The last week of school before the break had a strange slowness to it. The sky was turning the kind of grey that usually followed final exams, and yet nothing felt like it was ending. Maybe because endings were louder. This was quiet.
She was quieter too.
When we walked home together, there was less banter and more pauses. But not uncomfortable ones. Just the kind that come when two people are too full of things they don't know how to share.
"Do you think crows ever forget where they were born?" she asked me once, stopping in the middle of a narrow lane.
I blinked. "What kind of question is that?"
She shrugged. "I don't know. Just felt like asking."
And then we kept walking.
I used to think talking was the way to know someone. Now I wasn't so sure. She'd say strange things like that sometimes. The kind that sounded like nonsense but stayed with you longer than real conversations.
We'd started taking the longer route home. Past the grocery store with the orange shutter, past the house with the cactus garden, and down the lane that smelt like rainwater and dust.
She didn't say she wanted to walk more. I didn't ask why we didn't take the shortcut anymore. We just did.
---
One afternoon, it started raining halfway. Not the dramatic kind, just a drizzle that turned everything soft. She didn't have an umbrella. Neither did I.
She looked at me. "Run or stay?"
"Stay," I said. "I hate running."
She laughed, and it was the first time in days that it didn't feel like she was forcing it.
We stood under a tree that barely covered us. The rain was cold, but her presence was not. She looked up at the sky and closed her eyes. There were raindrops clinging to her lashes.
Then she reached for my hand.
Just like that.
Not saying anything.
Not even looking.
Her hand was smaller than I expected. Warmer. And for a second, I thought maybe this is what it feels like —
—not to fall in love,
—but to remember something your heart always knew.
She didn't let go until the rain stopped.
We didn't speak about it afterward. The moment became a pocket of silence neither of us unpacked. I didn't even tell my best friend.
Some memories feel like they're made of glass — say too much and they'll shatter.
---
The next few days were uneventful. We still met, still walked. But there was something unspoken between us now. Not tension, not awkwardness. Just... awareness.
In class, I started watching her more. Not in a creepy way. Just in the way you watch someone who suddenly means something.
She fiddled with her pen when she was nervous. Twirled her hair during maths. Doodled stars in the margins. Sometimes looked outside the window like she was trying to hear something no one else could.
I started writing more in my notebook. Not stories. Not poems. Just lines that felt like her.
> Her silence is not emptiness — it's where her real voice lives.
> Maybe I don't want her to love me. Maybe I just want her to understand that I do.
> I think the sky turns grey when people start falling apart quietly.
None of it made much sense, but they felt real. And that was enough.
---
At lunch, she once asked me, "Do you think dreams die when we grow up?"
I said, "I think they turn into ghosts."
She smiled and nodded. "Maybe that's why people look so haunted."
---
One evening, after walking her home, I stood outside her gate for a few seconds longer than usual.
She noticed. "What?"
I shook my head. "Nothing. Just thinking."
She leaned against the gate. "You're always thinking. One day your brain's going to leak out of your ears."
I smiled. "Then you'll have to carry me."
She laughed. "Nah. I'll write your eulogy. 'Here lies a boy who thought too much and did too little.'"
"Cruel."
She grinned, then grew quiet.
"Hey," she said after a pause, "You know I'll forget all of this, right?"
That hit harder than I expected.
"Why would you say that?"
She looked at the sky. "I don't know. I just feel like this is the kind of stuff people forget when they grow older. Maybe we'll forget each other too."
I wanted to tell her I wouldn't.
But I didn't.
Because I didn't know if that would be a promise or a lie.
So I just said, "Maybe. But if you forget me, at least let me be someone you forgot kindly."
She didn't reply.
Just nodded.
And went inside.
---
That night, my mother peeked into my room while I was writing.
"Still scribbling?"
I nodded. "Just clearing my head."
She sat down beside me. "Clearing your head by stuffing paper with confusion?"
I smiled.
She picked up the notebook, flipped through it. "Your handwriting still looks like chicken scratches."
"You said the same thing in third grade."
"And I was right."
She tousled my hair. "Don't lose yourself in your head too much. The world is outside."
I didn't tell her that the world outside didn't always feel like mine.
I just nodded.
She kissed my forehead before leaving. "You'll be alright, okay?"
For the first time in days, I believed her.
---
The last day before break arrived. No one brought books. The teachers didn't really teach. Everyone was just waiting for the bell to ring so they could forget the semester.
Except me.
I kept watching the clock like it was counting down the last few moments of something I wouldn't get back.
I looked at her one more time before the bell rang.
She was smiling at something her friend had said. Her face lit up in a way I couldn't put into words.
And I thought, I want to remember her like this.
Before things change.
Before I leave.
Before anything ends.
And I whispered to myself —
"Her hand was warmer than I thought."