Novel & Cerita Silent Reading

Silence is not an absence for me; it is a texture. It is the rhythmic thrum of the refrigerator against the floorboards, the sharp vibration of a slammed car door echoing through my heels, and the pressurized stillness of a house at midnight. I have been deaf since birth, navigating a world of visual cues and tactile feedback. I don’t know what a voice sounds like, but I know what fear feels like—it is a cold, static hum in the center of my chest.

Guarding. Waiting. In silence.

I whisper in silence. ..... ……….. …………… ………… ………. ………… …………. …………….. …………. ……….. … ……….

Leaving only one thing in its place. Silence.

Everyone quietened down. The silence was deafening.

Aria Vale had learned, over the years, that silence was not the same as emptiness. People who had never lost their hearing always assumed the two were related. They were not. Silence had texture. It had dimensions that shifted depending on the hour, the season, the quality of light coming through a window. On certain mornings, when the city outside her apartment moved in that slow, amber way of early autumn, silence felt almost like a companion — familiar, unhurried, asking nothing of her.

The tapping of his pen on his calculator was music to my ears. The siren suddenly went on as everyone got up and rushed out to break without waiting for Mr. Winter to dismiss them. Crazy enough Sorrow remained seated as I watched him while I slowly took out my lunch box from my bag. “Tell your classmates to write page six and eight” Mr. Winter said looking at Sorrow. “Yes Sir” replied Sorrow. “Now you can go to break” Mr. Winter said walking out. “Siren!” yelled Apple standing near the window. “Are you taking out an army or a lunchbox in there?”

The quality of quiet that meant someone was sitting with what they had just heard and finding it accurate in a way that was doing something for them. Grace waited. She did not add to it. The answer was the answer and adding to it would reduce it. The pause went on for long enough that she became aware of the particular quality of Rachel’s silence — the way Rachel processed things she needed to process, which was completely, without shortcuts, giving the thing the full weight of her attention before she moved on from it. She had watched Rachel do this in rooms across eleven years. She had learned from watching it. She was watching it now through a phone line on a Thursday evening with the kit

Another way to show me that my life was entirely in his hands? "Stop," he whispered. I stood still, my chest heaving. The silence of the garden seemed to stretch, taut and expectant. "On the count of three," Silas said, his breath fanning across my cheek. "One. Two. Three." He snapped his hands away. The sudden influx of light made me squint, my eyes watering as they struggled to adjust. But as the blurry shapes began to sharpen, a deafening roar of voices shattered the morning quiet.

Complete silence for what feels like an eternity. “…what?”