He never forgot her.
Years passed. People moved on. The school changed. Teachers retired. Desks got replaced. Her name was spoken less. But he remembered.
Some nights, he still rereads the message he never got a reply to."Please don't leave."He remembers how his hands shook pressing send.How silence answered louder than any scream.
He doesn't blame her.
Not anymore.
He knows now that pain can be quiet. It doesn't always announce itself. Sometimes it wears eyeliner and laughter. Sometimes it says "Hey" and disappears.
So he started writing.Not to rewrite the past, but to give voice to those who never got to speak.
He wrote the boy and the girl, as they were. Not perfect. Not poetic. Just human.Confused. Quiet. Hurting. Trying.
He wrote for the ones who sit in the back of the class, staring out the window.For the ones who type a message and never hit send.For the ones who laugh too loudly because they're afraid of being silent.
He didn't change the ending. He couldn't.But he left the door cracked open — in case someone reading needed to know: they weren't alone either.
Now the book sits on shelves. In libraries. On nightstands. In backpacks.
And somewhere, a quiet kid flips through its pages and finally hears themselves in the words.
Maybe they'll send the message.Maybe someone will look up.Maybe silence won't win this time.
And maybe that's enough.
Because sometimes, telling the story is the beginning of saving someone else's.
Even if you couldn't save the first one.