Silence

Silence.

We’ve always been comfortable with silence. Not that there’s ever been a lot of it. Six years, eight months, twenty-one days. Is it normal to keep track of a friendship that obsessively? I don’t think so. I like numbers. Mia likes that about me too. I helped her with math homework every day of primary school, but not so much anymore. I think she’s getting better at it because now, she never asks for my help at all. Mia and I have always talked a lot, too much her mum says. The furrowed brow and twitchy lip her mum wears when she sees us talking has always confused me. Maybe it’s because I’m the only one Mia talks to. But there’s no reason for Mia to be lonely. She has me, one best friend. That’s all she needs.

Mia was always so vivacious when we were younger. That’s a fun word, isn’t it? Vivacious. It means lively, and boy was she ever. We always went on wild adventures in her backyard, sometimes to the moon, or the land of the fairies (as vague as that sounds), or rode dinosaurs and other stuff. She had the best imagination.

I don’t think I could live without Mia. I don’t even remember having a life before I met her. The second we met – six years, eight months, twenty-one days ago – it was an instant friendship. Instant connection, instant alliance, instant best friends. And suddenly, she wasn’t alone anymore. I haven’t left her side since.

In the last few months, Mia has been having it rough with her brain, or so she says. Her mum thinks she has a “dissociative mental illness” or something else with a long and medical-sounding title. A little while ago she finally decided to take her mum’s advice and see a psychologist. She tried to make light of it because apparently I’m “naïve” and wouldn’t otherwise grasp an understanding of the situation.

“The doctor said there’s a lot of abnormal activity in my prefrontal cortex. That’s here.”

She leant over and smacked me lightly on the head, a hint of cheeky smile erupting on her since weighted cheeks. I cheesed back and rubbed my prefrontal cortex, watching inquisitively as the spark disappeared, quickly as it arrived, as Mia drew her hand back and began to fiddle with the frayed ankle of her jeans. She bit her bottom lip and her shoulders scrunched with uneasiness, green eyes flitting briefly to meet mine and then away again.

At that point I wiggled out of the deliciously blue beanbag she got for her thirteenth birthday last month and skipped over to the bed, wrapped two wiry arms around her hunched frame and rested my prefrontal cortex on her shoulder.

And now, we’re here.

Silence.

Mia is at her desk, a fuchsia pink number that we painted together when we were ten. After the fun we had that day, everything in a three-metre radius was fuchsia. Mia really got in trouble for that one. I can see her scribbling numbers in a book and wiping saliva off the end of the pencil that she’s furiously denting with her teeth. I think its maths. When I asked if she wanted help, her ears perked up but instead of responding she smacked her palm against her forehead and muttered something I couldn’t make out. She’s been doing that for the past eight seconds since I asked.

“Mia…”

She burrows her head in her hands, beginning to shudder. “Not now, Pip.” Her voice trickles painfully out from between her lips, and I don’t need to see her face to know that her eyes are spilling over too.

I shrink back. She’s been real withdrawn lately and I can’t help wondering if I’ve done something to upset her. With every dismissive hand gesture I can feel childhood memories cascading down my back like water, drifting off into the past to be left there. Why can’t we stay the way we’ve always been? If she would only let –

“Mia! You have a friend here to see you.” Mia’s mum’s cheery tone ricochets off the walls, up the stairs and into the hostile room we’re both residing in. The optimism in her voice beckons to Mia, resounding the words she’s said so many times throughout the months: “You need to make an effort, sweetheart. The psychologist said interaction is good for you.” It stung every time I heard it. Was I not good enough for her anymore? She’d always tell me everything, but now she’s wandering further and further away with every trip to the psychologist’s office.

Sure enough, TAP TAP TAP. Mia’s bedroom door bursts open after an intrusive knock and in barrels a girl clad head to toe in denim. Her eyes are sharp, barely resting upon me for a second but instantly cutting me in half with their glower.

Within seconds, Mia is up from her desk and talking to this other girl, tears wiped, hand on hip and hair flipped to hide the neck scar she got when we fell into a thorn bush at age nine.

I sit and watch. I wait for her to acknowledge me. To forget this Other Girl and be my best friend forever and ever until there’s no more planets to explore and we’ve eaten all the fairy bread. I wait for Mia to come back.

She doesn’t.

Am I transparent or something?

She flips her head back, exposing the sharp molars at the back of her mouth and gleefully cackling at whatever Other Girl just said. With every giggle that I’m no longer apart of I feel myself slipping away. Her sea-foam eyes momentarily flicker in my direction and the corners of her mouth wilt ever so slightly.

Did she see me?

Her eyes glaze involuntarily, missing contact with mine like a dart just inches away from the bullseye. I try to whisper, but it comes out just a puff of cold, stale air.

“Don’t forget me.”

My words wash over her like dust in a sand storm. Useless.

“Who’s this?” Other Girl points to a yellowed sheet of paper tacked on Mia’s wall and quirks an eyebrow when Mia clears her throat, cheeks an embarrassing shade of burgundy. “Oh, I drew that when I was like eight.”

It’s a picture of us, Mia and me. She’s wearing the yellow dress she outgrew at age ten, I’m wearing the pink jumpsuit that I never really changed out of. Scrawled in crayon and smudged to the borders, yet a symbol of long-lasting friendship and youthful memoirs. Other Girl studies it intently before reading the captioned words out loud, her voice tinged with the spice of mockery.

“Me and Pippa on the moon.” Mia’s head bobs up and down, throat too coarse to verbally respond.

I can feel myself fading. My arms. My hands. My legs. My head. My hair, bright pink and quaffed like an effervescent cloud of sugar. Mia loved fairy floss when she was seven.

“Who’s Pippa?” Other Girl’s tone pierces. I can hear Mia’s hesitance in the silence that follows before she squeaks a reply.

“She’s my friend.”

A hushed glimmer of hope, snuffed out immediately as Other Girl’s mouth curls sardonically.

“Is she… real?”

Anguish. I whimper in Mia’s direction, straining myself to make contact, to prove I’m still here. My heart shatters as Mia’s chin crumples like a ball of paper.

I’m real to you, Mia. That’s all that matters.

All the hours of bliss. The time wasting, the sleepless nights of chatting, the adventures. The childhood. And now she’s leaving it all behind, me with it.

“Please don’t go.” I croak, barely a wisp now as I reach out to her in desperation. Mia’s green eyes glimmer with tears toward mine, a sea of daydreams and sanctity for so many years, and for the briefest second our gazes lock. Click.

And then she gently tumbles back into reality. My hearing fades as only the sounds of Other Girl’s distant prattle succumb the obscurity as Mia slips further and further away.

Six years, eight months, twenty-one days; but she doesn’t need me anymore.

Silence.