Secret to Silence

My dreams were over. I would achieve nothing meaningful in my life. My chance to make it out of this shit town had gone by once it had struck midnight last night. I didn’t even get the decency of a rejection letter. Turns out I’m not worth a single sheet of paper. Ruth was standing over my huddled body on my bedroom floor. 

“You didn’t need that fancy university anyways.” She kneeled down beside my writhed body. 

“Yes I did. You know I did.” I mumbled. Everyone was posting about which universities they had got into and accepted offers of admission. The deadline to accept offers was yesterday. Until then. I had kept thinking my acceptance letter was late, that it would come in the mail on the last day. It hadn’t. I refreshed my inbox thousands of times in the weeks leading up to yesterday as well. Nothing. 

Ruth pulled me into a hug. “You’re amazing and that university just didn’t see that.” 

I leaned into Ruth. “Just stay here for another year and then see what happens. Maybe you’ll find something else to do.”

I flung my head up sharply and stared at Ruth. “No. This is all I’ve ever wanted since I was six. And now that dream is shattered. I don’t want to do anything else. This has only verified my one true fear. That I’m worthless. That I’m stuck in this shit life.” I stood up, harshly knocking Ruth over. I flopped onto my bed and pulled the covers over my head. I’ll just stay here until I die. 

“Lindsay, life isn’t over because you didn’t get accepted into your dream university.” She tugged the covers down enough to see my bloodshot eyes. “I’ll be here for you. I’m always here for you. Isn’t that enough right now?”

“It isn’t.” I knew my words had left from under the covers because Ruth’s face looked like I had slapped her. I knew I was being mean, but I was also being truthful. I turned over so I didn’t have to look at Ruth anymore. I waited for her to say something. Maybe call me a bitch. Instead, I felt her weight lift off my bed. I held my breath as she walked out of my room, slowly closing the door. This is all I wanted. To hibernate and cry and be by myself.

***********

I kicked the pebble into the lake as Ruth walked up beside me. “Why did you call me down here?” I said.

“Why? You got somewhere else to be?” She took a turn at kicking a rock.

“Yeah, bed.” I huffed and stared at my suspended breath in the air.

Ruth wouldn’t meet my gaze, instead, she glanced up and down the damp river bank and thumbed her shoe into the dirt.

“I need to tell you something.” She said it so fast that I almost thought the wind had spoken.

“About?” I questioned.

“You can’t get mad. I won’t make you promise, but… please try not to get mad.” The wind was picking up and the trees’ branches were bending down trying to hear this confession. “The guilt is eating away at the lining in my stomach and the muscles in my heart. I care about you and you need to know.”

“You’re scaring me Ruthie” I hugged my arms around my torso and shuffled my feet back. I didn’t care about the cold or for the first time in a while, my bed. My insides were heating up, spreading and burning behind my neck.

“Your acceptance letter. I burned it.” Ruth wrung her fingers back and forth. “I also deleted any emails regarding your acceptance.”

I allowed myself a moment to pause. The burning of anxiety extinguished now that I knew it wasn’t my secret she was confessing to knowing. The opposite feeling settled in. Maybe it was from the chilly air, but I felt so numb. I couldn’t do this right now. I side-eyed Ruth, she was blinking away tears, the guilt finally escaping her body. It didn’t make sense before, but the realization of what happened dawned on me. I didn’t have anything to say. Only one thing was on my mind.

“Ow!” Ruth screamed as she stumbled back and tripped over her own feet. She looked at me with betrayal as she held the right side of her face from where my hand connected in sweet vengeance. 

“Lindsay, I’m sorry.” Ruth scrambled to her feet, careful not to step any closer. “I couldn’t bear the thought of you moving across the country. I need you, I need you in a way you don’t need me, but that’s fine because you make up for it by just being you.” Her eyes were wide, pleading, like if she could push them out of her skull she could make me understand. 

“I thought I wasn’t good enough.” I started speaking in a low voice and slowly. I barely registered my mouth moving to get the words out. “For the past five months, I’ve beaten myself up and cried over not achieving my dream. Each time I checked my mailbox for that acceptance letter, you had the audacity to stand beside me and hug me when there was nothing but bills and flyers. Each time I threw my phone across the room over not receiving a goddamn email from them, you calmed me down. Telling me not to worry”

“I can make it up to you.” Ruth rushed and clung to my shoulders. Her nails dung into my skin through my sweater. 

“There’s nothing you can do, you ruined everything” I kicked her to the ground and screamed over her body, cowering at the hate in my throat. “The deadline to accept offers passed. It passed weeks ago.” 

Ruth lunged at my ankle and held on. “Please don’t tell anyone. Everyone will hate me. They were all rooting for you. No one will understand why I did what I did. But you do, right?” 

 It was too late to change what Ruth had done. But I knew I wouldn’t tell anyone. I couldn’t give them a motive. 

“I’m so sorry Lindsay. Please forgive me, I only did it for us.”

Ruth didn’t deserve my forgiveness, she deserved to be drowned in the river.