Harry didn't see Zara for the rest of that day.
Not in school.
Not outside his window.
And it bothered him.
He kept checking the back garden like some secret was going to bloom from the weeds. But nothing happened. No knock. No whisper. Just the kind of silence that crawled under his skin and settled there like a parasite.
At school, the world moved on like always. The noise, the teachers, the same boys kicking a deflated football against the red-brick wall. But something inside Harry had shifted. He noticed things more—like how everyone laughed without meaning it, how the teachers smiled like masks, and how his own footsteps echoed like they didn't belong.
He walked past the wall behind the school—the one Zara mentioned. His words were still there, smudged but visible.
> "I am the echo of a voice no one wants to hear."
Right beneath it, scribbled in smaller writing, was something new.
> "Even echoes sound like company."
—Z
His heart stopped for a second. She'd been here.
She'd responded.
He touched the words with his fingers like they were Braille and he was trying to feel her thoughts.
That evening, as twilight draped the sky in bruised purple, Harry returned to his room. The window stayed closed.
No knock.
No Zara.
He sat with his notebook again and scribbled:
> "There's a girl who hears the quiet in me. I don't know what scares me more—her knowing, or me needing her to."
Just as he finished writing, a folded piece of paper slid in from under the window frame.
He jolted.
Rushing to the window, he flung it open—but again, no one. Just the wind, whispering secrets he couldn't understand.
He picked up the note.
It read:
> "You feel things too loud, Harry. I do too. But don't let the world silence you. There's strength in the way you survive."
At the bottom:
Zara.
But below her name, something else caught his eye. A drawing. A familiar one.
A tree.
Split in half.
One side full of leaves, the other bare.
He gasped.
His mother had once drawn the exact same thing in her journal. He remembered it clearly—right after the diagnosis, before the silence began.
What did Zara know?
And how could she know it?