[Okay READERS!!!, see, I'm just a student right now, but the thing you're gonna read here is freakin' REALLL!!!! yupp, in my early years, turns out to be a butterfly experience; so-called love and silence still surround me, but yepp, just an experience to get.]
The sterile smell of hospital hallways is something you never really forget. It lingers in the back of your throat like a bitter pill. By the time I hit 4th grade, I had spent more time in a gown than a playground, all because some kids didn't know how to keep their hands or their words to themselves.
But Class 6? Class 6 was my rebirth.
I came back like a storm. I wasn't that quiet, fragile girl anymore. I was the extrovert. I was the girl who laughed too loudly, talked too much, and made sure every corner of the room knew I was there. I was making up for lost time.
Then, he moved into the apartment on the 1st floor.
The Boy Behind the Door...
He was in 7th grade, a year older, and worlds away because he went to a completely different school [ School is confidential]. That made him the ultimate mystery. He had this quiet, grounded energy that felt like the eye of a hurricane—and I was the hurricane.
Living on an upper floor meant that every single time I left the building, I had to pass his door. It became the highlight of my day. I'd be walking down the stairs with my friends, yapping away about some drama at school, and the second we reached the 1st floor, my voice would get just a little bit higher, a little bit brighter. I wanted him to hear me. I wanted him to see that I was alive and his cricket-ups and snots for as long as 3 years till in my 7th grade, it was the extreme up that made me ignore to suppress my feelings.
Falling for him wasn't a slow burn; it was an instant forest fire.
The Cousin, The Secret, and The Shatter
My cousin was in 10th grade. To me, he was the guy who knew everyone. To him, my crush was just "neighbor drama."
I told him in confidence, tucked away in the corner while paying and chilling i bloody roar. I told him how my heart did a weird glitch every time I saw the 7th-grade boy from 1A heading to his bus stop. I thought my cousin was my ally. I thought he understood that after everything I went through in 4th grade, this crush was my first "normal" thing.
He didn't.
Maybe he thought it would be funny, or perhaps he thought he was doing me a favor. One afternoon, right there in the lobby—the neutral ground of our building—my cousin saw him. And he said it. All of it.
The rejection wasn't a "no." It was worse. It was a shift in the atmosphere. The boy from the 1st floor didn't laugh or tease; he just... turned into a ghost.
The Two-Year Silence
For the next two years, the 1st floor became a gauntlet.
As an extrovert, silence is physically painful. I wanted to fix it. I wanted to go to his door, knock, and say, "Hey, my cousin is an idiot, can we just be friends?" But the look in his eyes—or rather, the way his eyes purposefully avoided mine—told me that the door was locked. Permanently.
Year One: We perfected the "Phone Stare." Whenever we passed in the lobby, we both suddenly had the most important emails in the world to read.
Year Two: We learned the rhythm of the door clicks. If I heard his door open, I'd wait thirty seconds on the stairs so I wouldn't have to face the ice.
It was exhausting. I was the girl who could talk to anyone, yet I couldn't even say "excuse me" to the person who lived twenty feet below me.
Graduation: Class of 2026 is approaching
The heat of June 2026 will beheavy. The air is gonna be thick with the scent of cheap perfume and graduation.
I will be standing in my 8th-grade uniform. I'm the girl who survived the bullying, the girl who survived the hospital, and the girl who spent three years loving a ghost. Across town, he's graduating 9th grade. He's heading to a high school I won't attend. He's leaving the middle school era behind, and with it, he's leaving me.
I see him every time on the 1st floor. For the first time in years, I didn't reach for my phone. I didn't hide, I just...left.
I looked at him. Really looked at him. He looked... ordinary. He wasn't or was the "Main Character" [Confuzin'me out]I had built up in my head to save me from my past.
I realized then that my "comeback" wasn't complete because I found love. It was complete because I didn't need it to feel whole.
I walked past his door, the heels of my shoes clicking loudly on the tile. I didn't say a word, and neither did he. But as I pushed open the heavy front door and stepped into the sunlight, I realized I wasn't holding my breath anymore.
The one-sided story was over. And for the first time, the silence felt peaceful, yet his absence was felt in my breath...