The Sea Of Tranquility

I wasn’t supposed to be here. Not in this town. Not in this school. Not in this version of myself. But here I was, walking down a hallway that stretched endlessly before me, lined with faces I didn’t recognize. Faces that didn’t know me, not really. And that was the point. The new girl. The silent one. The girl with shadows in her eyes and a history no one would ask about. At least, not directly. Delbrook High smelled like industrial floor wax and the stale remnants of adolescent boredom. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead like they were tired of their own existence. My steps were the only sound that seemed real in this hallway, each one echoing against the sterile walls. I moved slowly, my hood pulled up, fingers curled inside the sleeves of my oversized sweatshirt. I liked being shapeless. Edgeless. Harder to define. Locker 312. I didn’t need a map to find it. It stood alone, off to the side, next to a trophy case with a cracked pane of glass and a janitor’s closet that seemed to leak the scent of bleach every time someone passed. It was the kind of locker they gave to kids who didn’t matter yet. I didn’t open it. Instead, I leaned against it like it might open a different world, a world where I didn’t feel like I was pretending to be something human. My breath fogged slightly in the cool air of the hallway. A girl walked past with a stack of books, casting me a sideways glance, the kind that tried to look indifferent but carried a question all the same. I was used to those. Then, he appeared. Josh Bennett. He didn’t look like the others. No backpack slung over his shoulder. No earbuds buried in his ears. No expression, not really. Just a slow, measured walk, like he was always a second behind a life he didn’t want anymore. He passed me without hesitation, but his eyes slid toward mine for half a second, hazel with flecks of green, like late autumn leaves before they fall. I didn’t flinch. I didn’t look away. And neither did he. It wasn’t a romantic glance. It wasn’t even an acknowledgment. It was recognition. Two broken things, still walking. People said Josh was trouble. Not because he caused it, but because he attracted it. Like gravity. At fifteen, his parents died in a car crash. A year later, his grandmother, the last of his family, passed away in her sleep. By the time he was seventeen, he was alone—legally emancipated, somehow holding the edges of his life together with silence and sawdust. They said he built furniture in his garage, rarely spoke in class unless forced to, and that no one dared sit beside him at lunch because he never spoke twice to the same person. I’d read about boys like him in books. The brooding, mysterious type. But Josh wasn’t fiction. He was a scar walking on two feet. And for some reason, I couldn’t stop watching him. My first class was English Literature. It was small mercy, words used to mean something to me. Before. I slid into the last row, in the far corner by the window where sunlight did its best to fight through the grime on the glass. I opened my notebook, untouched. My pen hovered over the first line like it was a cliff I wasn’t ready to climb. Josh walked in five minutes after the bell rang. He didn’t explain himself. He didn’t apologize. He just moved to the far side of the room and sat one seat away from mine. Mrs. Langston, our teacher, raised an eyebrow but didn’t comment. I guess this was usual. I felt him. That’s the thing some people walk into a room and disappear. Josh walked in, and the air shifted around him. He didn’t make noise. He didn’t announce himself. But the space around him changed. He smelled faintly of cedar and soap. His hands were scarred, little slashes of untold stories that would never be shared. His hoodie was stained with paint, fraying at the edges. He looked less like a student in a desk and more like someone who had spent too much time working with his hands. I didn’t look at him. Not directly. But I noticed the way his pen tapped once every seven seconds. I counted. I memorized it. The rhythm of it gave my fingers something to hold onto, something to distract me from the noise in my head. Mrs. Langston began talking about Hamlet,about madness, about performance, and how grief could twist a person into something they didn’t recognize in the mirror. I stopped breathing for a moment. Not because I didn’t understand. Because I did. When class ended, Josh stood first. He walked past my desk, but this time he paused—just for a second. Without looking at me, he dropped a piece of paper onto the edge of my desk. Then he was gone. The note was small, torn from the edge of a page. The writing was blocky, not cursive. Not elegant. "You’re not the only ghost here." My heart thudded hard in my chest. I folded the note carefully and slipped it between the pages of my notebook, sitting still long after the room emptied. The buzz of conversation faded away as I let the words sink in. Not the only ghost. Lunch was a blur. I didn’t eat. I didn’t speak. I found a corner table in the back of the cafeteria, where the sounds of trays clattering and people laughing felt distant—like they were happening in another world entirely. Josh didn’t sit near me. He didn’t have to. That notesimple, blunt was already a match struck in the quiet dark. Some part of me knew it. This was going to be the beginning of something. Not beautiful. Not fairytale. But real. Real. And possibly dangerous. And maybe… that was exactly what I wanted. The weight of the note stayed with me throughout the day, a quiet reminder that I wasn’t as alone as I’d once believed. Josh had seen me. Really seen me. And I couldn’t figure out if I was grateful for it or terrified. As the final bell rang, signaling the end of the school day, I grabbed my bag and moved quickly through the hallways, avoiding eye contact with anyone. I was still the new girl, the silent one, the girl with ghosts in her eyes. But now, there was something else. A thread. Thin, fragile, but there. And somewhere, just beyond the edges of my self-made prison, I knew Josh was walking beside me. Not physically, not yet. But there.