What the Silence Felt Like

By morning they both knew something was wrong.

Rowan came to her door and opened it and stood there and opened his mouth and nothing came out. Not a sound. He looked at her with an expression that started as confused and moved quickly through alarmed and arrived at something that was not quite scared but was close to it.

Asha tried to say sorry. The word formed perfectly in her head and arrived at her mouth and then simply did not happen. She could speak to her mother at breakfast. She could speak to the postman. She could speak to the woman at the corner shop. She had tested all of these things carefully during the morning.

She could not say a single word to Rowan.

He could not say a single word to her.

They sat across the breakfast table and their mother talked about the day and neither of them said much, which their mother put down to the argument the night before and gave them both meaningful looks that they did their best to return normally.

After breakfast Rowan followed Asha to her room. She showed him the book. She pointed to page fourteen and he read it, his lips pressed together, his eyes going through the same process of understanding hers had.

He looked at her when he had finished reading.

She spread her hands in a gesture that meant I know, I know, I am sorry, I did not mean to.

He looked back at the page. He pointed to the condition. Both must wish to break the silence at the same time.

She nodded. She had been thinking about that all morning. The problem was obvious. She wanted to break the silence. She was almost certain Rowan wanted to break the silence. But how were they supposed to show that they both wanted to at the same time when they could not speak to each other?

Rowan picked up one of his own pencils from her desk, one of the blunt ones, and wrote on the back of an old envelope.

He wrote: We both have to want it at the same moment. How do we know when?

Asha took the pencil and wrote back: I think we have to find whoever owned this book. They might know more than it says.

Rowan looked at what she had written. Then he nodded slowly.

Then he wrote: I am sorry about the pencils.

Asha looked at those five words for a long moment. She took the pencil.

She wrote: I am sorry I said what I said. I did not mean it.

Rowan read it. He gave her a small nod that meant I know. She gave him one back that meant the same.

It was not the same as saying it. But it was something.

She closed the book and put it under her arm and knocked on Rowan's door. He opened it immediately, which meant he had been standing on the other side of it already, waiting. She held up the book and he looked at it and nodded. She pointed down the hall and he nodded again. They went downstairs and got their shoes on in silence and went out into the street and neither of them needed to say where they were going because they both already knew.

They went to find out who the book had belonged to.