The house was always quiet.
Not the peaceful kind of quiet, not the kind that makes you feel safe and easy, but something heavier,something lingering deep in shontae's chest. It was the kind of silence that made every small sound feel wrong, even breathing too loud could get him into trouble.
Shontae sat on the floor beside his bed with a book on his lap, his back rested against the bed . The dim light from his desk lamp cast a soft glow across the pages of the book, the only warmth in a cold room otherwise. His fingers tightened slightly around the edges he forced himself to focus on the words.
Reading books was the only thing that helped.
In books, people had choices. They could run, fight back or find something better waiting for them...they're free. Things change
In his life, they didn't.
So when he read whenever he could, losing himself in stories until the world around him faded into something distant and unimportant.
School wasn't much better, but at least it was different. The noise of students talking, laughing and moving throught the hallway. No one payed him much attention which was excatly how he liked it.
The library was the only place that didn't have noise.
It was quiet, but not in a suffocating way like his house was. Here the silence felt gentle, filled with the soft turning of pages and the occasional shuffle of movement. It was the kind of silence he could exist in.
He wandered between shelves, scanning familiar rows of books he had already read more than once . His hand moved absentmindedly along the spines until.
One book stood out .
It didn't match the others. Its cover was darker, like very dark, worn in a way that didn't look like age, but like it had been handled many times. There was no title, no author, just a faint symbol pressed into the surface.
Maybe he shouldn't have picked it up.
But then again who knows? Life works in mysterious ways.