𝓓𝓻𝓪𝔀 𝓶𝓮 𝓶𝓸𝓻𝓮

In my opinion, people talk too much.

They fill every silence like it’s something broken needing to be fixed. They make noise for the sake of not being left alone with their own thoughts. I never understood that. Silence isn’t empty, it’s peaceful. And to me, it’s comforting.

Every morning starts the same. I count my steps from the front gate to my locker. Thirty-six. Then I count how many breaths I take before I make it to my classroom. Twenty-four, that's if I walk slow enough. It’s stupid, I know. But it keeps me from thinking too hard. If I think too hard, I spiral. And spiraling means people look, people whisper, and judge, and do you want to know what I do? I shrink.

I keep my head down. Always.

They laugh sometimes when I walk past them. I hear my name in that sharp, mocking tone they always use. Like a punch made of just words.

♡

“Atticus the mute.”

“Do you think he’s, like, cursed or something?”

“Maybe he’s just dumb.”

♡

I used to try and explain how I felt. Once. A long, long time ago. I told someone my throat just closes up when I try to express my feelings, that the words were there, but they get tangled up. They didn’t believe me. They never do. Now I don’t try. I just let the silence wrap around me like strong armor, pulling me down with my weakness.

But there’s one place I feel like I can breathe.

My sketchbook.

It’s always with me, tucked in the back of my backpack like a secret. The pages are filled with charcoal lines, ink strokes, smudges of graphite. But mostly, they’re filled with her.

~ Ophelia. ~

She sits three seats away from me in English. Always has. Since I was transferred from another school. She’s everything I’m not, loud in a way that isn’t irritating, smart in a way that doesn’t make people hate her, beautiful in a way that makes even the teachers soften their voices when they say her name.

She’s not like them, she's not like me.

And maybe that’s why I draw her. Maybe that’s why, in the quiet moments between lessons, when the teacher’s voice fades into background noise and my heart starts racing for absolutely no reason, I pull out my pencil and I sketch her.

The way she twirls her pen between her fingers. The way she tilts her head when she’s confused. The way her hair falls like spilled ink across a canvas. I’ve drawn her a hundred times. A thousand. In pencil, in pen, in charcoal. I’ve drawn her laughing. I’ve drawn her crying, well.. not exactly, tears of laughter. I’ve drawn her the way I imagine she looks when she’s not at school, free.

I'm not creepy! It’s not creepy? At least, I don’t think it is. It’s not like I’m stalking her. I don’t follow her home or dig through her stuff. I just… watch. Observe. Like an artist should.

She’s art. That’s all.

Today, I’m more anxious than usual. My hands won’t stop shaking, and there’s a tightness in my chest that hasn’t gone away since this morning. I’m counting my breaths again as I walk into class.

Thirty. That's too fast.

I take my seat in the back corner near the window. Same place every day. My heart does this thing where it skips a beat when she walks in. I absolutely hate it. It’s too obvious. But no one notices me anyway, so maybe it doesn’t matter.

She’s wearing a red sweater today. I’ve never drawn her in red before, usually she wears a dress or a shirt and skirt but now she's just wearing a tracksuit.

I flip to a fresh page and start sketching the curve of her jaw, the way her hair brushes against the fabric of her sleeve. She’s talking to someone, laughing. Her eyes crinkle when she smiles. I try to capture that.

For a moment, everything fades. The class. The voices. There’s just the pencil and the paper and her.

Until the bell rings.

I sit upright quickly. The teacher’s already handing out assignments for us to do over the weekend and hand in next week. People are standing, talking, moving. I shove my sketchbook under a stack of papers, grab my bag, and move to leave.

Only, I forget it. Fuck.

I don’t realize it until I’m halfway down the corridor. My chest goes cold. I freeze. My sketchbook. It’s still on my desk. OPEN!

Panic claws at my throat.

I can’t go back. Not now. What if someone saw it? What if she saw?

I press myself against the locker and close my eyes, trying to breathe through it.

In. Out. In. Out.

It’s just a sketchbook. Just drawings. No one will care. No one looks at my desk. No one looks at me, I’m invisible.

Right?

But my gut twists, and I know I’m lying to myself.

That sketchbook is me. It’s every thought I can’t say out loud. Every feeling I’ve buried so deep I forgot I even had them. If someone finds it, if she finds it...

I don’t go back.

I can’t.

Instead, I spend the next class staring at the clock, every second feeling like a punishment. My mind runs wild. I hope my teacher found it and put it on his desk to return to me in the next lesson. Yet, what if she was the one who found it. What if she laughs? What if she tells everyone? What if this ruins everything?

And yet, a small, impossible part of me wonders… what if she likes it?

But no. That’s a fantasy. People like her don’t notice people like me. Not unless it’s to point and laugh.

When the bell finally rings for lunch, I move fast. I don’t stop at my locker. I don’t wait around. I just go straight back to the classroom, hoping and praying, that it’s still there, untouched.

But when I get there, it’s gone.

My desk is empty.

My sketchbook is gone.

~ ♡ ~