FIXING WOUNDS

THE FRIEND I NEEDED

Ivy stood at the front of the class, hands trembling behind her back.

Twenty-eight eyes. Twenty-eight silent judgments.

She could feel them weighing her, measuring her, deciding if she was worth talking to or worth ignoring. Ivy had gotten used to the ignoring. It hurt less.

Then she saw her.

A girl in the third row, dark braids pulled back with a red scrunchie, staring straight at Ivy. Not with pity. Not with curiosity. With a small, crooked smile. Like she knew something Ivy didn’t.

Ivy immediately looked away.

She didn’t do friends. Especially not girls like that — the kind who looked confident, loud, maybe even a little rude. The kind who would use your secrets as lunchroom gossip by Tuesday.

Ivy gave her one-line introduction and sat back down. Her voice cracked halfway through. Nobody noticed. Or if they did, they didn’t care.

After her, the same girl stood up.

“Hi. I’m Meta Okoro. I just moved here from Gary.”

Gary. Ivy’s hometown.

The words hit her like a cold splash of water. Same hometown. Same accent hiding under the Chicago one. Same broken roads, same corner store with the flickering neon sign.

Ivy played it cool. She crossed her arms and stared at the desk. _So what?_ Same hometown didn’t mean same heart. She wasn’t making friends with anyone here. Not again.

---

A few days later, the class was called out to the stairwell for uniform measurements. Ivy didn’t hear it. She had her head down on the desk, half-asleep, trying to shut out the noise.

A shadow fell over her desk.

“Hey. Have you measured yet?”

Ivy looked up. It was Zara.

“No,” Ivy mumbled, letting her head drop back down.

“We were called out to measure,” Zara said, nudging her desk lightly. “Come on. You don’t want Ms. Peterson yelling at you.”

Ivy sighed and stood up.

As they walked to the stairwell, Zara asked, “Are you scared?”

Ivy blinked. “Yes. A little.”

“Why? Because of your boobs?” Zara grinned.

“No.” Ivy stopped walking. The question caught her off guard. No one had ever asked her that so directly. No one had ever cared enough to ask.

Zara just shrugged. “Fair.”

That was it. No follow-up. No teasing. No “you’re weird.” Just _fair_.

And for the first time in years, Ivy felt seen. Not pitied. Not judged. Just… seen.

They took their measurements together. Then they walked back to class together. Then they sat together at lunch. Then they started buying plantain chips from the canteen together.

It was small at first. Normal classmates stuff. Nothing serious.

But slowly, it became everything.

They sat together in every class. They rode the same bus home. They collected their uniforms together, even got matching sportswear without planning it. People started calling them “Ivy and Zara” like it was one word.

Ivy told herself she wasn’t getting attached. She told herself it was just convenient.

But when Zara laughed at her terrible math joke, Ivy laughed too. For real. The kind of laugh that made her stomach hurt.

When Zarwa shared her umbrella in the rain, Ivy didn’t pull away.

When Zara said, “You’re quiet, but you’re not boring,” Ivy believed her.

Ivy got attached. Badly. More than Zara, if she was being honest. Meta was cool, steady, like a rock. Ivy was like a river — always moving, always scared she’d overflow and flood everything.

But with Zara, she didn’t feel like she’d flood.

They became best friends within the first semester. The kind of best friends who finish each other’s sentences. The kind who save each other a seat without asking.

---

Then finals came.

They wrote the exams, and school shut down for a long break. Three weeks with no alarms, no classrooms, no Meta.

Ivy thought she’d be fine. She thought she was stronger now.

She was wrong.

Three days into the break, the sickness hit her like a truck. Not a cold. Not a fever. That heavy, crushing weight in her chest. The panic that made her hands shake and her vision blur. The kind that made her think, _This is it. This is how I die._

She lay in bed, sheets stuck to her skin, phone clutched in her hand.

Her mom knocked once, said “Take your medicine,” and left.

Her step-siblings were loud downstairs. Her dad was watching TV.

Nobody noticed. Nobody cared.

But in the middle of it all, one thought kept repeating in her head like a prayer:

_I want to see Zara. I need to see Zara. I really need to see her._

Zara was the only person who made the world feel less blue.

Zara was the only person Ivy wanted when everything went dark.