DIARY OF IVY JAMES

September 5th

First day of high school. Yay.

Another building, same stares.

Everyone’s still talking. They don’t say it loud, but I can hear it anyway. That’s the girl whose house caught fire. That’s the girl whose mom never came back.

I want to scream. Or disappear. Maybe both.

Sat by myself at lunch. Not that I expected anything else.

DIARY OF EZRA MOON

September 5th

Saw Ivy today. First day and she already looks like she’s on a different planet. Not in a bad way. Just… alone.

She probably doesn’t remember me. We used to sit next to each other in 6th grade when I was the new girl and couldn’t figure out the cafeteria line. She gave me half her sandwich and said I looked “like the kind of girl who draws sad comics.”

She was right. I still do.

Thinking about writing her something. I don’t know. She looked like she needed a crack in the silence.

IVY JAMES

September 7th

I got a note in my locker.

It just said:

“Glass breaks. Storms crack glass wide open.”

No name. No clue.

But it made me feel something. I don’t know what yet.

It’s dumb but… I read it like five times. My hands were shaking. I told myself I was going to throw it away. But it’s folded inside my sketchbook now.

I keep looking around in class like I’ll catch someone watching me. Nobody ever is.

Except that girl with the cloud-hair and chunky headphones. I think she’s in my English class.

EZRA MOON

September 9th

She didn’t throw the note away.

She tucked it in her sketchbook like it was worth keeping. My stomach kind of flipped when I saw that.

I wrote another one. Still no name. Just:

“You don’t have to be whole to be real.”

I hope she gets it. I hope she doesn’t think it’s creepy. I just… I get it, you know? What it feels like to be quiet on purpose. To carry something sharp inside you and pretend it’s fine.

She’s not scary. She’s just scarred.

So am I.

IVY JAMES

September 11th

Another note today. I thought maybe it was a fluke last time. But now I know it’s not.

It said:

“You don’t have to be whole to be real.”

Who are you?

I don’t want to get my hopes up, but something about this makes my ribs ache in a good way.

Like maybe I’m not as invisible as I thought.

For the first time in a long time, I didn’t sit alone at lunch. I sat at the edge of the courtyard. And someone—headphones girl—sat three benches away. She didn’t say anything.

But she looked at me. And she smiled.