You were seventeen the first time you realised she didn’t know how to land.

It was late spring, the kind that smelled like wet pavement and cheap deodorant, and she was sitting on the school field with her knees pulled to her chest, pretending she wasn’t crying. You’d been looking for your PE kit in the lost‑and‑found when you saw her through the window, a small, hunched shape in a too‑big hoodie, the sleeves chewed to threads.

You weren’t friends yet. You barely knew her name. But something in the way she held herself — like a butterfly with the wings torn off, still trying to fly — made you walk outside without thinking.

“You’re going to get grass stains,” you said, because you were seventeen and useless with feelings.

She didn’t look up. “It’s not my shirt.”

You sat down anyway. The grass was cold. She smelled faintly of smoke, but not the kind you’d learn to recognise later. More like someone else’s cigarette, clinging to her hair.

After a long silence, she said, “My mum forgot to pick me up.”

You knew that wasn’t the whole story. You also knew better than to ask.

So you stayed. You talked about nothing — the teacher who hated you, the vending machine that ate your coins, the way the clouds looked like someone had smudged them with their thumb. She laughed once, a small, startled sound, like she wasn’t used to hearing herself do it.

When her phone buzzed, she flinched. You pretended not to notice.

“Do you want to walk home with me?” you asked.

She hesitated. You could see the calculation behind her eyes — the risk, the vulnerability, the unfamiliarity of being offered something without strings.

“Okay,” she said.

You didn’t know it then, but that was the first time she trusted you. The first time she let someone see her without the armour of sarcasm or bravado. The first time she let herself be small.

You walked side by side, not touching, but close enough that your shadows merged on the pavement. She kicked a stone the whole way, like she needed something to keep her tethered to the ground.

At her door, she paused. “Thanks,” she said, and the word sounded foreign in her mouth, like she wasn’t sure she was allowed to say it.

You shrugged. “Anytime.”

You meant it. You didn’t know what “anytime” would come to mean.

You didn’t know you’d spend years learning the shape of her silences. That you’d become the person she called when the world tilted sideways. That you’d hold her hair back in bathrooms, sit with her in waiting rooms, walk her home from places she shouldn’t have been. That you’d love her in a way that wasn’t romantic but still managed to break you open.

You didn’t know she’d become a constellation of bruises and brilliance, someone who could make you laugh until your ribs hurt and then disappear for days. Someone who’d look at you like you were the only solid thing in a world made of smoke.

You didn’t know she’d grow up believing she was unlovable, and that you’d spend years trying — and failing — to convince her otherwise.

All you knew, that first afternoon, was that she looked like she might blow away if you didn’t sit beside her.

So you did.

And when she finally went inside, you stayed on the pavement for a moment, staring at the closed door, feeling something shift in your chest.

You didn’t have a word for it then.

You’d learn it later.

Responsibility. Devotion. Fear.

All the same thing, when it came to her.

You didn’t realise she was missing until the second day.

At first, it was just quiet. The kind of quiet you’d learned to interpret as a good sign — no shouting, no slammed doors, no frantic texts at 2AM. You let yourself believe she was sleeping, or studying, or ignoring you on purpose because she’d decided you were annoying again.

But by the next morning, the quiet had a different weight.
A hollow one.

You checked the usual places: the benches behind the science block, the corner shop where she flirted with the cashier for free gum, the bus stop where she sometimes sat even when she wasn’t going anywhere. Nothing.

By lunchtime, you were pacing the school field, the same one where you’d first found her curled into herself like a secret. You kept expecting her to appear — hoodie sleeves chewed, hair in her face, pretending she hadn’t been crying.

She didn’t.

You told yourself not to panic. She’d done this before. Not disappearing, exactly, but drifting. Slipping sideways out of reach. You’d learned to wait it out.

But that afternoon, when her mum called the school asking if she’d been in, something in your chest went cold.

You walked home the long way, checking every alley, every doorway, every patch of grass where she might’ve sat down and forgotten to get back up. You didn’t find her. You found a cigarette butt you thought might be hers, but it wasn’t. You kept it anyway.

By the time the streetlights flickered on, you were rehearsing what you’d say if you found her.
Nothing angry. Nothing scared. Just something simple, something she wouldn’t run from.

You found her on the third night.

She was sitting on the curb outside the old laundrette, hood up, hands tucked into her sleeves like she was trying to disappear into herself. Her eyes were glassy, unfocused, but she smiled when she saw you — a small, crooked thing that didn’t reach her face.

“You found me,” she said, like it was a game.

You sat beside her. Close enough that your shoulders brushed. Close enough that she could lean on you if she wanted to.

“I always do,” you said.

You didn’t ask where she’d been.
You didn’t ask why she hadn’t called.
You didn’t ask what she’d taken.

You just stayed until she was steady enough to stand.

Later, when you walked her home, she kept bumping into you like she needed the contact to stay upright. You didn’t mind. You pretended it was accidental.

You didn’t know it then, but this was the night you stopped being a friend and became something else.
A lighthouse.
A warning sign.
A place she returned to only when she was already breaking.

You didn’t have a word for it yet.
You would learn it later.
Responsibility.
Devotion.
Fear.

All the same thing, when it came to her.

The walls are breathing again.

Not literally — I know that — but they move in the corner of my eye, like they’re trying to inhale for me. I’m lying on the kitchen floor, cheek pressed to the tiles, and the cold feels like the only thing keeping me tethered. The air tastes stale. Metallic. Like I’ve been chewing on a battery.

I try to sit up. My body disagrees.

The ceiling looks wrong. Too low. Too soft. Like it’s sagging under the weight of something I can’t see. I blink hard, but the edges still curl, like burnt paper.

Nutmeg scratches at the door.
Or maybe she’s scratching at my ribs.
Hard to tell.

I close my eyes. The darkness tilts.

I tell myself I’m fine. I tell myself I’ve been worse. I tell myself this isn’t a big deal, that it’s just another Tuesday, that I’ve survived Tuesdays before.

My heart doesn’t believe me. It thuds unevenly, like it’s trying to remember the right rhythm and keeps getting it wrong.

I reach for my phone. The screen lights up too bright, stabbing into my skull. No messages. No missed calls. No reason to be awake.

I think about calling you.
Just to hear your voice.
Just to lie.

I don’t.

Instead, I stare at the ceiling until it stops moving. It takes a long time. Long enough that the light outside shifts from blue to grey, then to something that might be morning.

Nutmeg meows again.
Closer this time.
Accusing.

I manage to roll onto my side. My arm aches — not from anything dramatic, just from the way I slept on it, or the way I shook, or the way I always shake. There’s a bruise forming near the crook of my elbow. I press it with my thumb. I don’t feel much.

The flat feels too small. Like the walls have crept inward while I wasn’t looking. I drag myself upright, using the counter like a handrail. Nutmeg jumps onto it, staring at me with that look she gets — the one that says she knows exactly what I’ve done and is waiting to see if I’ll admit it.

I don’t.

I pour a glass of water. My hands tremble. The water sloshes. I pretend it doesn’t.

It’s 06:00.
The sun is rising.
The world is still here.
So am I.

For now.