DIGITS OF THE HEART

📘Chapter 11: The Space Between Words

The third week of term arrived with a strange stillness, as if the school itself were holding its breath. Harizon had grown used to the quiet, but this was different. It wasn’t just Clarion’s silence anymore, it was the absence of something unnamed. A shift in the air. A pause in the rhythm.

He began to notice the small things. How Clarion no longer lingered near the art room, where she used to sketch faces from memory. How she sat at the edge of group discussions, her voice measured, her laughter restrained. How she avoided eye contact—not just with him, but with herself.

Harizon didn’t know what had happened, but he felt it. Like a thread pulled too tight.

One afternoon, during a literature lesson on Achebe’s *Things Fall Apart*, Mr. Muriithi asked the class to discuss the meaning of silence. “Is it strength?” he asked. “Or surrender?”

Clarion raised her hand. Her voice was calm, but her eyes flickered. “Sometimes silence is survival,” she said. “Sometimes it’s the only way to stay whole.”

Harizon felt the words land in his chest like stones. He looked at her, really looked, and saw the weight she carried. Not just the silence between them, but something deeper. Something she hadn’t named.

After class, he lingered by the doorway, hoping she’d speak to him. She didn’t. But as she passed, she slipped a folded note into his hand. No words. Just a drawing—a single leaf, half-shadowed, half-lit.

He stared at it for hours that night, wondering what it meant. Wondering if it was a beginning, or an end.