Page 19 of The Silence Between

“The apartment manager is threatening eviction. I've picked up extra shifts at the diner, but it's not enough.” He ran a hand through his hair, a rare gesture of open frustration. “I should be focusing on college applications, but instead I'm trying to figure out how to keep a roof over my siblings' heads.”

The unfairness of it all hit me like a physical blow. Leo, brilliant and hardworking, shouldering burdens no eighteen-year-old should have to carry while I worried about which prestigious university to attend.

“What can I do?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Nothing. I shouldn't have dumped this on you. I just needed to tell someone who...” He trailed off, looking away.

“Who what?”

“Who wouldn't judge. Who might understand, even a little.” He sighed. “I'm sorry.”

“Don't be,” I said, more forcefully than intended. I stopped walking and turned to face him. “Don't you get it yet? I care about everything that happens to you.”

The declaration hung between us, more revealing than I'd intended.

Leo stared at me, the orchard silent around us except for occasional apples falling to the ground with soft thuds. “Why?” he asked simply.

The question carried the weight of everything between us—East Riverton and West Riverton, family expectations and family responsibilities, privileges and struggles neither of us had chosen.

Rather than answering with words, I stepped forward and kissed him. The gesture was both terrifying and inevitable, like stepping off a cliff after standing at the edge for too long.

For a heartbeat, Leo remained frozen, and I thought I'd made a catastrophic mistake. Then his hands came up to frame my face, and he was kissing me back with an intensity that answered questions I hadn't even known to ask.

When we finally separated, breathless in the cold air, Leo's expression held wonder and conflict in equal measure.

“I didn't think...” he began, voice rough.

“Me neither,” I finished.

We found ourselves sitting beneath an apple tree, backs against its trunk, fingers interlaced as if afraid to lose contact. Above us, branches heavy with fruit creaked in the breeze.

“Whatever happens with your family,” I said, squeezing his hand, “you're not alone anymore.”

I meant it as comfort, as promise. I couldn't know then how soon that promise would be tested.

* * *

November turnedthe world gray and bare, trees shedding their leaves like abandoned hopes. I moved through school hallways with careful neutrality, hyper-aware of maintaining appearances while my internal landscape had transformed completely.

Leo and I had developed an elaborate choreography. Friends to the outside world, something much more in private moments. The secrecy added its own intensity, every glance across a classroom carrying coded meaning, every “accidental” brush of hands in the debate room electrifying.

At my locker between classes, I organized my textbooks while my mind replayed the previous evening: Leo's laugh as we studied on his apartment floor after the younger kids went to bed, the way his eyes darkened when Mari took Sophie to the bathroom and we were briefly alone, the warmth of his lips against mine in the stolen moment before they returned.

Leo passed in the hallway with a group of East Riverton students, our eyes meeting briefly—a private communication in a crowded space that sent my heart racing. No one noticed. No one knew.

The duplicity should have bothered me more than it did. Instead, it felt like the first authentic choice I'd ever made—something neither planned nor prescribed, something entirely my own.

That evening at home, I pushed food around my plate as my parents discussed my future as if it were already written.

“Richard says the alumni interview is mostly formality,” my father said, cutting his steak with surgical focus. “Princeton values legacy applications, but it still helps to make a good impression.”

My mother nodded. “Oh, that reminds me. Margaret's daughter—you remember, from the club?—she'll be at Princeton next year too. Pre-med, I believe. Lovely girl.”

The implication hung in the air. I studied my parents' expressions—the easy certainty in their eyes, the way they discussed my life as if its course were inevitable. Would they look at me the same way if they knew about Leo? If they knew their son was falling in love with a boy from the wrong side of town who worked night shifts and raised his siblings and kissed like drowning men breathe?

Later that night, I slipped out my bedroom window, navigating the familiar route to our bridge. Leo waited in our usual spot, a dark silhouette against the star-scattered sky.

“Hey,” he said softly as I sat beside him. His hand found mine immediately, our fingers intertwining with practiced ease.

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