25 Feb Sockie

April 4th, 1991 was when I learned that listening too well can hurt you.

Sometimes they forgot I was there. I learned not to remind them. Our house looked normal from the street. Small yard. Cracked driveway. A tree that dropped its leaves early every year. The paint on the porch railings peeled in thin strips, as if it couldn’t hold on. Inside, everything felt close. Like the rooms kept air in their corners. Even with the windows open, the air didn’t move the way it should. Sounds stayed longer than they needed to.

When I walked through rooms, I learned how to walk like I wasn’t there. Not fast. Not loud. Not in anyone’s way. If you move like you belong, people notice. If you move like you don’t, people step around you. I noticed patterns before I noticed people. That was the first thing that felt like it belonged to me. I noticed which floorboard squeaked and which didn’t. I noticed the exact sound the kettle made right before it screamed. I noticed how long it took for the refrigerator light to turn off after you shut the door.

I noticed how long it took for my parents’ faces to turn away from me.

I learned to breathe quietly. Sometimes I practiced it on purpose. In through my nose. Out slower than I went in. Quiet enough that nobody could blame me for anything. Quiet enough that if someone got angry, it couldn’t be because I was making noise.

I wore the same shirt every day. Buttoned to the top. Tight sleeves. I slept in it too. Changing felt like it would start something. If I stayed the same, maybe nothing would pick me out. Routine felt like a shield. If the buttons stayed closed, maybe everything else would too.

Liz made lists on the fridge and rewrote them when nothing changed. Maggie drew houses with too many windows and people that were too small inside them. Dad walked through rooms without stopping, like slowing down would cost him something. Mom poured coffee and forgot where she put it, then poured another. Sometimes she stared at the counter while it cooled, like she was trying to remember what she came into the kitchen for.

Sometimes Mom would speak and stop in the middle of her sentence. Like she lost the thread. Like she forgot who she was talking to. Like she forgot there was a kid right there. Sometimes Dad would look past me when he talked. His eyes would land on the wall behind my head instead. It made me feel like I didn’t take up space the way other people did.

I tried to be easy to forget. It felt safer.

James noticed things. He noticed when adults stopped listening. He noticed when voices changed. He fixed small things when he could — loose handles, drawers that stuck, a cabinet door that wouldn’t close right. He taught me how to wait.

He also taught me how to breathe.

Not like a lesson. He never said my name when he did it. When the house got loud, he would stand near me and breathe out slowly, deep enough that I could hear it. He didn’t look at me. He just slowed himself down until I followed. If my chest moved too fast, he made his breathing slower. Longer. Like he was showing me where the air was supposed to go. I copied him without thinking. That was easier than asking.

Sometimes he did it in the kitchen when voices rose. Sometimes he did it in the hallway when a door slammed. Sometimes he did it in my room after lights-out, standing in the dark like a guard, breathing out slow until my body remembered it could stop shaking. James didn’t talk much either, but when he did, it mattered. Like he saved words and only spent them when he had to. Waiting meant staying quiet. Staying still. Not asking again. Waiting until someone remembered you were there. James said waiting was better than being wrong.

Sometimes I stood in doorways and watched people move around me. If I looked at someone long enough, I could see when they decided I didn’t matter. Their faces barely changed. Just a small shift. Like a door clicking shut. It happened fast. A glance. A pause. Then the decision.

At night, James sang our mom’s lullaby wrong on purpose. If he messed up, he started over. He stretched the notes. Left space between lines. He said it was a game, but it wasn’t for sleeping. It was for timing — inhale, exhale, slow enough to stay. I think he didn’t want me listening to the house. Or to our parents breathing in the dark like they were trying not to notice each other. Sometimes the breathing stopped for too long, and I counted until it came back. Counting was another thing that belonged to me. Numbers didn’t change their minds. Numbers didn’t pretend they didn’t see you.

Once, very quietly, James said, “You don’t have to hold it.” So I learned not to.

I prayed for him every night. Not because I believed it fixed things. Because doing the same thing every night felt steady. I said the words slowly so I wouldn’t miss any. Sometimes I prayed for myself, too. Not for big things. Just for a night that stayed quiet.

There was one afternoon where nothing went wrong. No slammed doors. No raised voices. Maggie showed me a drawing. Liz stayed at the table. Dad didn’t leave the room. James leaned against the couch and didn’t fix anything. The light through the window looked soft. Like it belonged to a different house. For a moment, it felt like the house was holding us. I remember thinking: Maybe this is what normal feels like. Maybe normal is just a day where nobody gets tired of you.

Then James left.

I heard the zipper before I saw him. He packed clothes and his notebook. He didn’t take Maggie’s bear. He left it sitting on her bed, facing the door. His shirt was buttoned wrong. He didn’t fix it. That scared me more than if he had. He said he was leaving. Said he’d find somewhere better. Said he’d send for us. He kissed Maggie’s forehead, waved at Liz, and rested his hand on my head for one second. His hand was warm. His fingers shook once, like he wanted to say something else. He opened his mouth, then closed it again.

Then he was gone.

I stood in the hallway long after the front door closed. Not because I was listening for him to come back. Because the house didn’t know what to do without him, and neither did I. The rooms felt too big. The quiet felt too close. After that, the air in the house felt sharper. Like you could bump into it.

Three weeks later, the police used careful words. The kind meant to end conversations. They said river road. They said tunnel. They said it was handled. I wasn’t allowed to ask questions. They said James was old enough to make choices. They said boys ran away. They said the tunnel was dangerous and that it wasn’t my business. They said it like a door being shut. After that, no one opened it again.

But I noticed the word they kept using. Tunnel. They said it like it was something you weren’t supposed to picture.

After that, everything felt louder. Not the volume. The pressure. Small noises that felt too sharp — chairs scraping, dishes clinking, people breathing too close. I learned to hold my breath when adults were talking, like my lungs were something I should hide. At school, rules changed after they were explained. I corrected them once. The teacher smiled like I was making trouble. When other kids yelled, adults stepped in. When I spoke, they told me to wait my turn.

So I did. I learned how to disappear without leaving.

If I didn’t look like I needed anything, people stopped seeing me. They stepped around me instead of over me. That’s how I learned the most dangerous thing you can do is look like you’ll manage. Because once people believe you’ll manage, they stop checking. They stop helping. They stop noticing the moment you start sinking.

They sent me to St. Mary’s Home for Boys. The place smelled like cleaner and old paper. The clocks didn’t match. The hallway lights buzzed constantly. Someone had scratched numbers into the floor tiles so hard they left grooves. I traced them with my eyes while I walked.

The first thing I learned there was that the building kept sound. Not like a person. Like a place that held everything you did. The second thing I learned was that adults there didn’t need to shout to make you do what they wanted.

Mrs. Kimber checked her watch before she spoke. “You’ll settle in,” she said. “You always do.” She said it like she’d already decided what I was, and that was that. Her hair was pinned tight. Her smile was tighter. She spoke in a voice that made everything sound reasonable, even when it wasn’t.

My bed was against the wall. The sheets were tucked too tight. The pillowcase smelled like bleach. I folded my clothes carefully. I didn’t want anyone to get angry about small things. I kept my shoes lined up. I kept my socks even. I kept my breathing small. If I did everything right, maybe nothing would happen.

On my first day, I found the library before I found the dining hall. It wasn’t a real library. Just shelves and old donated books and a smell like dust that didn’t move. But the rules in there didn’t change. You take a book. You bring it back. You put it where it belongs. I liked that. I liked puzzles too. I liked questions with answers. I liked knowing there was a way through something if you could think long enough.

The first night, I lay still and listened to everyone else sleeping. Some boys snored. Some talked in their sleep. One cried quietly, like he didn’t want anyone to hear him. I counted breaths until my chest hurt, then slowed them down the way James taught me. I stared at the ceiling until the darkness started to look like shapes. Then I heard it. Not the building. A person.

A soft step on the floor near my bed. A pause. A careful inhale. I didn’t open my eyes right away. I tried to pretend I was asleep, because I didn’t know what the right move was. The mattress dipped. Weight. A knee. Too close. A hand grabbed my shirt right under my collar and yanked, hard. My buttons strained. Fabric cut into my throat. I opened my eyes. There was a boy above me. Same age. Eight, like me. But built like he’d been shoved around longer. Some kids look older when they’ve been angry their whole life. His face was half in shadow, but I saw his mouth.

He wasn’t smiling.

He leaned in so close I could smell toothpaste and something sour underneath it. “Don’t make noise,” he whispered. I tried to breathe like James taught me. In. Out. But my chest jumped anyway because my body didn’t care about lessons when someone was sitting on you.

He shoved something against the side of my head — hard enough that white sparks flashed in my eyes. I didn’t know if it was his fist or the bedframe edge. I just knew pain hit fast. I made a sound. Small. Not a scream. Just a noise my throat made by accident.

He hit me again. This time, my ear rang. The world tilted. My pillow slipped. He grabbed my wrist and twisted, not enough to break it, just enough to make it clear he could.

“Stay still,” he said.

I stayed still. He pressed his palm over my mouth and pushed my face down into the pillow until my nose filled with fabric. I couldn’t get air. My lungs panicked and kicked against my ribs. I tried to count. One. Two. But the numbers broke apart. His weight shifted, and for a second, I thought he was leaving, but then he grabbed the side of my head and slammed it once into the wall.

Not enough to kill me. Enough to leave something behind.

Then he whispered, like he was giving me a rule. “You don’t get to be quiet here,” he said. “Quiet makes people look.”

And then he got off me, just like that. He stepped back. He looked around once, like checking if anyone had moved. He left without running. Like he wasn’t scared. Like this was normal to him. I lay there with my heart hammering and my mouth tasting like metal. In the dark, nobody moved. The boys kept breathing like normal. The building kept every sound anyway. I pressed my hand to the side of my head. It came away wet.

In the morning, I told Mrs. Kimber that something happened. I didn’t say the word attacked. I didn’t say the word boy. I said, “Someone was at my bed.” She looked at me like I was giving her extra work. “Nightmares,” she said. I shook my head. “I wasn’t asleep,” I said. Her smile tightened. “Boys get carried away,” she said, like it was nothing.

I told the nurse my head hurt. The nurse looked at my cheek and went quiet. She dabbed at my ear with gauze and didn’t ask me to repeat myself. Someone wrapped my head. Clean white bandages. The nurse asked, “Who did this?” I stared at the floor tiles. I counted scratches. I said, “I don’t know.” Because I didn’t. And because knowing would mean naming. And naming would mean people would expect me to keep talking.

Back in the dorm, my blanket was folded at the foot of the bed. I hadn’t done that. I didn’t tell anyone. There were things you didn’t say out loud if you wanted them to stay small.

After that, a group of boys started sitting near me. They weren’t quiet kids. They laughed. They argued. They made jokes. They dared each other to do stupid things. They talked like they owned the room. And they didn’t use real names. Everyone called them what they called each other. Gage. Redd. Dax. Cole. No one asked where the names came from.

Gage talked the most. Redd laughed the quickest. Dax watched where people stood, like he kept a map in his head. Cole asked questions like he already knew the answer. They joked with each other constantly.

“Bro, you can’t even spell that,” Redd said once, leaning over Dax’s paper.

“I can spell,” Dax said.

“You spelled it wrong,” Cole said, smiling.

Gage laughed like he liked the sound. “Let him be wrong. Makes him easier to beat.”

They all laughed, even Dax, like it was normal. Then they looked at me. Like they were deciding if I was part of it.

The boys called me Sockie. I hated that name. No adult commented. No adult smiled about it. The adults didn’t pay attention. Only Mrs. Kimber watched like she was waiting for me to mess up. At first, the nickname sounded like nothing. Like a word kids throw out and forget. But they didn’t forget. They used it like a signal.

“Sockie,” Gage said one day, like he was checking how it sounded. “Come here.”

I walked over. Gage didn’t touch me. He didn’t need to. He just pointed at a spot next to the table, like that was where I belonged.

“Stand there,” he said.

I stood there.

Redd snorted. “He actually did it.”

Cole looked at my face like he was studying it. “He’s really serious.”

Dax said, “Leave him alone,” but he didn’t sound sure.

Gage’s smile stayed on his face, but it wasn’t friendly. “We are leaving him alone.” They laughed at that.

The game didn’t have a name. At first, it looked harmless. Like something to pass time. One person walked ahead. One followed. You weren’t supposed to lose sight. If you did, it reset. They said it was teamwork. They didn’t hit me. They didn’t shove me. They didn’t grab me. They just used words and timing. They told me to stand still. They said it was part of the game. Or a test. Or just for a second. Sometimes they joked with each other while they set it up.

“Bet you can’t keep a straight face,” Redd told Dax.

“I’m not laughing,” Dax said.

“You always laugh,” Cole said.

Gage looked at me. “Sockie won’t laugh. He doesn’t do anything.” I didn’t know what to do with that.

Redd said the light was better there. Dax told me to move two steps. Cole told me to wait. Gage counted down even though nothing started. They laughed like it mattered. Sometimes their teasing was small.

“Why you standing like that?”

“Say something.”

“You’re blinking like a robot.”

“No, he doesn’t. He just stares.”

“Bro, he’s right behind you.”

They teased each other too, so it didn’t stand out at first. But it started to change. They started using me as the punchline more than each other. At lunch, they told me to sit in the wrong seat. When the real boy came back angry, they leaned back like it was funny.

“Sockie said it was fine,” they said.

I didn’t.

Adults said it was a misunderstanding. Misunderstanding became the word for everything. Some days, they made me carry things I hadn’t touched. A broken pencil. A torn page. A missing key. I’d find them in my pocket, like they’d always been there. It made me start checking my pockets all the time, like I didn’t trust my own hands. They didn’t need to touch me to make it worse. They just spoke like they owned the truth.

“Why you always doing weird stuff?”

“Stop acting like you don’t hear people.”

“You’re so quiet it’s creepy.”

“You’re not creepy,” Dax said once, quickly.

Redd looked at him. “You defending him?”

“I’m not defending him,” Dax said.

Gage laughed. “He doesn’t need defending. He’s fine.”

If I stayed quiet, they acted like I didn’t mind. If I spoke, they acted like I was making a big deal out of it. Gage was the one who watched my face the most. Sometimes he stared too long, like he wanted a reaction. Sometimes he acted like I wasn’t there at all, like he was proving something. Sometimes he said my name like he wanted to hear it again.

“Sockie.”

Like testing how it felt. Redd noticed once and smirked. “Why you always saying it like that?”

Gage’s smile snapped into place. “Saying what?”

“You know,” Redd said. “Like you like it.”

Cole’s eyes flicked between them like he was counting.

Dax said, “Shut up,” but not loudly.

Gage didn’t look away from me. “Go get your book,” he told me. I went.

The worst part wasn’t one moment. It was the pattern. And then Part 2 started without anyone saying it out loud. They stopped pulling me in. They started leaving me out. They’d talk and laugh, and when I stepped closer, the conversation would shift like a door closing.

“We already did that,” Redd would say.

“It’s not for you,” Cole would add, like it was simple.

Dax wouldn’t look at me. He’d just keep walking. Gage would look, though. Gage would look right at me, then look away first, like it made him mad that he noticed.

One night after lights-out, they told me to hide with them. They pointed at the lockers where the light didn’t reach.

“Go,” Gage said. “Right there.”

I went.

“Don’t move,” Cole said.

“Don’t breathe loud,” Redd added, and laughed like it was funny.

Dax muttered, “Hurry up,” like he wanted it over with.

Then they left. I stayed where they put me. I could hear whispering. Quiet laughing. Shoes moving away. I heard Gage counting under his breath like time was the point. I slowed my breathing and waited. I didn’t move until the hallway went silent. When I stepped out, the air felt colder. The lockers looked taller. The silence felt crowded.

After that, the rules got stranger. They told me to wait in places that didn’t feel meant for kids. Stairwells. Storage rooms. Ends of hallways where the air tasted old. They left me there. Sometimes I heard them whisper my name on the other side of a door. Sometimes I heard nothing. Sometimes I heard breathing that wasn’t mine. Those were the worst times. Because it felt like nobody would notice if I didn’t come back.

Mrs. Kimber said I needed to “socialize.” She said it like it was my job to fix it. When I told her the boys played games that made me feel wrong inside, she smiled the same tight smile.

“Boys will be boys,” she said. “You’re bright. You’ll figure it out.”

Bright. That was a word adults used when they didn’t want to help.

So I tried harder. I learned the shape of their jokes. I learned which laugh meant trouble and which meant nothing. I learned that when Cole asked a question softly, it meant he wanted an answer he could use later. I learned that when Redd laughed too quickly, it meant something had been set up. I learned that when Dax went quiet, it meant he didn’t want to be part of it but didn’t know how to stop it. I learned that when Gage got calm, it meant he’d made his mind up.

I learned so much. It didn’t save me.

One afternoon, Dax told me we were going somewhere else. “Just for a minute,” he said.

They took me farther than usual. Past the fence. Past where adults watched. Past where the building’s buzzing lights couldn’t follow. The sky looked too open. Like it didn’t care what happened down here.

They were quieter than normal.

Gage walked ahead and didn’t look back. Redd laughed once—sharp and quick—then stopped. Cole asked me if I always did what people told me. I said yes. They stopped walking. Gage turned around slowly, like he wanted to see my face when I said it.

“Say it again,” he said. “Louder.”

So I did. They smiled, but it wasn’t the same kind of smile. It was the kind of smile people have when they’ve been waiting for something to line up.

Dax told me to stand where the light didn’t reach. So I did. Redd looked at my shirt and laughed like he saw something funny. Cole asked me if I understood what a joke was. I nodded.

Gage stepped closer. For a second, he didn’t look like he was joking at all.

“Say you’ll wait,” he said.

So I did. Because waiting was what I was good at. Because saying no felt like guessing wrong. Because James had taught me that waiting was safer.

Redd tilted his head. “He really will.”

Dax laughed under his breath. Quick. Small. Cole walked a slow circle around me without touching me. “You don’t even argue.”

Gage’s jaw tightened like that annoyed him. Then he pointed ahead.

“Go on,” he said. “Wait there.”

That was when I saw the tunnel. It didn’t look huge. It looked ordinary. Like a place people drove through without thinking. The air near it felt used. They followed me to the edge. Gage stopped at the mouth of it and looked in like he was checking something.

“Just a little in,” he said. “Then wait.”

Redd leaned close enough that I could hear his voice clearly.

“Don’t leave,” he whispered, smiling.

I turned to look at them again. They were already stepping back. They told me to wait. They walked away together. They didn’t look back. That was when I understood that not only were they fake, but that the kindness had always been part of it. That the whole point was to get me here.

The tunnel held cold air like a mouth holds breath. I waited. I waited the way James taught me. At first, I could still hear them. Shoes on gravel. Low voices. A laugh that cut off too fast. Then the sound faded. And another sound took its place. Breathing. Not mine. Slow. Careful. Close enough to change the air.

I tried to breathe more quietly. The tunnel answered, as if it had heard me. I told myself I would count like I did at home.

One.

Two.

Three.

But the breathing behind me didn’t match my counting. It waited between breaths. Longer than a person should. My chest tightened. I tried to do it like James. In. Out slow. The breathing behind me copied me. Like it knew exactly what I was doing.

That’s when I ran. When no one came back, I tried to breathe. I ran. I slipped. I fell. Everything went white.

When I woke up, I was in a hospital bed. My head was wrapped in gauze again. My ribs were bandaged. Breathing hurt like my chest had been squeezed. The nurse kept looking at the bandages like she didn’t want to. She asked me who did it. I said I fell. She didn’t believe me, but she didn’t push. Like she knew pushing didn’t always help.

The nurse said the wound was strange. Clean. Like it didn’t happen by accident. She didn’t meet my eyes when she said it.

They sent me back. St. Mary’s looked the same when I returned — same buzzing lights, same cleaner smell, same clocks disagreeing. But the air felt different, like it knew.

The boys acted normally again. Gage asked me if I was okay in a voice that sounded careful. Redd smiled and said, “You’re back.” Cole asked if I wanted to sit with them. Dax opened the door as if nothing had happened. I didn’t answer.

Adults said I needed to make an effort. Mrs. Kimber told me to stop being dramatic. She told me to stop making stories. She told me to stop trying to get attention. But I didn’t want attention. I wanted someone to notice me quietly and then do something about it.

Nobody did.

The next night, my bed was empty. They said I wandered. They put up posters.

My name was wrong. They never found me.

Years later, Mrs. Kimber drove home late. She took the tunnel because it was faster. She didn’t like the tunnel. She had never liked it. She had heard stories — boys disappearing, drivers seeing things in mirrors. But stories were just stories. And she didn’t like being slowed down by anything.

Halfway through, she felt it. Breathing. Slow. Careful. Familiar. At first, she told herself it was her own breath. That tight feeling people get in tunnels. Then she realized her breathing was too fast. And the other breathing wasn’t. It was calm. It was patient. It sounded like someone who had practiced.

She told herself it was nothing. Then she checked the mirror. He was in the backseat. Bandaged. Quiet. Shirt buttoned wrong. Not looking at her. Breathing the way he had been taught.

Her hands tightened on the wheel. For a second, she didn’t scream. For a second, she did what she always did. She looked forward again like that would fix it. But the breathing stayed. Slow. Careful. Close. She whispered, “Who are you?” The boy didn’t answer. He didn’t move. He just breathed out, long and steady. And the air in the car changed. It felt thicker. Like the tunnel had followed her out.

Mrs. Kimber tried to tell herself she was imagining it. Then she heard it. A small sound behind her, similar to that of fabric shifting. Like someone sitting up straighter. Her eyes flicked to the mirror again. The bandage looked too clean. The face looked calm. The eyes looked older than they should. She swallowed hard.

“No,” she said, like a warning.

The breathing behind her stayed steady. Then, very quietly — so quietly it could have been the tunnel itself — she heard words. Not loud. Not angry. Practiced.

“You’ll settle in,” the voice said.

Mrs. Kimber’s stomach dropped. It was her own sentence. Her own voice. But it didn’t come from her mouth.

Her foot jerked on the pedal. The car sped up. The tunnel lights blurred. She couldn’t stop looking forward. Because she knew the moment she looked away, she’d look back again. And she knew what would happen if she did.

The breathing grew closer. Like someone sitting right behind you, close enough that the space changes. Her hands started to shake. She tried to scream. But her throat wouldn’t work right. The boy breathed out. Long. Slow. And the car kept moving. When she finally burst out of the tunnel into open air, she didn’t feel relief. Because the breathing didn’t stop.

She drove faster. Streetlights flashed. Her house came into view. She pulled into the driveway too hard, tires scraping. She sat there with the engine running, shaking, staring straight ahead. She didn’t check the mirror.

Minutes passed. The car filled with quiet. Then the breathing behind her moved again. A gentle inhale. A patient exhale.

Like someone waiting for her to remember he was there.

Like someone very good at it.

And she learned how long waiting can really last.