Chapter Eleven: Unsent Messages
877 Words
The room was dark except for the soft glow of her phone screen. Alina lay curled beneath her blanket, eyes heavy but mind restless.
The house had long since gone quiet, yet the silence only seemed to press more tightly around her chest. Sleep refused to come.
She unlocked her phone and opened her messages. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard before she typed:
Alina: Are you awake?
Three dots appeared. Then disappeared.
She waited.
Five minutes passed. Nothing.
With a sigh, she scrolled back through her conversation with Silas. Message after message filled the screen—most of them hers. A few were from him, curt and sparse. It stung more tonight than ever.
She reread his last text, sent weeks ago.
Silas: I guess I’ll see you around.
That was during finals week. Even then, it wasn’t a proper reply to what she had sent: a long paragraph about missing him, about hoping he was okay, about how her days felt a little less bearable without seeing him at school.
She remembered the beginning, when he had just started courting her. His messages back then were frequent. Short, but warm. There were even emojis once. He’d show up behind the school during break just to walk her to class. He would brush a strand of hair from her face and say, “You’re kind of a mess, you know that?” But the corners of his lips would curl up like it was a compliment.
But lately, it was as though he forgot she existed.
Still, she couldn’t let go. Not yet.
She typed again.
Alina: I miss you.
Then she stared at the screen, finger hovering over the send button.
She didn’t press it.
Instead, she locked the phone and placed it face down on her chest.
The silence didn’t go away. It deepened.
She turned on her side and tried to breathe deeply. Maybe if she could think about something else, anything else—but the only images that came were fragments of memories with Silas. The way he avoided her eyes during school. The way he brushed past her in the hallway like she was just another girl. The way he only ever held her hand when no one else was looking.
Was it always like this?
Had he ever truly wanted her?
A part of her wanted to end it. She could say goodbye, delete the messages, erase his number. She could be free of the quiet ache in her chest every time he didn’t respond, every time she waited in vain behind the school for a meeting that never came.
But she didn’t want to let go of the only thing that ever felt like hers.
And even if it was a cold love, at least it was hers.
Until it wasn’t.
Her chest tightened. The pain started as a dull throb behind her ribs, then quickly intensified. She gritted her teeth and curled inward, clutching her stomach. Her breath came out in shallow gasps.
Not now. Not tonight.
But it was happening again.
She had pushed through so many flare-ups before, but tonight her body rebelled. Heat crawled up her spine, sweat dampened her temples. Her fingers trembled as she reached for the drawer beside her bed, pulling out a bottle of pills prescribed for the worst nights.
She took two and lay back, willing herself to calm down. The agony was familiar, but it didn’t hurt less. It never did.
Tears slipped down the sides of her face, soaking into her pillow. She hated this. She hated the loneliness. She hated how she had to hide this from everyone—how she’d convinced herself that silence was strength, that her pain didn’t deserve a voice.
Her phone buzzed once. Hope surged, and she grabbed it.
But it wasn’t Silas.
A spam notification.
She dropped the phone back onto the bed, more gently than she wanted to.
Then she pulled her diary from beneath the mattress, the leather cover worn smooth from her fingers. She flipped to the last page and started to write.
Dear diary,
It hurts tonight. Not just my body, but everything. I wish I could tell someone. I wish I could scream. But there’s no one who would listen—not really.
Not without pity.
And I don’t want pity.
Silas doesn’t text me back anymore. I think I’ve known for a while that I was the only one holding this together. But I can’t let go yet. It’s stupid, isn’t it?
How you can cling to someone even when they make you feel invisible?
My body is a battlefield. Every night, I lose a little more. I want to rest. I want to be held. I want someone to fight for me.
But maybe that’s too much to ask.
I’m so tired.
—Alina.
She closed the journal and held it close, like it could shield her from the pain. Her eyes finally began to flutter shut, exhaustion winning over agony.
She didn’t hear her mother walk past her room. Didn’t hear the house creak. Didn’t see the moonlight settle over her face like a quiet, pale benediction.
In her dreams, someone held her.
But when morning came, she would wake to silence.
Again.
- Writer
