I knew her as much as I knew she was mute. I knew the color of her hair; a silky blonde, almost the color of white sand and foamy beach waves. She rarely wore it down but rather, in a messy bun as if she hated early morning and blaring alarm clocks. I knew the color of her eyes; a pale shade of forest green, like the arms of pine trees and like tiny tadpoles creating ripples in their murky waters.  In the brightness of the sunbeams, they'd glow with a luminous shade, as if somehow they were smiling even when she wasn't. I knew the shape of her lips; pinched into a thin, careless, line, a shade of light pink and smooth. I knew she couldn't utter a word from those goldilocks lips of hers to giggle at our jokes and whisper about the cute boys and tell tall tales. I knew she wanted to, by the way her nose twitched three times in a row, and the way she'd stand not too close but not too far, just enough to listen to the stories and daily gossip. I knew she was the new girl who happened to belong, partly, in our clique, and the girl who moved in next door halfway through the semester with scores above average and winning a spot as the teachers pet. I knew she was a simple girl, like us, but without a voice we wished we could hear.

But what I didn't know was that she moved in search of a new beginning, someplace to escape the terrors that frightened her to silence. I didn't know she screamed in her dreams every night, the unseen ropes wrapped around her wrists and secured her into a distressed sleep and refused to let her wake up for what seemed like eternity. I didn't know her tears stained her cheeks and ran down her hands and soaked the paper she'd scribble endless empty words, ones she wasn't able to say aloud. I didn't know she rolled in her bedsheets with her eyes shut tight, silently begging the memories to leave her alone for one day, ones that consumed her mind every second of the day. I didn't know it took every ounce of strength for her to hold back the pain, so that the smiles we saw and brightly lit orbs, were nothing but coverups for the real image of horror. I didn't know watching us brought back nostalgic feelings of the old into her heart, flaming in her chest of hollow dark pits, ones that were dug by the carefully structured bug called loneliness. I didn't know she clung onto thin air in fear of stumbling backwards and revealing pieces of herself like seeds for the sparrows from the palm of her hand. I didn't know she'd touch the corners of her lips as if to make sure her voice hadn't escaped from it's prison cell.

In truth, I didn't know the mute girl. I only knew the hard shell on the outside. And maybe we should've tried harder, tried to listen to the story she was telling us all this time. Maybe then, we wouldn't have missed it.

story dedicated to the people of society