Student Spotlight

The weight of Silence

They say silence can protect you. But they never tell you how heavy it becomes — how it fills every corner of your chest until breathing feels like a confession. I used to think that if I stayed quiet, the walls would stop shaking. That if I hid my drawings deep enough, the truth would remain buried with them. But the truth doesn’t stay buried — it bleeds through the paper.

The first time I drew the shadows, I didn’t mean to. My pencil just moved, carving lines that looked too much like fear. My father’s temper had been rising ever since he lost his job — sharp words, slammed doors, the smell of stale beer hanging in the air like smoke that never clears. Sometimes, even footsteps made my shoulders tense before I could think. Mum’s sleeves got longer. Finn stopped laughing. I stopped talking. My sketchbook became the only place I could speak without being heard. Each page was a secret language — cracked windows, broken glass, eyes that never looked up. I told myself it was art, but really it was evidence.

My teacher, Ms Rhodes, found one of the drawings that slipped from my bag; she didn’t ask what it meant. 

She asked, “Who are you protecting, Elias?” I remember freezing, every muscle stiff. Protecting? That word felt like both accusation and rescue.

That night, I shoved my sketchbook under my mattress. Dad was in one of his moods again — the kind where silence was safer than breath. Finn was sitting beside me, tracing the lines of a drawing I’d done of the two of us under sunlight.

“It doesn’t look real,” he said softly.

“I know,” I whispered. “That’s why I drew it.”

Days blurred. My father’s anger became rhythmic — unpredictable but familiar, my pulse thudding life fists against a locked door. Every time he shouted, I flinched before the sound even reached me. My guilt was the echo that followed it. 

When Ms Rhodes asked me to stay after class one day, I almost ran. But something stopped me. Maybe it was her voice, the kind that made you feel seen even when you wanted to disappear.

“Elias, I think your drawings are trying to say something you can’t.”

So I gave her one. Just one. The one with the shattered window and the boy hiding behind it. I told myself it didn’t mean anything — that it was just lines and ink. It wasn’t.

Two nights later, I heard Dad yelling downstairs, ‘Elias!’—my name, loud, shaking, tearing through the house. When I saw the drawing crushed in his fist — my body froze — my throat closed — my chest thudded like the house itself might break.

“You think you can humiliate me?” he roared. 

Before I could answer, he lunged. His shadow broke over me — the smell of beer, the slam of footsteps, the air slicing apart. 

Finn jumped between us.

The world cracked like glass. 

Time slowed. The sound came after— a sharp crack, then a heavy, final thud. The world tilted. Glass rattled. My stomach dropped as if my body had fallen through the floor. I heard my brother hit the ground. The sound — that dull, final thud — was the one my conscience still makes.

The sirens echoed — red and blue bleeding across the walls. I couldn’t stop shaking. My words came out in fragments, like ripped paper. “It’s… my fault… I showed her…”

“Mm…ss… Rh…odes.”

 “No, Elias. It’s not your fault. It’s his.” Her voice — steady, firm. 

Dad was taken away. Mum’s hand trembled as she held Finn’s in the ambulance, whispering over and over, “He’s breathing…he’s breathing…”

And I sat on the curb, my sketchbook beside me. Torn. Empty. But… free.

Then came the quiet. Weeks passed. The house felt quieter, but not in a safe way — more like an aftershock. Every sound reminded me of what the silence had cost. Even the hum of the fridge felt too loud, like it was daring us to speak. Sometimes I’d catch myself holding my breath, waiting for a shout that never came.

Then, I started drawing again — a new sketchbook. Not the shadows this time. Just light — fractured, hesitant, pushing through the cracks. Ms Rhodes called it “healing.” I called it “trying.”

One afternoon, she asked if I’d ever want to share my drawings — to help other kids who might be living the same silence. I wanted to say yes, but fear still lived in my ribs. So instead, I nodded once, the movement small but certain and said, “Maybe one day.” 

She smiled. “One day starts small, Elias. Sometimes with just one line.”

That night, I opened my “the sketchbook” again — its pages creased and scarred, smelling faintly of smoke and dust. I redrew everything. The window. The boy. The brokenness. But this time, I added something new: a beam of light falling across the boy’s face. It wasn’t perfect, but neither was I. 

And then — a sound. The door creaked open.

 “Hey, Eli.” 

I turned. My breath caught. Finn — pale, bandaged, but standing — leaned against the doorframe. 

“You still draw too much,” he said, his smile crooked.

 I laughed, for the first time in months. “Someone has to.” He sat beside me, tracing the light in the drawing with his finger. “You know,” he said quietly,” I remember when you used to draw us as superheroes.” 

“I stopped,” I replied. He looked at me, his eyes glinting with something I couldn’t name. “Maybe you shouldn’t have.” I smiled — but then I saw it. On the corner of the page, faintly pressed beneath my new lines, a different hand’s writing. Rough, jagged, unmistakable.

A note. “I kept the rest.”

The letters were my father’s. The world shrank to that sentence. My pulse stumbled. My sketchbook — my secrets — hadn’t all been destroyed. He still had them. In a heartbeat, I realised: silence wasn’t gone. It was crouching…waiting.

My hands shook around the sketchbook as Finn kept tracing the light on the page, unaware of the ghost crawling through those words.

“I kept the rest.”

It didn’t feel like a threat. It felt like a promise — a reminder that some shadows don’t die; they hide monsters. My heartbeat became a metronome of dread.

That night I couldn’t sleep. Every creak in the house sounded like him — the wind whispering through the eaves like a voice I’d buried. I told myself he was gone, but the truth whispered back: he’ll never really leave, not when his voice still lives inside my head.

I opened my sketchbook again, staring at the page until my eyes burned. Then, slowly, I began to draw — not him, but me. Older. Standing in front of a door, light spilling from the cracks. 

Because maybe healing isn’t about forgetting the darkness. Maybe, it’s about learning to face it — and draw it back into the light.  The pencil trembled, but it didn’t stop. The light stayed on the page. Maybe every mark I make is a word I never got to say — and every line, a promise that silence doesn’t win.

And somewhere, deep down, I hoped he was watching. 

Because this time, my silence had teeth. 

written by Nathan R - Year 9B