Silence

Dear Classmate,

I walked in with the rest of you. As usual, you ignored me. I sat at the very back of the room and leafed through an open book. In silence, I read. In silence, I lived.
I tried to be friends with you. But every time I walked towards you, you walked away. Are you afraid of me? Ashamed of me? Disgusted? Appalled? I want to know why you hate me so much.
But I still don’t, because you don’t even talk to me.
The teacher came in and started the morning roll call. She mentioned my name, the last on the list, and I raised my hand. Everybody became quiet, and took out their books and pens. I knew that it would be the last time I would be called. Until tomorrow’s roll call.
I am the girl everyone ignored.
Everyone.
It was like I existed for the sake of existence.
The lesson started, and I tried to pay attention. I looked at you and you were secretly laughing with your friends.
I wondered what it would feel like to laugh with people. Because, if I am not ignored, then I am laughed at. It would be nice to laugh with you. I always wanted to be friends with you. You were everything I wanted to be. Smart, beautiful, funny...
Everybody loved you.
I continued to leaf through the book, interest in the lesson all forgotten.
Then the teacher asked, “Who wrote Pride and Prejudice?”
No one answered. Then, her eyes stopped in my direction. I took it as a sign that she was telling me to answer.
So I stood up and walked to the front, because I did know. Jane Austen. I remember, because we have the same first name.
You suddenly shivered. “Somebody turn the fan off! It’s cold.”
“It is off,” your seatmate told you.
I picked up a piece of chalk. Then I began writing.
Jane.
I stopped. I didn’t want to write Austen. Maybe it was time I gave myself some attention, after all.
I wrote “Jane” again. And again. Again. I kept writing like my life depended on it. Life? What a joke.
You screamed. Somebody fainted. Others started running away, and still others were frozen in place.
Now you know my name.
You just couldn’t see me.
Then again, you never saw me when I was alive.
Being dead was no different.
You were unable to run; perhaps your senses were not working properly. I walked toward you and held your hand. You were warm. Or I was cold. I don’t know. I think it was both. You fainted.
I did know that my body was somewhere cold, lying in metal, awaiting autopsy.
Lying there, because you killed me.
Remember when you were driving last week towards your parents’ house? It was the weekend and you were drunk. I was going home, too. But unlike you I didn’t have a car.
You hit me. You knew you hit me, because you got out of your shiny new Porsche and looked at the road behind you. You saw me, you checked my pulse. Or lack thereof.
You were afraid.
I wasn’t.
I was finally free of my disfigured body. It wasn’t my fault that my mother tried to abort me, and failed. It wasn’t my fault that I had, as you said, half-a-nose. Nor was it my fault that my spine was curved and my feet were uneven. None of it was my fault, and yet you made me pay.
You got back into your car and rode off into the night in a cloud of dust and smoke. Relief, too, since you knew nobody saw you.
You didn’t think you’d see me again, did you?
Tut, tut.
It’s your turn to be ignored by the rest of the world.
But don’t worry, I’m not going to let you out of my sight.
Tonight, you join me in silence.