost imperceptibly. The hand resting against his leg stills completely, as he turns his head toward me. Slowly.
And even with the sunglasses, I canfeelhim staring. I can’t see his eyes, but I feel the focus in them anyway. Like he’s scanning me, searching for something in the shape of my face, the tone of my voice.
But he doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t do so much as cock his head to the side, as if considering something.
I don’t know why, but suddenly the air between us feels thick, and I get this strange feeling I’ve overstepped somehow. Overstepped into a place I was never supposed to enter.
I shift under the weight of it, pulse skipping. “I—was that… dumb to say?” I ask, trying for a laugh that doesn’t come.
“Not dumb,” he says finally. “Just not something most people notice.”
