"Where were you the other night?" his father asked. Hugo's eyes met the floor, desperate not to see the judgmental look on his father's face.

"With a friend," he signed, his hands moving slowly.

There was a beat of uncomfortable silence. He didn't want to know what his father was thinking. It usually wasn't anything good. "I didn't know you had a friend," he said. His voice was so calm, not happy or angry, just calm.

"I met her last week."

"Did you talk to her?" Hugo shook his head and his father let out a loud sigh. "I was hoping that when you finally made some friends again, you'd be able to speak. Or are you lying to me?"

Now, Hugo looked up at his father, his mouth open wide with shock. "Why would I lie?" he asked, scrunching up his face. Talking was so much harder for him that his father believed. It was like there was something in his throat blocking the words from ever escaping, no matter how hard he tried or how much he wanted to.

His father sighed again. "I don't know, kiddo. Ever since... Everything, you've just been weird," he muttered. If by weird he meant, completely traumatised, then sure. But Hugo said none of that, it would only cause an argument he was not in the mood to get into.

It wasn't Hugo's fault that he couldn't speak, it was just something that happened. He didn't choose it. He'd been told that it was his body's reaction to what he'd seen, to what had happened to him. It wasn't too bad, all things considered. He didn't want to speak that much anyway. People scared him too much, even Renee sometimes.

There were moments where he was sure he would say the wrong thing to her and she wouldn't want to be his friend anymore. Every time he said something and she only muttered in response or didn't reply at all, he was sure he had offended her. He'd think about it over and over again on the train to work or home until he was sure she wouldn't talk to him the next morning.

"I'm going out with her again next week," he told his father. Michael Garland barely spared him a glance and pushed a plate of steaming food towards him. "And no, I won't talk to her. She understands sign language."

"Aren't you lucky?" his father said, staring at his plate of food. "What's her name?"

"Renee."

"Is she nice?"

Hugo nodded. "Very," he signed. Nicer than he had ever expected. She'd dropped him home the night before and offered him a ride to school the next day. He'd politely declined, of course, he didn't want to be a bother to her. He wanted to take it back that morning when he got on the packed train but there was nothing he could do about it.

Hugo picked at his dinner and drummed his fingers against the dining table. "I'm glad," his father said eventually. "It had taken a while but I am glad you're making friends again." He was too, for the most part. It still scared him, would probably always scare him, but it was better than the crushing loneliness he'd been feeling for the last five years.

After high school and everything with his mother, he didn't leave the house. His gap year turned into two years, then three years and so on. He did online courses that would help him get a job, but he never actually used them until his laptop broke and he went to see Robert.

Robert had been his mother's best friend since they were children. He'd been so happy to see Hugo that day that he'd offered for him to have dinner out the back. Hugo unloaded all of his problems that night and Robert hadn't missed a beat before offering him a job. He'd seen Hugo tinkering with his laptop and phone regularly.

His father, while happy he'd finally gotten a job, was disappointed that it wasn't something completely new. Hugo knew that he couldn't start something he'd never done before, it would only freak him out. There was so much he couldn't do now that he couldn't talk. Customer service was one of those many things, despite how much his father pushed it.

"Do it for your mother," his father would say when he shoved course information packets or job openings at him. "Your mother would want you to do something with your life." Five years he'd listened to it and after so long, he got sick of it. Anything to shut him up for five minutes, but it didn't seem to be working. Even with a job and a university course, his father wasn't pleased.

His father wouldn't be pleased until his mother was back with them, which would never happen. Alicia Garland was dead and had been for five years. No matter how much either of them wanted it, there was no bringing her back. People changed after they lost someone, Hugo went mute, and his father grew expectant. His father wanted to live vicariously through him, and Hugo wouldn't allow it.

His mother's death wasn't the only thing that had caused him to go silent, but it was the gigantic cherry on top of the already huge cake. He'd had a large group of friends back in high school, his best friends he'd thought at the time. His mother always told him that the friends he made in high school would stick with him for life, but that was a lie.

Towards the end of their second last year of school, Hugo got into an argument with one of the other boys in the group. He couldn't remember what it was about now, it'd been so long. The rest of the group picked the other boy's side, as was expected. He'd apologised profusely, saying he was stressed and dealing with things at home. It was a lie but also wasn't at the same time. He'd been trying to figure out how to tell everyone that he was gay.

But his so-called friends hadn't listened. They yelled at him, called him awful names and shunned him when he did finally get the courage to tell them he was gay. They left him completely alone over a tiny argument that in retrospect meant absolutely nothing. They spread rumours about him, using the fact that he was gay to their advantage.

No one at school wanted to talk to him except to call him names. The teachers stared at him like he was something awful they'd accidentally stepped on. He'd thought that things like that only happened in movies, but he was wrong. He stopped caring about his classes. He passed his tests but barely. He didn't pass his exams all that well and didn't get the score he needed for university. He stopped caring.

It meant that either way he would have had to wait to go to uni. Most universities accepted applicants older than twenty-one without needing a score, but his father had asked for a TAFE course at least. When he got to twenty-three and still wasn't enrolled, he figured that was a better time than any.

He'd started out not wanting to make any friends, not wanting a repeat of what had happened to him in high school. But Renee had sort of forced herself upon him, not that he'd given it much of a fight. He didn't realise until after he met her just how much he needed a friend. She knew nothing about him, but that didn't seem to matter.

He never did see his high school friends again. They all graduated and disappeared off the face of the planet. After Hugo's mother died, his father moved them to another town, not too far from where they used to live, but far enough that he never ran into the people who'd abandoned him.

As he'd expected, they'd all heard about his mother dying. It happened right before exams, after all, he didn't come to school for almost two weeks. The only reason he went back was because his father told him he had to sit his exams. They didn't say a word to him, no one did, but maybe that was better than the bullying.

There'd been a part of him that hoped that maybe they would feel bad for him and decide to speak to him again, but by that point, he'd already gone quiet. He realised roughly a year after he graduated that even if they did talk to him again, they'd only be friends with him out of pity.

Under his father's watchful eye, he ate all his food. That was something he was grateful for when it came to his dad, he always made sure Hugo ate everything that was on his plate. "Do you want anymore?" Michael Garland asked when he was done, but Hugo only shook his head. Some days, one plate was too much for him.

The sky had turned dark while they'd been eating and streetlights illuminated their quiet street in yellow patches. The faint sound of cars drifted in through the open window above the sink, monotonous and boring. Without being asked, Hugo cleaned the dishes they had used while his father lounged around in front of the television.

"Maybe you should go back to a therapist," his father suggested when Hugo walked into the living room, his hands still damp from cleaning. His father didn't look at him, even though he knew the only way he'd see his son's response was if he looked up. It meant that it wasn't up for debate.

Hugo kicked his father's chair, despite knowing how much the balding man hated it. He needed his attention. He wasn't going back, not again. He shook his head furiously. "I don't need to," he signed, pursing his lips. "I'm fine."

"You're still not talking," his father said as though it were an inconvenience to him. "You need to talk."

"I don't. I can get by just fine without talking. I have so far."

His father sighed and looked back at the television. A news reporter spoke of atrocities in some middle eastern country. His father muted the tv and her voice cute off sharply. "I'm sick of having this argument with you, Hugo. I've told you many times that you need to see someone about this," he said. "You know this isn't permanent, you can talk if you want to."

He clenched his fists against his sides and took a deep breath before he said anything else. "I don't want to talk."

His father growled in irritation, dog-like and terrifying. "Why not? It's been five years, Hugo! She's gone, you don't need to keep doing this!" His father's face was red and spittle flew from his lips.

Hugo stepped back and swallowed the rock that had formed in his throat. "You weren't there, you didn't see what I did," he tried to stop his hands from shaking, tried to stop the anger from taking over his face. He couldn't explode, couldn't have the awful arguments he always had with his father. "You will never understand. No therapist will help me because I don't want it. I will talk when I'm ready."

"And when will that be?" his father asked. There was a sneer on his face. Parents weren't meant to look at their children like that.

"I don't know!" If hands could scream, his would be. He was sure his face said enough as it was. There was a heat in his cheeks. His eyebrows were furrowed and his eyes narrowed at his enraged father. There was so much more he could say, but he'd said it hundreds of times before. There wasn't any point to repeating himself. "I have work to do."

Without another word from either of them, Hugo stormed from the room. The bright light of his room seemed like a welcome haven and he slammed the door behind him like a petulant teenager. He wouldn't see another therapist. He'd seen far too many over the past five years and they all told him the same thing.

He was mute by choice due to what he had seen and what had happened to him. In time, he would speak again, but only if he chose to. And he wasn't going to speak for a long time. He didn't want to. Anyone who wanted to be a part of his life would go out of their way to try and talk to him, like Renee and Robert, and that was that.