(Ashpen's voice continues)
She always walked a little behind the group.
Not out of shyness. Not because she didn't want to be part of things.
But like someone who liked listening more than leading—someone who didn't mind being the pause between words.
I used to slowdown to match her pace.
I thought I was being kind.
Now I wonder if she needed someone to linger beside her—someone who didn't expect conversation, or explanations, or even a smile.
Just company.
Quiet company-
The silence after her disappearance wasn't immediate.
It grew in layers, slowly folding itself into our lives.
At first, there was a kind of disbelief—people spoke about her in present tense.
"She likes that band, right?"
"I think she was going to paint that scene for the art fest."
"I'll wait. She's just late."
But by the second week, the silence hardened.
Her name began to vanish from sentences. Her desk was reassigned. Her photo on the club wall was taken down—probably for space, they said.
People weren't being cruel.
They were just doing what humans do when something hurts too much to hold—
They let it go,
But not me-
I clung to the weight of her memory like a stone in my chest.
I didn't want to forget the way her eyes darted around when she was thinking, or how her socks nevermatched but somehow always made sense together.
I remembered how she'd hum softly—not a tune, but just a kind of sound, like her thoughts leaking out in musical Morse code.
There was one day in particular—before she vanished—that keptplaying in my mind like an old film reel.
A school trip, sometime in early spring.
We were by the sea, gathered around a bonfire. Everyone else was laughing, running around with marshmallows and Bluetooth speakers.
She sat behind me, fingers quietly moving through my hair, braiding it.
"You always look better with it half up,"
she said.
"Like a storybook hero."
I laughed.
She didn't.
But I didn'tturn around to look at her.
I wish I had.
That moment stayed with me, like a pressed flower between the pages of a forgotten book.
I kept replaying it, trying to read what I hadn't seen—
Was there sadness in her voice?
Was she saying goodbye even then?
Now that she was gone, I noticed the space she left everywhere.
At school, when we formed groups, there was always onechair too many.
At cafés, I'd catch myself lookingtoward the window seat she used to favor—expecting to see her there,
-chin in hand, watching the rain like it was telling secrets.
In my dreams, I often heard her footsteps.
Not loud-
Not running,
Just a steady rhythm, walking beside me.
Some people asked why I hadn't
"moved on."
"It's been a month."
"You barely knew her that well, right?"
"She'd want you to be happy."
They said it gently, like trying to hand me a warm drink I didn't ask for.
But I didn't want comfort.
I wanted the ache-
Because the ache meant she had been real.
I started collecting things.
Quiet things. Things that reminded me of her:
An old notebook I found in the library with a doodle in the margins that looked like her style-
A pair of earrings left in the art room—tiny silver stars
A paper scrap with the words "wishful sinking" written in her handwriting
I didn't tell anyone.
They wouldn'tunderstand.
They thought grief needed to be loud to be valid.
But hers wasn't loud.
So mine wasn't either.
There was one afternoon, late in April, when I felt the weight of her most.
It was raining softly.
The kind of rain that seemed to apologize as it fell.
I sat in the classroom alone.
Her seat—the one by the window—was now taken by a boy who chewed gum and wore his hoodie like armor. He didn't know who had sat there before. Or maybe he didn't care.
I stared out the window, watching drops race down the glass.
And suddenly, I remembered something she once said in passing:
"I like the kind of rain that doesn't ask for attention. It just… happens."
That's how she was.
She never demanded space—she simply existed within it.
And now, even in her absence, she filled every corner.
Later that evening, I opened the sketchbook I had taken from her room again.
I wasn't even sure why I'd brought it home. It feltwrong. Like I was holding something sacred that didn't belong to me.
But it was the only version of her that felt unfiltered.
No half-laughs.
No polite nods.
Just truth, drawn in charcoal and hidden in darkness.
One page had only four words:
"Iam not loud."
I ran my thumb over the indentation in the paper.
She had pressed the pen sohard it nearly tore the page.
Another entry, months earlier, read:
"If I disappear, will anyone change their route home?"
I wanted to scream yes.
Yes, I changed mine. I stopped going by the art room. I took the longway to class just to avoid the bench where she once sat eating strawberries with a fork.
But I also knew—
She hadn't meant me.
She had meant everyone else.
The ones who smiled at her but never asked why her hands shook when she was cold.
The ones who liked her posts but never noticed when they stopped.
The ones who called her "gentle" but never asked whatittook to be that way every day.
There was a dream I kept having.
In it, we were sitting in the school library. She was doodling raindrops on the edge of a page. I was pretending to read, but really, I was just watching her.
Then, suddenly, she looked up and asked:
"Would you remember me if I erased myself from every photograph?"
I never answered in the dream.
I always woke up right after.
One evening, while walking past the lake, I thought I saw her.
A girl, standing near the rocks.
Same height.
Same way of standing—shoulders a little slumped, like her bones were tired of being polite.
But it wasn't her.
Of course it wasn't.
Still, I stood there for a while.
Just watching-
Just remembering.
I think part of her knew I'd remember.
Maybe she hopedsomeone would.
Not to bring her back.
But to prove she had been real.
And I do,
I remember her in the lull between two classes.
In the way wind moves hair across the eyes.
In songs with lyricstoohonest to be casual.
Some nights, when I can't sleep, I whisper her name.
Not out loud.
Just in my head.
Softly-
Like folding a paper crane.
I don't know if she hears it.
But I hope she feels it.
Wherever she is.
There are absences that echo louder than presence.
And some people, even when gone, leave behind a gravity you can't shake.
I don't wait for her to return anymore.
That hope, too, has softened into something quieter.
But I still carry her.
In the space between laughter and silence.
In the weight of a poem I never got to answer.
In the small rituals—wearing mismatched socks, watching the sky, folding letters I'll never send.
Not in grief,
But in memory.
Because she wasn't just a ripple.
She was the whole lake.