My Captain Learned My Silence

I haven't said a word in thirteen years.

Selective mutism, the doctors called it, a few weeks after the night I lost my parents. No one knows what happened that night; I’m the key witness, but I refused to say anything, even to my brother.

The words exist. I can feel them behind my teeth. But when someone looks at me and waits for my response, my throat closes, and nothing comes out.

I stopped fighting it a long time ago.

My name is Isadora Saint. I'm twenty, a junior at Highland University, and a ballet major. I'm very good at being overlooked.

I like it that way. Mostly.

My life is simple.

Classes in the morning. Rehearsal in the afternoon. Dinner with Jolie, my best friend and roommate, who talks enough for both of us. She learned sign language in a single weekend, just so I wouldn't have to type everything. She has never once made me feel like my silence was a problem.

At ten every night, my phone buzzes.

Love you, Iz. Lock your door.

That's my brother, Jace. He's two years older, the center for the Highland Hurricanes, and the only family I have left. After our parents died, he read me comic books through my bedroom door for months. He never asked me to talk. When I finally opened the door, he just scooted over to make room.

He has one rule for me. He said it the day I moved into the dorms.

Stay away from Aren Caedmon.

I didn't need the rule.

Aren is Jace's best friend, captain of the Hurricanes, a senior. When we were kids, he was always at our aunt's house, eating our cereal and falling asleep on the couch. He ruffled my hair once on his way past. He never asked why I didn't speak. He just said hey, kid, and kept walking.

I remember feeling grateful. I also remember feeling hurt. I never figured out how to separate the two.

Now he's number twenty-two.A popular boy in our school.

He's the laugh at the center of every table, the tall shape I can spot across a courtyard from two hundred feet away.

So I developed a habit.

If he walks into a room, I leave. If his team is in the library, I take the other stairs. At home games, I sit in the top row and leave before the final buzzer.

Once, I hid in a stairwell for ten minutes because I saw a dark head in a blue hoodie and my heart wouldn't calm down.

"You know he's not going to bite," Jolie said to me once.

I know.

"He's literally just a guy."

I know.

I knew something else too, and I didn't tell her.

I was almost sure Aren didn't know who I was.

Three years on the same campus, and he had never looked my way. Not a nod, not a smile, not even the careless hey, kid from when I was small.

To him, I was probably just a quiet girl with a ballet bag. Jace's little sister, if he remembered at all.

Avoiding him was easier than watching him not notice me.

That Thursday in October, I wasn't supposed to be out.

Jace had texted at six: Team dinner. Back by eleven. Don't go anywhere.

I sent a thumbs-up. Jolie raised an eyebrow. The thumbs-up had been too fast.

The studio got double-booked; I signed. They moved me to Summit Rink. Nine to midnight. It's empty.

Alone?

I'll be fine.

She tossed me her phone charger.

"Text me when you're back. Or I'm calling your brother."

I took my duffel bag, my pointe shoes, and a blue hoodie I'd grabbed off Jace's chair that morning. It smelled like his laundry soap. It hung to my knees. The back said HURRICANES in white letters, with a number underneath. I didn't check which one. Jace borrowed hoodies like other people borrowed pens.

Summit Rink was old and half-forgotten. At the end of a side corridor, there was a tiny practice studio with a wall of mirrors and a barre. Through the thin wall, I could hear the Zamboni on the ice.

I laced my pointe shoes. I pulled on my leg warmers. I pressed play.

For the first time all week, I forgot everything.

I danced until my feet ached and my hair fell loose and the sweatshirt clung to my back. When the music ended, I stood in the middle of the floor with my arms still raised, breathing hard, and looked up at the mirror.

Someone was standing in the doorway behind me.

Tall. Dark hair, still damp from the ice. A blue warm-up jacket, a hockey bag on one shoulder. He wasn't smiling. He just looked at me with such curiosity that make my legs go weak.

But when I recognize the tall figure.

My whole body went cold.

Aren Caedmon.

We both didn’t move. He just stood there watching me.

Then, very softly, in a voice that I didn’t recognize at all, he said the one thing I never expected.

"Isadora."