Silence by Rebekah Shimer (best novels for beginners txt) 📖

room to see me, which meant that I was allowed this time to myself. No one would be able to judge me. No one would cast looks of pity on me and feel sorry for me. I actually let all of the memories of Delilah come back to the front of my mind and they played in my head like some kind of home movie.

 

We were in my backyard, trying to get tans before school started. We both laughed at how pale we both were, which was really obviously shown by the bikinis that we had worn. We laid in the lawn chairs for, what seemed like, hours. When the sun had finally set low in the sky, we gathered our stuff and went back inside before we froze to death. I made sure no one else was in the house and we rushed into my room when the coast was clear. We were both winded from laughing so hard while trying to run. We were both trying to get over our laughing fit when she snorted. It was the first time that I had ever heard Delilah snort, so that just sent us into more of a laughing fit.

We were both crying from laughter when we were finally able to get a handle on ourselves. Of course, our happiness was short-lived when Delilah had to go home. Her parents had had a fight that day and her dad was making her go home so her mom wouldn’t be able to pick her up in the morning. I waved goodbye to her and I wanted to ask her so badly if she wanted to stay, but she was out the door before I got the courage to ask her big, burly father.

 

Why didn’t I ask her father for more time with her? Where was she? Was she even alive? This question plagued my mind for the rest of the night and, eventually, I cried myself to sleep.

Dreams

Audrey

 

That night, I dreamed a terrible dream.

 

Delilah was standing at the edge of a cliff. She was smiling down at the water, which scared me. I knew that she never did like water or swimming, but now she was almost welcoming the water. I ran up to her to stop her from doing the unimaginable. I grabbed her arms and pulled her back from the cliff’s edge. She smiled at me like how she had smiled at the water, which sent goose bumps down my arms.

She said in her sweet voice, “It’s okay. I’m ready.”

I looked at her with confusion thick in my face, but she just put a reassuring hand on my shoulder. I felt my arms slowly descending down, but I didn’t want them to. I knew that if I let her win this argument, she would jump. I just knew it. She walked over to the edge and looked back at me. She smiled back at me and then took one step forward. I screamed at her, but I knew that it was already too late. She was gone. I saw the top of her head fall underneath the edge of the cliff and ran over, praying that she was holding on for dear life to the rocks underneath the cliff.

When I looked over the side though, Delilah was nowhere to be seen. I gaped down at the chopping water that was slapping the side of the rocks below. I couldn’t see her anywhere. I could feel tears flowing down my face in buckets, but I didn’t care. No one else was there to see me anyway. I screamed out her name repeatedly, but I didn’t receive any answer. There was no one left to answer.

 

When I woke up, I knew that something had happened. The smell of chocolate chip pancakes wafted into my room, which was a bad sign. Whenever something happened that mom knew would upset me, she would always make chocolate chip pancakes. I felt my forehead, which was covered in sweat. I took a few deep breaths and then got out of bed. I really wasn’t ready to face whatever news my mom had for me after the dream that I had just had, but I decided to face it sooner, rather than later. I walked out of my room and slowly made my way into the kitchen. My mom was working furiously, but I also noticed that tears were rolling down her face.

I asked her quietly, “Mom?”

She turned around, quickly wiping her face before she wanted me to see them.

She smiled and said shakily, “Yes?”

“What’s wrong?”

She was quiet for a minute before she said, “They found Delilah’s body. She was in the Lake Titan. They found her this morning.”

I couldn’t breath. I couldn’t think. I felt completely numb. I didn’t know what to do. What was I supposed to do when I found out that my best friend was found dead in a lake not far from my own home? My mom walked over to me and pulled me into an airtight hug. I didn’t really want her to hug me, since I barely knew her, but I let her think that she was comforting me. She backed away from me a little after the hug, but she was still holding my shoulders firmly.

She said sternly, “Now Audrey. You must promise me that you will make the best out of this situation.”

I asked her quietly as more tears poured onto my face, “How?”

She took a deep breath and said, “Bad things have always happened and they always will happen as long as you live on this earth. Everyday, people take bad situations and use them as an excuse to run their lives down to the ground. They know that they’re able to use their bad lives as an excuse, so they do, making sure to take the easy route out of life. What others, the most courageous ones, decide is that they’re going to take their bad misfortunes and turn them into something good.

“I know that it’s hard to lose someone so close to you and I don’t expect you to bounce back right after this whole thing. I won't blame you or be mad at you if it takes you your entire life. All I’m asking you do to is to take this and make something good come out of it. Even though you had no control over what happened to Delilah, you can still control what happens after. That’s all I’m asking you. Please tell me that you will not let this affect your life in any way except positive?”

I nodded my head, feeling that what she said was right. I knew it was, but I almost didn’t want to remember that fact. She smiled at me and kissed my forehead softly.

She asked, “So. Do you want some pancakes?”

I shook my head slowly, not really remembering if I had an appetite or not. She nodded in understanding and let me walk back to my room without saying anything. When I closed my door, I didn’t know what to do. Should I wallow in self-pity for a few hours, or should I do what my mom said? Find a way to make this positive. I searched my mind for any way that Delilah’s death could be a positive experience, but I didn’t come up with anything after a few minutes of silently thinking. I groaned in frustration and fell down on my bed face first. I breathed in and out, trying to regulate my breathing and slow it down. I heard someone knock on my door, but I didn’t answer. I didn’t really want to see anyone at the moment.

Andrew said from behind the door, “Hey. I heard about Delilah. Come on out Audrey. Please.”

I shook my head, but then I remembered that he couldn’t see me.

I said quietly, “No. Just leave me alone.”

“But Audrey-“

“I’m fine! Just please leave me alone for once!”

I could hear the hurt in his voice when he said, “All right. Fine.”

I started to cry even more at that moment. I had managed to hurt Andrew before I even saw his face this morning. I guess I really wasn’t getting the concept of making this a positive experience. I sat up in my bed and took out my old scrapbook. Delilah and I had made the scrapbook together during our junior year. Was that really just last year? I looked through the photos and smiled at the memories. There was a picture of Delilah and me when we were sledding outside. I smiled at the memory of that day.

We said that we were going to stay outside all day, but we had only been out for a couple hours before we weren’t able to stand the cold anymore. We had just taken the picture right after we had gone sledding down the bumpiest hill in the entire town. We were covered in snow from head to toe, but we didn’t care. We were having fun. People would drive by us and honk at us as we were sledding down the hill. Some elderly people would give us disapproving glares as they drove past, but we didn’t care that they thought we were too old to go sledding.

We had gone inside after that bumpy ride and my mom couldn’t stop laughing at us. Both of us had tangled, messy hair and our clothes were already soaked from the snow. We were almost dripping water from how much snow was soaked into our snow pants and winter coats. I looked at the next photo and almost laughed out loud. This one was taken down at a concert. People in the background were photo bombing our photo, but Delilah and I just thought that it was that much funnier.

We had gone to a Skillet concert together and we were both running off of very little sleep and a lot of caffeine. We both looked a little crazed in the photo, which wasn’t for what we were going for at all. We were actually trying to take a nice photo for a senior photo to go in the school slideshow next year, but we really didn’t care how it looked after we saw it. We both thought that it was funny. I smiled a little as I closed the scrapbook. I remembered the look of admiration Delilah and I both had after we had completely looked through the entire thing.

I took a deep breath as I set the scrapbook down on my nightstand that was next to my bed. I knew that I would have to go over to Delilah’s house sometime, but I knew that I wouldn’t be able to face her parents today. Maybe not even anytime near the beginning of the week, but I would probably have go to sometime near the end of the week. Her parents. I had always known them as Mark and Lindy, but half the time I just called them “mom” and “dad”. I knew that they needed to talk to me about some things that concerned Delilah. I knew what we would already talk about. When Delilah and I were littler, we made lists of things that we wanted to give to each other after our graduation, something to