Lila's body had become a thing she both lived in and feared.
It betrayed her daily—with sharp pains in her joints, breath that came too shallow, fatigue that pulled at her like ocean waves. Yet it was also the vessel through which she loved the world. Her eyes still saw beauty. Her heart still swelled with quiet affection. Her hands, though frail, still wrote stories of lives she'd never touch.
But nothing in her body had prepared her for this: the ache of waiting.
Aidan hadn't shown up in three days.
Not even once.
Not a glimpse of his navy beanie. Not a flicker of red shoelaces. Not a wave. Not a note.
Nothing.
Lila sat at the window, her chair pushed as close to the glass as possible. Her blanket slipped from her shoulders onto the floor. Her mother had called twice to bring her lunch, but Lila hadn't answered. Her stomach was a knot of hope and dread. She watched the sidewalk like a storm cloud watches the sea—waiting to break.
The park below was unchanged. Max still kicked his pebble. Celeste still danced with her earbuds in. Mr. Caldwell still fed the birds. The world moved on, and Lila… stayed behind.
Alone again.
Like before.
Her fingers trembled as she wrote in her journal:
"How do you miss someone you've never spoken to? How do you feel abandoned by a stranger?"
She stopped writing. The tears came quietly this time—without a sob, without a gasp. They rolled down her cheeks and soaked the paper until the ink bled into watercolor bruises.
She closed the book and let it fall to the floor.
That night, her father knocked gently and entered with a tray of food she wouldn't touch.
"Lila… honey, you haven't eaten since yesterday. Talk to me."
She didn't respond. She sat curled on the window bench, staring out into the darkness.
"I know this boy… he meant something to you," he said, sitting beside her. "But you don't know him, not really. Maybe something came up. Maybe he's just—"
"He saw me," Lila whispered, her voice hoarse from disuse. "No one's seen me in months. And then… he did. And now he's gone."
Her father's eyes softened. "I see you, sweetheart."
Lila shook her head.
"No, Dad. You see the girl you had before I got sick. The daughter you're afraid of losing. The one you're trying to hold together with all your love. But he saw me. The broken, tired, angry me. And he didn't look away."
Her father's lips parted, but no words came. After a moment, he placed the tray down and quietly left.
Lila turned back to the window. The sky had turned the color of bruised peaches—soft, dying light.
She whispered, more to herself than anyone, "Why did you leave?"
The fourth day came.
Still, no sign of Aidan.
That morning, Lila woke gasping from a nightmare. In it, she was sitting by the window, but no one was outside. Not a bird. Not a soul. Just empty streets. A world abandoned her. And she was banging on the glass, screaming, "Don't forget me!"
She'd startled herself awake, tangled in her sheets, oxygen tube half-off, throat dry from crying in her sleep.
She didn't tell her mother.
She didn't tell the nurse.
But she wrote about it.
"The silence has a voice now. It whispers that I imagined him. That the boy with the paper crane and the sad eyes never existed. That maybe I dreamed him during a fever. Or worse… maybe I mattered to him for a second, and then I didn't."
Lila began retreating again.
No more getting dressed.
No more brushing her hair.
No more sitting in the chair.
She returned to the bed like it was her coffin and let the world move on without her.
The journal stayed closed.
The window stayed shut.
Her body began to ache again, heavier than before. Her heart ached even more.
The fifth day.
She didn't expect anything.
She'd stopped expecting anything.
But when her nurse drew back the curtains, there was something taped to the glass.
A note.
Folded and held in place by two strips of masking tape.
Lila sat up like a puppet yanked by invisible strings.
Her mother rushed to retrieve it, her fingers shaking nearly as much as Lila's.
She unfolded it and handed it to her daughter, watching her with cautious hope.
Lila read the message three times before her eyes blurred:
"I'm sorry. I wanted to come. I tried. I couldn't. —A"
No explanation. No details. Just five short sentences that cracked her wide open.
Her chest heaved once, and then again. Not with tears, not yet—but with something hotter: anger.
Anger she had buried beneath hope and softness.
She gripped the note like it might answer her.
You tried? What stopped you? Was I not important enough?
But the guilt came rushing in right behind it.
Maybe something bad happened. Maybe he's hurt. Maybe he's as broken as you are.
She wanted to hate him for making her feel like she mattered, then leaving her in silence.
She wanted to forgive him instantly, because the ache of resentment was heavier than she could bear.
She wanted answers.
And that's when she made a decision.
She reached under her bed and pulled out a small box of old supplies—markers, tape, a ruler, scissors.
Then she began writing.
The next morning, before sunrise, a note was taped to her window from the inside:
"You mattered. I missed you. Please tell me what happened. —L"
She waited all day.
Every hour was a small eternity.
Then, just as the light began to fade into twilight—he appeared.
Aidan.
Same jacket. Same beanie. Same quiet presence.
He stood by the fence and looked up.
She was already there, hand on the glass.
They didn't wave.
They just looked at each other for what felt like forever.
Then Aidan slowly reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper.
He knelt and placed it beneath Celeste's tree.
Lila wanted to run downstairs herself. To sprint barefoot across the grass, pick it up, and shout at him, "Why? Where were you?!"
But she couldn't. So she waited until her mother fetched it.
The note was written in small, precise handwriting.
"My brother relapsed. He has cancer too. We've been in and out of the hospital for weeks. I thought I could still come, but the guilt ate me. I felt like if I was here, I was betraying him. And if I wasn't here, I was betraying you. I didn't know what to do. But I missed you. I thought about you every day. I even brought your note with me. It's in my bag. I'm sorry I left you in silence. I hope you'll forgive me. —Aidan"
Lila's throat closed.
Everything inside her broke open.
So he wasn't just a dream.
He was real. He was hurting too. Carrying weight. Carrying someone else's pain while trying to hold on to her memory.
She cried without shame this time.
And then she wrote again.
"I'm still here. I don't hate you. I understand. We're both carrying people we love. Maybe we don't have to carry alone anymore."
She asked her mother to place it beneath the tree.
Over the next few days, they began a new ritual.
They didn't wave. They didn't smile.
They wrote.
A note each day.
Sometimes two.
Lila poured her days onto the page—her fears, her exhaustion, her love for sunlight, the names she made up for the people in the park.
Aidan responded in kind—he told her about his brother, about the hospital lights that never dimmed, about his own fear of losing people, about how sometimes he felt more like a shadow than a boy.
And slowly, their connection deepened into something stronger than before.
They weren't strangers anymore.
They were witnesses to each other's survival.
One day, Lila wrote:
"Do you think you could ever come closer? Like… talk to me. For real?"
Aidan didn't come the next day.
Her heart sank.
But the day after that, he arrived.
With a chair.
He brought it to the fence. Set it down. Sat.
And then… he held up a dry-erase board.
It read:
"Hi, Lila. I'd talk, but your parents might call the cops."
She laughed. A real laugh.
Then she held up her own sign—scribbled hastily on the back of an old drawing:
"We'll start with signs. Maybe someday soon… without the glass."
He nodded.
And for the first time in weeks, the silence didn't hurt anymore.
It held space.
It carried meaning.
It felt like hope.