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.