Uncovering the Silence

Two weeks? They can't be serious. This must be some kind of practical joke. I can't survive two DAYS on my own, let alone two weeks. I always find excuses to talk to family and friends outside, keep myself talking. I can't stay stuck in my own head or else I start losing it. Keeping me here in an isolated, empty space for two weeks is just asking for something to go wrong.

How long can I go without breaking? How long can I keep myself calm for? It feels like I've been here for five days already and it's only been two. I have to survive twelve more days of fidgeting with whatever I have near me -- twirling my pencils in my hands or twiddling my thumbs. I keep singing to myself or listening to music, trying to tune out the fact that I'm isolated, but everything I think about leads me back to that unavoidable truth -- I'm stuck here. It's like being marooned on an island and seeing a ship sailing off in the distant horizon and desperately trying to wave it down with flailing arms. But they're too far away. They can't see you. Or hear you. To keep going would be a fool's errand, time wasted on a pointless task that could have been better spent strategizing for survival. After a while, you get so tired you have no choice but to give up, to surrender yourself to the most undesirable outcome possible... that you won't get out of this the same person, if you get out at all.

I recognize I can call my friends on the phone, but those who know me know I prefer being in close contact with people. I always avoid phone conversations if I can because the tinny affect on people's voices over the phone always drives me nuts. It's those smaller, quieter noises that for some reason get to me. It's not the classic nails on a chalkboard or screeching of a loud child that annoys me the most, it's the sounds that are so quiet they're essentially silence. Where white noise usually settles most people, it drives me insane. Soft music is absolutely fine, but the humming of a radiator or the ticking of a clock or actual, complete silence -- that's distressing beyond words to me.

It's with no pleasure that I find myself in a quiet rural hotel room in the middle of South Carolina desperately pleading to myself that sometime, cars will start to drive by or a harsh wind will start up or that something will happen that will allow me to think more clearly. As it stands, I'm fiddling on my phone, too unmotivated to write anything, too distracted to focus on studying, and too desperate to get out of my own head to just sit there and tap my fingers on the chair. My phone is the only thing keeping me zoned into the real world, and that's not exactly an encouraging statement. Someone had come by earlier to drop off lunch for me -- a double cheeseburger with a side of fries from a nearby fast food restaurant. I figure if I'm gonna be stuck on my own for two weeks, I might as well spoil myself with some cheap junk food at least once. As I chow down on my burger and browse through Instagram, a particular recommended photo catches my eye. I tap to enlarge the photo, wanting to make sure I'm not losing my mind from the isolation.

I'm not losing my mind. There he is. Derek Janton, classic high school jock if ever there was one, sitting in his car on a dark night. The picture was posted about an hour ago, meaning this was probably taken last night. Usually, I would imagine photos from his feed wouldn't get recommended to me. I mean, I'm not exactly a member of his social crowd and he's not exactly what I would call the warmest person I've ever met. This time, though, I guarantee you there's a reason this photo was recommended to me. I guarantee you it was recommended because of who was sitting next to him in the car. Susan Barrowfield. Her long, straight blonde hair shines in the reflection of the camera flash as she smiles with Derek.

Red flags start going off in my head. She told me that she wasn't going anywhere last night. She said she needed to stay home to take care of her little brother, Andy. And she certainly never gave me any hints that she was hanging out with Derek Janton, of all people. Now, of course, I'm not saying she needed to tell me every single person she's hung out with and describe what they did or any of that overprotective, overly jealous behavior. What I am saying, however, is that when your girlfriend is sitting alone in a car with the high school jock on a Friday night smiling with his arm around her when she said she would be staying home and she never gave any hints whatsoever that they ever interacted before... let's just say that triggers some warning bells.

I sit there staring for a minute or so, trying to comprehend what I'm looking at. Why did she change her plans last night? Why did they spend the night together? And where on Earth was that picture taken? After a few minutes of trying to piece everything together, I did the unthinkable. I picked up my phone... and I called her. Tinny affect aside, I couldn't handle having a serious conversation like this with dry, emotionless words on a screen. I needed to hear her voice.

The dial tone starts. After three tones, she picks up.

"Hey, baby! How's isolation going?"

"Not great, I'm sure you can imagine."

"Aww, I'm sorry, what's going on?"

"You said you weren't going anywhere last night, right?"

"Yeah, why?"

"Why were you with Derek Janton?"

There's a slight pause. "W... what?"

"I asked why were you --"

"I heard you the first time, but... Derek Janton?"

"I saw the picture of you two on Instagram."

A longer pause this time. "He posted that picture?"

"Yeah, he did."

"Oh, god."

"Why have you never talked about him? It's a little weird when your girlfriend hangs out with the most popular high school boy at night when they said they weren't going anywhere."

A pause.

"Well? Lay it on me."

I heard a heavy sigh on her end. "I'm sorry, Derek. I'm... I'm really sorry."

I could hear the worried tone in her voice. "Why are you saying it like that?"

"I just... I just think he's really cool, and it's not that I don't think you're cool, it's just... I don't think I really see you in... that way anymore."

"So Derek sweeps you off your feet and you don't tell me about it before you sneak off to God knows where in the middle of the night?"

"It wasn't like that, he just drove by my house and invited me to the high school parking lot with some friends."

"That didn't seem like the smile of someone talking to someone else for the first time."

"Okay, so we've talked at school a lot the past couple of weeks, I'm sorry, I wanted to talk to you about it."

"Clearly not enough to pull me aside before I discovered it for myself!!!"

"Look... I'm sorry. He wasn't supposed to post that picture. I wish you hadn't found out that way, but..."

"But I did."

"But you did."

Silence for a second. "I've got some studying to do." And I hung up.

Maybe I didn't handle it in the best way, either. Maybe I should have been calmer talking to her, and maybe I did act a little jealous. But clearly my instincts picked something up. The quarantine period was already lonely enough for me. Now, I felt even more isolated than before.