“Can I ask you a personal question?” She leaned in, her shoulder brushing mine, and I instinctively turned to face her.
I nodded, careful, wary. She bit her lip, rolling the words around in her mouth like she was afraid they might taste wrong coming out. That alone told me what kind of question it would be.
“You’re… mute?” she asked finally, her voice soft, cautious, as if one wrong note might shatter me. Her question hung in the air, heavier than it had any right to be.Mute.The word tasted familiar, almost safe compared to the truth.
My fingers twitched against my jeans. My throat ached, but not with words… just memory. When I was a child, I spoke. Not fluently, not fast, but enough. Enough to give them something to tear apart.
Kids at school would repeat everything I said in mocking voices, bending my words into weapons. They laughed because it was easy. Because I was easy. Fragile. A glass window they could throw stones at and watch shatter over and over again.
The fear settled deep in me, so deep it rewired my body. I started to stutter, not because I couldn’t speak but because I was terrified to.
Terrified of the sound of my own voice.
Terrified of giving them something to rip into. And that stutter gave them more fuel, more cruelty. They had their fun, and I learnt the only way to survive was silence.
So no, I’m not mute. I want to speak. I want to be free. But the moment I try, my throat locks, my muscles betray me.
My own body cages me in.
I turned to Jennie slowly, forcing the words back into the box they belonged in. With a small shake of my head, I answered her unspoken question.
“Is it SM?”
My face twitched at the sound of it.SM.
What was that?
Some sort of label?
A name for something broken inside me?
I shook my head slowly, hesitantly, unsure if I was denying it or just admitting I didn’t understand. My brows pinched together, and Jennie noticed.
“Selective mutism,” she clarified, softer now, like she knew she was stepping into fragile territory. “My parents… they run a private school just uptown. It’s mostly focused on kids with special needs. Deaf, blind, autistic, nonverbal… you name it. I grew up around all of them.” Her voice was calm, careful, the way someone would explain a bruise that wasn’t theirs. “Some of them had SM. They could talk, but their bodies didn’t let them. Their fear kept their voices locked inside.”
My chest tightened. Fear. Locked. She spoke like she’d crawled into my head and put words to things I couldn’t. I stared at her, blinking too fast, my throat suddenly dry.
No one had ever…namedit before. To everyone else, I was mute. Easy. Done. Case closed. But Jennie didn’t say mute. She didn’t say broken. She gave it… letters. A name.
I hadn’t been diagnosed. No one cared enough to look deeper. I lowered my gaze, fingers gripping the edge of my folder until it bent. Maybe I wasn’t just silent. Maybe I was something else.
I stayed quiet, staring at the ground, the wordSMstill pressing against the inside of my skull. Jennie tilted her head, watching me too closely, like she could feel my silence gettingheavier by the second. Then she leaned back, voice softer than before.
“You don’t have to be something.” My head lifted, just barely, eyes flicking to her face. “You don’t have to have SM. You don’t have to be mute. You don’t even have to explain yourself.” She shrugged, playing with the zipper of her bag, her tone so casual it almost disarmed me. “You can just be you. Someone who doesn’t enjoy speaking, and that’s fine too. No labels unless you want them. Up to you.”
Her words sat in my chest like a weight, and yet, strangely, they didn’t crush me. They grounded me. I didn’t realise how badly I needed someone to say that until now.
I slowly nodded. I don’t even know why. Maybe I was admitting to having SM. Maybe I was just nodding along to her words. Maybe it wasn’t either of those things. I don’t know. I’m just… acknowledging her.
The thing is, Jennie cracked me open in minutes. Minutes. While others didn’t even try. And I don’t care. I don’t expect people to try for me. I don’t expect them to ask, or wonder, or reach out. I stopped waiting for that a long time ago. But I guess… I didn’t think it would feel this good, having someone actuallysee me.
“So,” Jennie spoke again. “Is Aly late, or are you early?” she asked, tilting her head, the corners of her mouth quirking up like she already knew the answer.
I pulled my phone out, the lock screen lighting up the time.12:48.So I was early. Of course I was.
I looked back up from the screen and gave her a small nod. Her grin widened, playful but not mocking, just… amused in a way that made my chest feel lighter.
“You’re adorable.” She chuckled, shaking her head like she couldn’t believe me.
