Chapter 11: Unspoken Things
535 Words
---
The next day, the air felt different—sharper, quieter. Like the world had paused to let Naya catch up with herself.
She found Elijah already waiting on the curb, sketchbook balanced on his knee, pencil between his teeth as he flipped pages.
“You survived therapy,” he said without looking up.
“Barely,” Naya muttered, dropping beside him. “The walls were too white. Too clean. Like they’d never seen someone break.”
He chuckled. “Most walls are liars.”
She leaned her head back, eyes to the sky. “She asked what I was scared of.”
“And?”
“I told her I was scared I’d forget how to feel anything that didn’t hurt.”
Elijah nodded slowly. “I get that.”
He closed his sketchbook, resting it on the ground beside them. “I didn’t always draw like this, you know.”
She glanced at him. “What changed?”
“My brother.”
Naya blinked. Elijah had never mentioned family before. He always talked like he existed in a vacuum—just him and his shadows.
“He died,” Elijah said, eyes far off. “Two years ago. Car crash. He was sixteen.”
Her breath caught.
“I used to draw cartoons. Dumb stuff. Comics with bad jokes. After he died, I couldn’t draw anything that smiled.”
They sat with that silence—heavy, respectful, real.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“I’m not,” Elijah replied, then looked at her. “Not anymore. I hated the pain at first. I thought it was ruining me. But now… it’s the only part of him I have left. If I let it go, it’s like he disappears too.”
Naya felt that deep. In the marrow of her loneliness. Grief wasn’t just sadness—it was memory’s last breath.
“Is that why you don’t talk about him?”
Elijah shrugged. “No one asks. No one really wants the real answer.”
“I do,” she said.
He turned to her, slowly. “And you?”
Naya hesitated. Then: “I used to think the world was supposed to break you. Now I’m not sure if it just watches while you break yourself.”
He nodded. “And you’re scared you’ll disappear before anyone notices.”
She swallowed. Hard. “Yeah.”
They didn’t touch. Didn’t hug. Didn’t cry.
But that afternoon, they shared something louder than all of those things—truth.
Before they parted ways, Elijah reached into his backpack and handed her a folded piece of paper.
“What’s this?”
“Something I drew. For you.”
When she got home, she opened it in the safety of her room. The drawing was simple: a girl sitting on a windowsill, looking out at the moon. But the moon had a face—it was listening.
At the bottom, in Elijah’s scratchy handwriting, were the words:
“You’re not invisible. I see you.”
---
That night, Naya wrote in her journal:
“Maybe broken people don’t need to be fixed.
Maybe we just need someone who sees the cracks—and stays anyway.”
---
- Writer
