We met in the back row of the English classroom, the one nobody liked because the radiator hissed and the paint peeled. You had your headphones in, ignoring the teacher, and I had my notebook out, already scribbling the first line of a story I’d never finish.

“You write too much,” I said. Not mean. Just observation.

You pulled your headphones down a notch. “You think?”

I shrugged. “You probably just like the sound of your own sentences.”

You laughed, not at me, at something in my voice. That was the first time I knew you’d notice me, really notice me, without asking why.

After that, we started timing our bathroom breaks together. Shared packets of crisps behind the bike shed. Borrowed each other’s notes and never returned them. You had a way of talking about things I didn’t want to hear, but somehow I wanted to anyway. Movies, music, stupid arguments about whether the Oxford comma actually mattered.

You were sharp. Too sharp for most people, but I liked it. I liked the way you could cut through pretense like a knife. You made me laugh, which made me admit things I shouldn’t have, like how I sometimes hated myself for laughing at nothing, or how I thought no one really saw me.

We had a rhythm. I would show up late; you’d roll your eyes. You’d eat all the sweets; I’d pretend not to notice. We made our own world, a little bubble behind textbooks and homework. I liked that we could be quiet and still, and it didn’t feel like ignoring each other.

But things changed. Small things first. You stopped sharing your snacks. You got sharper with your words. I said something dumb in the library about a boy I liked, and you didn’t laugh — you just frowned. I remember that exact moment. I felt like I’d stepped onto someone else’s property.

Then the trust eroded. You started pulling away, hiding your notebooks, rolling your eyes at me even when I wasn’t late. I tried to tell myself it was just stress, exams, hormones, but I knew it was more.

We stopped timing our bathroom breaks together. You skipped the crisps. You sat in the front row when you knew I’d be at the back. I still saw you sometimes in the corridor, and the gap between us made me ache like it wasn’t just friendship I’d lost — it was recognition. Someone used to seeing me, and now she didn’t.

By the end of Sixth Form, we didn’t talk at all. I wrote your name once in the back of a notebook, crossed it out, wrote it again, erased it. That’s the last time I tried.

I still remember the sound of your laugh in that old classroom. The way you’d tilt your head when you were thinking. The way it made me feel like maybe someone, somewhere, could see me fully. And then, slowly, over months, that feeling vanished.

Sometimes, late at night, I wonder if you remember it too — or if I’m the only one keeping the echo alive.

After college, we didn’t know how to keep being us.

You moved into that flat near the station, the one with the draft in the kitchen and the tiny balcony that smelled like wet concrete. I got a job in the city, commuting two trains too early, buying sandwiches that weren’t meant to be eaten. We still texted, but the rhythm was off. The jokes that landed perfectly in the library fell flat over WhatsApp. The timing was gone.

I tried to visit once. You were out when I arrived. I waited on your balcony, staring at the cracked concrete below, and texted you: “I’m here.” You didn’t reply. When you got back hours later, you apologized like it was a math problem: polite, precise, but without warmth. I nodded, but I felt it — that little distance growing.

Then the secrets started. Small things first. You wouldn’t tell me why you were always tired. You wouldn’t say who you were with or where you went. I didn’t push, but I noticed. I noticed everything. The hoodie you wore too often. The smell of smoke that wasn’t from your usual cigarettes. The way you avoided my eyes when you talked about other friends.

I wanted to reach for you, to anchor you somehow. But you didn’t want anchoring. You wanted freedom — or chaos. Maybe both.

One night, I turned up at your flat because I hadn’t heard from you for days. You opened the door half-asleep, hair tangled, eyes bright but unfocused. I thought you were sick, but you just shrugged and muttered something about “running errands.” You were shaking. Not from the cold. Not exactly. I asked if I could come in, and you said yes, then let me in silently.

We sat in your kitchen, the fridge humming too loud. I asked what was wrong. You looked at me like I’d asked the wrong question. Then you laughed — a short, sharp laugh — and said nothing. That’s when I first realized that whatever I thought I knew about you, I didn’t. You weren’t telling me because you couldn’t, not because you wouldn’t.

After that night, I started stepping back. Not deliberately, not angrily, but instinctively. I couldn’t fight whatever was coming. You weren’t the same friend I’d known, and I didn’t know if I’d ever see her again. I called less. Texted less. When you did reach out, I answered quickly, politely, without asking anything that might trap me in what I feared I’d see.

And still, I worried. About you. About what I didn’t know. About the things I glimpsed but couldn’t name. I kept checking, quietly, like a parent or a sentinel. I never stopped caring. I just stopped expecting.

By the time we stopped speaking altogether, months later, it felt inevitable. Not dramatic, not explosive — just a quiet falling apart. I was a witness, yes. But I wasn’t allowed in. Not really.

I still carry the memory of your laughter, the small defiance in your voice when we joked about nothing, and the tiny apartment balcony where I waited for a friend I couldn’t reach. Those fragments are all I have now, and sometimes, late at night, I go back to them, wondering if you remember too — or if, like me, you only keep the echo alive.

I didn’t knock.

I shouldn’t have come in at all, but I kept thinking about the phone call that never happened. The texts that stopped. The “I’m fine” that never rang true.

The flat smells wrong the moment I open the door. Metallic, sour, like pennies left in the rain. Nutmeg stares at me from the counter, tail flicking, pupils wide. She doesn’t move when I step in. That cat always knows.

And there she is, slumped at the table, glass in hand, still. Hoodie damp at the collar, hair sticking to her cheek. Bruises bloom along her arm. Small ones, but enough.

“Hey,” I say softly.

She doesn’t look up. I drop the charger onto the table. The clatter is louder than I want. Her hand twitches. Nutmeg hisses.

“Did he touch you?” I ask, careful, slow. Already preparing myself for the answer.

“I let him,” she says.

My stomach drops. I want to do something. I want to tell her she didn’t have to. But I know she knows that. She always knows. So I stay still.

She doesn’t say more. She just lets the word sit, like a stone in the middle of the room. I feel it pressing on me.

“This was supposed to be a celebration,” I say. I don’t raise my voice. I’m trying to measure, trying to be the adult we never allowed ourselves to be in Sixth Form. “You were clean. You were negative.”

She doesn’t flinch. She only breathes.

I sit across from her, close enough to reach, but I don’t. My hands are shaking anyway. I try to picture her like the girl I knew in the back row, laughing at nothing, scribbling stories she’d never finish. I try to anchor myself there, but the present refuses to let go of her wrist, the slight tremor in her fingers, the way her gaze refuses mine.

“You’d rather ruin yourself than let one good thing happen to you,” I say.

“No,” she says. Her voice cracks. Not denial. Not defiance. Just… a refusal to let me have the truth.

I keep my mouth shut. I don’t know what else to do. I watch her, feeling useless, small. I tip the water glass in her hand into Nutmeg’s bowl. She doesn’t move. She doesn’t protest.

I tell her to call me once she’s stopped coming down. That’s all I can do. That’s all I’m allowed.

Before I leave, I step into the doorway. I want to say I’m still here, but the words catch in my throat. I close the door carefully, making sure it doesn’t slam.

Nutmeg jumps down from the counter and walks past me. She doesn’t hiss anymore, just watches, blinking slowly. I know she’s judging me too.

I stand on the landing for a minute, breathing. Trying to remember who she used to be. Trying to remember who we used to be, back when laughter and secrets fit into a notebook and a bag of crisps.

I wonder if she’ll ever be that girl again.

I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to go back to being her friend.

But I leave the door unlocked anyway.