Whatever Remains, T. Richardosn [brene brown rising strong TXT] 📗

principal asked, “Why would you do this? Has he ever done anything to you?” Well, I would’ve said yes but they’d have even more suspicions that I’d done it and I didn’t. What in their minds gave them the conclusion that I’d done this?
“I know you did it Summons!” she yelled. Summons. That was my last name but no one’s ever called me by my last name. I shook my head. “No!” she yelled. “You did! After Matthew told her that no one was coming to be her date, she went on a rage and took his white glove and threw it in the punch and she ran out. Matthew ran after her to apologize---” that wasn’t true. Matthew came to manipulate me some more, she hadn’t seen the whole thing, no one had.
“After that,” she continued, “Matthew didn’t come back. He was gone and so was she. There was no blood on the side walk though, only Matthew where she left him, a clean death she did.” I shook my head. Dramatic Keely had a way with words. I wanted to yell at her so much but all I did was shake my head with a furious gaze holding on her made up face. Maybe the tears were faked. Maybe she knew I didn’t kill him but didn’t like me. That couldn’t be possible though. I had never done anything to her. These were real; tears stroking down her with real malodorous sweat. I swallowed in.
After the party, Matthew came towards me and told me how stupid I was to believe that someone would actually want to be with a girl who couldn’t talk and was senseless. Yes, this hurt me terribly, I probably cried but I remembered that I didn’t want to remember this night so I magically swept it from my memories.
I didn’t remember anything else though. I began to cry. I wanted to yell, I didn’t do it you idiots!

Of course no one would listen though, they wouldn’t read it writing it on a paper, and they wouldn’t watch it in sign language, they also couldn’t read my lips which some of the easiest things I mouthed, they refused to look at. I wasn’t stupid. I knew what I was saying. I understood English. I just had this one huge problem that no one would really understand, not even a best friend, not even a step brother, something my parents and family just couldn’t understand. Just because I didn’t speak, didn’t mean that I couldn’t listen, I couldn’t see, it didn’t mean I needed special treatment. They spoke to me like I didn’t know what language they were speaking. They always broke it up in pieces. It drove me to tears.
“Calm down Orphelia, easy girl.” Now these idiots are talking to me like I’m a horse! The man put a hand on my shoulder. “I’m giving you two weeks, do you hear me? Two weeks to see if you can actually find proof that you didn’t do it. I also need you to find a witness of your actions, someone that actually saw it. If you don’t have a witness, Matthew’s parents are prepared to sew you.” I gaped for a moment with my eyes teary and red. I shook my head. I couldn’t even think of talking right now. I was shocked. No one saw what happened! No one can bring me to court; I have no one who saw there was no one. Not even my friend, when we were outside, Matthew and I, he talked and I left. There was absolutely no one watching. The things in my mind would’ve been the things that I’d say aloud.
“You are dismissed Lea,” said Keely. My mouth parted again. I didn’t want to get proof or a witness. I don’t want to do any of this at all. I breathed deeply as the late bell rang. “Lea?” Mrs. Rodriguez said. I closed my eyes and sunk my head in my hands. I coughed a little trying to get ready to talk. There was no noise as usual. Why would I even expect that? I’ve been mute for so long.
I walked along side to class next to my teacher. She didn’t feel bad for me at all. Matthew was her favorite student and now he was gone. We began walking up the stair well to the fifth floor.
“Why would you do that Lea?” she asked. I hated the name Lea; I’d like to be called by my original name. I shook my head. I didn’t kill anyone. No one understood. When we were up in the room, my personal guidance counselor sat at the door. At the sight of the both of us coming up she stood up.
“Lea!” she said. She ran up embracing me. This was all apart of a little act. In front of teachers, she would seem supportive of my issues but she was really cruel and only made my issues worse. I didn’t even really have issues. I was only assigned to a guidance counselor because they thought not being able to talk would stress me, so on the first day of high school, they assigned me to her thinking I already had problems of my own. I didn’t though. I was fine. I had no problems at all. I didn’t hug her bag but felt my eyes closing.
“Are you okay girly?” she asked. I nodded. “Get in class, we were supposed to meet up this morning but you didn’t come.” She was being so nice and smiled every single moment that she could. She had this job to be a personal guidance counselor but it seems she didn’t want to be assigned to me. No one does. I walked into the class where a bunch of students rubbernecked towards me. One guy smiled just for the fun of making me feel uncomfortable. I sat down next to a boy nick-named Rudolph.
“What’s up Lea?” he said. He wasn’t much of a friend really. He just talked when he had nothing to talk about. I shook my head. I pulled my bag around my seat and rubbed my eyes waiting for this part of class to be over. The whole class still had their heads turned to me. They all probably thought I’d killed someone. I feared that some one, sooner or later, would come out of the ocean and pull me down and out of class to have a discussion. The next thing I imagined was my father and my step-mother coming up to the school having a discussion with the teachers. I imagined me getting away with this death thing though, no voice or not. There was no way I could be put into jail without anyone having any proof. For all I know, I could deny and deny for the rest of my life. That would be a whole lot of misery on top of the misery I already had.
I’d have to deal with it until someone revealed the truth and right now it was concealed. To me it had been, I don’t know half of the things that happened that night since I’d erased it from my mind. Memories are supposed to stick with you though. Why weren’t they sticking with me?
“Everyone wants to know what happened in the office.” A random girl in my class blurted out. I was taken by surprise but didn’t show it. How’d she expect to find out? I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t tell them what happened. What did they want me to do? “Write what happened on the board.” The girl said. I looked at her now and tilted my head. I shook my head. She laughed. “Because you killed him.” She said. “We all know that you killed him. It’s doubtless, you’re an idiot and obviously crazy, of course your going to kill the most hottest and popular guy at our school. Now we’re all going to grieve over his grave. Should you even be in this classroom committing such a murderous tack?”
The teacher shushed her. “We don’t know if she did it, she has something to prove so it’s alright for her to stay in this school. If another murder of our students happens, she will be put into jail because then we know no doubt that it’s her.”
Did they think I was deaf too?
“So you’re going to give her a chance to kill another of the students and then you’ll put her into jail?” said Rudolf. My eyes narrowed then. “That could be any of us! Any of us could die!” He got up from his seat and moved to another. I wanted to yell but my voice was not bound to come out. Of course not. I crossed my arms and but my head on my table. “She’s trying to act innocent.” Rudolph said. I sighed deeply so that they all could hear how stupid and annoying I thought they all were. How could they all put me on trial for something no one saw me doing?

“Everyone, I want to say that we shouldn’t be speaking of God in a public school, but God bless this soulful body, for he had only lived seventeen years of a colorless life being beaten by many foster mothers, scowled by many un-holy fathers unlike yourself. Let color fill him in heaven, may the murderer of this body…” everyone looked towards me, “be taken some place to get rid of this terrible possession that has taken over this foul mind and rid the demon out.” I felt so uncomfortable about having such a spiritual speech take place inside our school cafeteria. “Please accept this chair as a gift to this young man and have him know that all these students wish him here. Amen.”
The chair was bedazzled with jewels from Keely. Flowers were being piled on the chair. I felt so bad. I didn’t do it! I would never kill someone if they were evil, if they were good, possessed or not, I wouldn’t be able to do it anyway.
I wanted to run out of this room and yell for my life and leave. Fortunately, it was the end of the day and my guidance counselor approached me. Before she spoke, she breathed heavily.
“Did you do this?” she asked. “If you killed this child, I don’t know what I’m going to say, and why, why did you kill him?” If I could answer, I would. I have ballet practice today and I couldn’t even bother with this right now. It was something I just couldn’t handle at the moment. If I could take everything much more slower and be able to right this down on a piece of paper, then we could easily solve this. No one understood me, no one would listen. They obviously didn’t care about what I thought. It was whether someone said I did it or not. Now all of a sudden just because Matthew’s idiot parents heard a couple of words coming from someone’s mouth meant they were going to sue me. Didn’t they at least ask for some evidence? If I ever planned on being a parent, I would demand evidence before I decide I wanted to bring a child to court with me or not.


I sat in the bus seat later on being gloomy unusually. I was not the talking type obviously and people thought I was gloomy every day, but Amanda could see the difference.
“I heard what happened.” She said. I nodded. “Did you do it?” she asked suddenly aware that there might be something wrong. I shot her a look of defiance. How could she ask such a silly question!? “I’m sorry,” she said, “I should’ve known you wouldn’t do something