There’s always that moment where everything seems okay. Where it’s late afternoon and orange light spills through the curtains, surrounding the pages of your book and the touching the tips of your fingers. Where everything seems fine, and you’re lying on a couch reading your favorite part, trying to ignore why he asked her to come into his room. Why he locked the door after he closed it.

But everything is fine, and you sit on your couch with your feet tucked up on one side, just like your uncle tells you not to. He’s not here though, so you keep them where they are. In the story, the girl looks out the window. She talks to herself about herself, how lonely everything is, and how she wishes she had someone to talk to so it wouldn’t be so awfully quiet all the time.

You stop turning the pages of your book and listen. Look towards the locked room.

Quiet.

Like when you think you’ve missed a question on a quiz or when you’ve forgotten your special colored pencils for art class.

You turn back to page ninety-three because you’re in the middle of your favorite part where the boy and the girl fall in love, because you don’t know what to do. The clock on the wall opposite from where you’re sitting says it’s 5:43. Your older brother told you to stay here with your little sister and cousin, that he’d be back by six.

It’ll only be quiet for seventeen more minutes, you tell yourself. And then he’ll come and take you away from the quiet that has lasted for longer than fifteen.

You decide to move into the bedroom across the hall and flick on the television with the volume on high, even though it makes you lose your place and you don’t know whether the boy married the girl on a boat or in a castle, or if they even got married in the first place. But you keep the volume up because if someone were to look from the outside, it would seem like you’re alone in the house even if you know you aren’t. They haven’t come out yet. The only sound is the television blaring, and you take the remote and switch it back and forth between channels because that seems easier than trying to concentrate on the stupid girl in your book with the stupid boy and the stupid story.

Click. A face selling shampoo that promises 60% more volume than some other brand.

Click. A team of some designers renovating some house.

Click. You look up from the television to the window of the room and miss what product they’re trying to sell, or the practiced look of surprise on the faces of people who’ve just had their living rooms repainted. The orange sky glows red, and purple streaks through it like someone tore it open with a sharp pair of scissors and let it leak out in every direction. You crane your head to look past the glare of the clock. Seven.

Click. A key turning the lock to the apartment.  

You running outside to greet your older brother, relieved.

His asking you where she is. You pointing to the locked room. His face darkening like the colors of the sky at seven, and you know you’ve done something wrong but you don’t know what it is. Or maybe that’s what you want to believe, so you don’t have to say something pathetic later like you were uncomfortable, or you just didn’t pay attention.

He gives you that ruined look, asks you why you weren’t inside the room with her. Like there are rules you should have known, only no one wrote them down for you or taught you how to protect yourself, much less anyone else. He says to wait outside, his voice lowering and his eyes narrowing. Hand shaking where he’s gripping your arm too tight. Maybe it’s you.

And you run to the doorway to put on your shoes so fast you forget your book inside, but all you want to do is be away from a too-loud television and orange light and the room in that apartment.

You’ve done something wrong.

And you know what.

But you don’t even get to think about it because your older brother pushes open the door almost as soon as you were told to go outside, takes hold of your wrist, and pulls you down the hall with your sister until you reach the elevator. He punches the down button with his thumb and doesn’t even ask you if you want to press it like he usually does, doesn’t make sound effects as the numbers get bigger until they reach the floor you’re on. Doesn’t pull funny, exaggerated faces at you to make you smile, even though that’s what he always does when you look and feel like your world is ending.

It’s just quiet, and the beeping of the elevator announcing its arrival seems too loud. You step in, and the harsh lighting turns the skin of your palms the color of chalk. You stare at the metal railing attached to its walls and see the distorted reflection of the three of you. You look away because you don’t want to see, because he’s breathing like there’s something stuck in his throat which makes it catch in places that don’t line up with this superhuman image you’ve created for him in your head.

He carries your five-year-old sister in his arms like she’s a baby again. You don’t look at either of them.

You don’t think you’ll ever be able to.