The Unnoticed Pact
1003 Words
The library became my sanctuary.
It didn't have stained glass windows or whispered prayers, but it had silence. And sometimes, when the world inside me got too loud, silence felt like salvation.
He was always there.
Noah.
The boy with the storm eyes and a sketchbook like a shield.
I didn't know why I kept going back. Maybe I was searching for a reason not to vanish. Maybe I just didn't want to be alone with my own thoughts anymore. Maybe... I just wanted to be near someone who didn't expect me to fake being okay.
The first time I sat down across from him, he barely looked up.
But something shifted in the air between us.
Like two invisible wires had found each other and clicked.
There was no dramatic conversation. No confessions. No epiphany.
Just a shared, fragile silence that wrapped around us like a thread.
And that thread kept pulling me back.
We became familiar in the way sad people do — quietly, cautiously, without pressure. Like we both knew what it felt like to be held too tightly or let go too easily.
He never asked me why I looked like I hadn't slept in days.
I never asked him why his hands trembled when he thought no one was watching.
We just... were.
One day, I asked him what he was always drawing.
He looked down at his sketchbook, then turned it toward me.
It was a portrait of a girl standing in the rain, her skin transparent, her ribs visible through her chest, but instead of a heart, there was a paper crane folded inside her.
I stared at it until my eyes burned.
"Is that supposed to be me?" I whispered.
He didn't smile, but he nodded.
"You're not broken, Lena. Just delicate. And still trying to fly."
My throat closed. I wanted to say something — anything — but all the words got stuck.
No one had ever seen me that way before.
Not as fragile. Not as glass. But as something still alive, still reaching.
That night, I went home and didn't cry.
But I didn't smile either.
I just lay on my bed, eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling fan as it spun in slow, lazy circles.
And I wondered if maybe — just maybe — there were still parts of me worth keeping.
The next day, I wrote him something on the back of my class notes.
"I don't know if I believe in healing. But I think maybe I believe in you."
I folded it and slid it to him across the table.
He didn't read it right away — just tucked it inside the cover of his sketchbook like it was something sacred.
The days that followed blurred together.
Class, library, Noah.
Repeat.
He started texting me at night.
Nothing heavy. Just random thoughts.
Noah: "Do you ever feel like you're made of glass and the world keeps slamming doors?"
Me: "Yeah. Except the doors are in my own head."
Noah: "Same."
We talked about nothing and everything.
What songs made us feel safe.
What dreams we forgot.
What nightmares never went away.
I told him about the weight in my chest that never lifted.
He told me about the voice in his head that said he wasn't enough.
We didn't fix each other.
We didn't try.
We just let each other exist.
Once, I asked him what he would do if he could disappear.
"Disappear like run away?" he asked.
"No. Disappear like... vanish. Be gone. No more pain. No more pretending."
He was quiet for a long time. Then he said:
"I think about it more than I should. But then I remember you. And that helps me stay."
It shattered something inside me.
Because I didn't think I was worth staying for.
And now someone was saying I was.
But the thing about depression is that it's cruel.
It doesn't let you keep the good things.
It whispers that the light isn't real.
That it's borrowed. That it will leave like everything else.
And part of me believed it.
Because even as Noah gave me something to hold onto, I could feel the dark pulling at my ankles again.
And I was so tired of treading water.
That night, I took out my journal.
I'd ripped out the page with my goodbye letter weeks ago, but I remembered the list.
"Things I need to do before I go."
I started a new one.
Clean my room.
Return my books.
Give Noah my last poem.
Make it look like an accident.
Don't let anyone find me first.
I stared at the words until they blurred.
This wasn't rage. Or despair.
It was stillness. The kind that settles just before the end.
Like watching the tide pull back and knowing the wave is coming.
The next morning, I showered.
Washed my hair for the first time in a week.
Put on mascara so no one would ask questions.
I smiled at my mom. Told her I loved her.
She looked surprised.
I guess I don't say it enough.
At school, I laughed with a classmate.
They told me I looked "better."
And that's the trick.
If you wear the mask long enough, people stop looking underneath.
In the library, Noah was already there.
I sat down, pretending everything was normal.
I didn't tell him that my mind was unraveling thread by thread.
Instead, I asked:
"Do you think people know when you're planning it?"
He looked at me, startled.
"Planning what?"
I shook my head and smiled.
"Never mind."
He didn't press.
And I hated how relieved I was by that.
We talked about music. About a movie neither of us wanted to see.
About how winter always feels like forever.
He showed me a sketch of two people underwater, tied together by a red string.
Their faces were peaceful. Their eyes closed.
"It's called 'Still Breathing,'" he said.
I nodded.
And swallowed the lump in my throat.
- Writer
