The Silent Cynic Chronicles, Story 3 : Dear Diary
Dear diary,
That tour at Middelton College turned out stranger than I thought it would.
I was already in a bad mood when we reached Middelton, because Helen spent the whole trip explaining that she feared I wouldn't be able to have a normal college life as long as I refuse to talk. She told I was ruining my life again. I'm amazed she isn't tired of saying that by now. She would save some saliva by just recording her everlasting speech and playing it ad infinitum. You have to praise her patience, though. Mine is getting thin.
Ruining my life, seriously ? As if life in general wasn't pretty much ruined from the start ! Does she believe herself in what she is saying ? Probably not. People lie when they are talking, after all. That's why they invented language in the first place.
Dad was busy driving and, I guess, very happy to have an excuse not to get involved in the – rather one-sided – conversation. The little idiot tried to take my defense by saying she would be there to support and help me, which of course doesn't make any sense, as she isn't in the same grade as me. Helen easily pointed that out. Besides, I would be tremendously surprised if she even managed to get into college. Any college.
She seems to think that college life is all about frat parties, anyway.
At Middleton College, we were separated. Dad and Helen wandered around to reminisce over their old days. The idiot and I were shown the place by our tour guide : a student named Heather who wasn't the brightest crayon in the box either.
She isn't smart enough to write her own papers, so she buys them from others. She told it was a "collaboration", because she got to say how long it should be and when it was due. Worse : she wasn't able to reread to see if it was any good. But this gave me an idea : I could easily write papers, or fix botched attempts at writing them, or give tips for writing them – for a price.
Sadly, that's where I needed the idiot. It isn't very easy to start a business when you won't talk to make your own advertisement. I got her to do that for me. I must admit that, since the incident at Brittany's party, she has been relatively serious about her promise to stay by my side and help me. That shouldn't last for long. With the idiot being really talented for sweet talking dumb guys and wrapping them around her finger, I quickly got plenty of customers and I made some money.
However, I was annoyed with some dumbass who, hearing the idiot explain that I was "a brain" and "very clever when it's about writing papers and stuff" altough I don't talk, asked if I was "some sort of highly gifted retard like in that Rain Man movie". Of course, the idiot hadn't seen the movie, so she didn't know what to answer.
Later, when I wrote in my notepad that this was a movie with Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise, she wanted to see it, because Tom Cruise is "so cute", of course. So she rented the movie – I gave her a few bucks to reward her for her help, by the way – and she had the silly idea that we should watch it together.
I had the sillier idea to accept.
So we did. The idiot was moved to tears. As for me, the movie made me very uncomfortable. I hadn't seen it in years and it hit a little to close to home. I am a little like Dustin Hoffman, am I not ? Of course, there are great disparities between our conditions, but it's true : I'm not autonomous. Not talking is a real drawback. Helen thinks I'm not aware of that, but I am. Painfully so. There are times when I truly need the idiot's help. Worse still : at times, the dynamic between us isn't completely unlike the one between Hoffman and Cruise in the movie.
I wrote "Am I a burden to you ?" on a note for her, but I couldn't bring myself to give it to her. I took it in my room and ripped it in tiny little pieces that I threw in the trash can.
Maybe I am a burden to her. But I can't bring it to her attention, because she would desert me. And I can't allow myself to think like that, either. She is the one who did that to me. She started it. She is responsible of my condition. She is the one at fault there. I don't have to be embarrassed or grateful when she helps me, because she has to. She owes me that much.
I can't let anything convince my otherwise, because if I did…
I don't want to even think about it.
Goodnight, dear diary.
TBC
