Chapter 9-THE DAYS YOU DIDN'T COME
613 Words
The almond tree waited.
But she didn’t.
Tara didn’t show up on Monday.
Or Tuesday.
Or even Wednesday.
No message.
No note in the locker.
Not even a glance in class.
Tyler felt it first as irritation. Maybe she was still mad about Tonia
But by the third day, it wasn’t just irritation.
It was ache.
He watched her from across the room.
She didn’t laugh with her friends. She barely spoke at all.
Eyes tired. Skin pale.
Something was wrong.
By Thursday, he tried to catch her before she left school. She walked fast , but this time, he followed.
“Tara! ” he called. “Wait , please.”
She stopped.
Turned.
But didn’t smile.
“Where’ve you been?” he asked, breath short from trying to catch up with her . “You haven’t come to the tree. You haven’t even..........”
“I’ve been here,” she said simply.
“Not with me.”
She looked away.
His voice lowered.
“Are you okay?”
She gave him a smile. The kind that looked like it had been sewn on, too tight at the edges.
“I’m tired.”
That night, Tyler found himself drawing again. Not for her. Not for school.
Just… to cope.
He sketched her eyes the way they looked in class distant, like they were seeing something far beyond the room.
He sketched the almond tree.
He sketched the empty space beside him.
Then he added a sentence beneath the sketch:
“This is what it feels like when the silence is your fault.”
By Friday, she wasn’t in school.
And this time, it wasn’t just skipping the tree.
She was gone.
No one knew where. Her friends just said she was “resting.” That she hadn’t been feeling well.
But Tyler… he felt the panic crawl into his lungs.
He wrote a note anyway.
“I miss you.
Not the quiet version of you.
Not the strong, guarded, barely-here version.
I miss the version that looked at me like I mattered.
If I messed that up…
please let me find a way back.”
He slid it into her locker.
Waited.
No reply.
By Sunday, he was at her gate.
He didn’t even know he remembered her address but he did. From one time, weeks ago, when she offhandedly mentioned a yellow gate with peeling paint.
He stood there, nervous, with his sketchbook clutched like it held an apology he didn’t know how to say.
Then the door opened.
And it wasn’t her.
It was her mum.
She looked at him, surprised. Then her face softened. “You’re Tyler?”
He nodded.
She stepped aside slowly. “She’s inside. You can go in.”
He walked in, heartbeat thudding.
And then he saw her , curled on the couch, blanket over her knees, a hot water bottle pressed to her stomach.
Her eyes widened.
“Tara…”
She sat up slowly. “Why are you.....?”
“I didn’t know,” he said, rushing over. “You just disappeared. I thought, I didn’t know if you were okay.”
“I wasn’t,” she said softly. “Not really.”
“Is it… serious?”
She shook her head. “Just a breakdown. I’ve been overworking. Thinking too much. Feeling too much. My body decided to shut down before I did.”
Silence.
Then he pulled out the sketchbook.
Opened to the page with the empty almond tree.
She looked at it , and finally, truly smiled.
Small. Sad. But real.
“Sit,” she said.
So he did.
For the first time in days, the silence between them was warm again.
- Writer
