Some memories don't fade. They just rot louder.
He was eleven when the world first taught him silence could bruise.
Snow soaked through the knees of his jeans as they forced him down again. A half-ripped sketchbook lay beside him, its pages caught in the wind like a dying bird. Pencil lines smeared into oblivion, erased by boots and spit.
Laughter echoed across the schoolyard. Not playful. Predatory.
"Draw this, freak," one of them said, snatching his scarf and jerking it tight around his neck. His head snapped back. His vision blurred. Somewhere between pain and humiliation, he stopped feeling entirely.
No teachers. No rescuers. Just echoes and bruises.
Later, at home, when he came through the door with a split lip and shaking hands, his father didn't look up from his newspaper.
"You probably deserved it."
That hurt more than any punch.
I woke up gasping. Like something invisible had just ripped the air out of my lungs and left me choking on nothing.
My chest ached. My hands were shaking. Sweat drenched my hoodie, which I was still wearing like a second skin I never wanted.
I didn't scream. I never scream. I just… stared at the ceiling until my heartbeat stopped sounding like a war drum in my ears.
Another morning. Another panic attack. Ten outta ten. Would recommend.
I peeled myself off the mattress—no frame, no blankets, just a faded cover I never washed—and wandered into the tiny-ass bathroom attached to my room.
There I was. In all my cracked-mirror glory.
Tall. Pale. Half-dead eyes. My hair was a mess of black waves that fell past my ears and did whatever the hell it wanted, kind of like me. There was a thin mustache on my lip, a lazy goatee starting to form on my chin, and a permanent case of "I stopped giving a damn in 2018."
I looked like I could be a Calvin Klein model if the shoot was titled Hot, Broken, and Sleep-Deprived.
Lean muscles. Faint scars. Bruises I stopped bothering to explain.
"Lookin' good, champ," I muttered to the mirror, my voice hoarse. "Dead inside is the new sexy."
I reached for a cigarette, lit it with a match that came from a bar I was definitely too young to be in, and cracked the window. Cold air punched me in the face immediately.
The sky outside was doing that soft pastel thing it does here—shades of pink and blue blending into the white of the snow. Trees dusted with frost. Mountains in the distance like sleeping gods. Rivers snaking between valleys like glass veins.
It was beautiful. Like, actually beautiful. Too bad I couldn't feel it.
"If this day doesn't kill me," I exhaled, "I might just give it a head start."
I skipped breakfast. Again. Not because of some deep philosophical belief, but because I didn't feel like hearing my dad breathe.
I slung my sketchbook into my bag, pulled on a jacket with more holes than fabric, and headed out into the bitter-ass morning.
Our little town in Alaska wasn't bad-looking. Actually, it was kinda jaw-dropping. Forests stretching like green oceans. Mountains stabbing the sky. Rivers that glittered even when they froze over. Problem was, beauty doesn't mean much when your insides feel like a haunted house.
I lit another cigarette on the way down the dirt road leading to the main street. Most people in town knew me by now. The weird kid. The one who always sat alone, drawing stuff no one asked for.
I didn't mind.
It was easier being alone. Safer. Quieter.
I ended up skipping school altogether and walking to the bridge near the edge of town. It wasn't a big bridge. Just a narrow thing over the river. But the view from there was... perfect. Like a Bob Ross painting with mental illness sprinkled in.
I sat down on the rail and pulled out my sketchbook.
And that's when I saw her.
A girl.
Standing at the edge of the bridge.
Toes poking over.
Arms crossed. Shoulders trembling. Like she was fighting gravity.
She looked like she hadn't slept in days. Hell, I recognized that look.
It was the same one I wore every morning.
I dropped my pencil.
"Hey!" I called out, sliding off the railing so fast I nearly busted my ass. "You—uh, you good? Because unless you're auditioning for an emo Disney reboot, this looks a little intense."
She didn't laugh.
Didn't turn.
Didn't even flinch.
So I walked. Slowly. Cautiously. Like approaching a deer that might bolt or bite.
"Look," I said, voice softer now. "I get it. Life sucks, the world's on fire, and people are trash. But if you're thinking what I think you're thinking… maybe wait until after you try Alaskan fried salmon. It's the only good thing here."
She turned.
Dark eyes. Tear-streaked cheeks. Black hoodie. Raven hair tangled by the wind.
She looked at me like I was either her savior or just another idiot.
Maybe both.
"You always open with fish jokes?" she said.
"Only for the pretty girls on bridges."
And for the first time in what felt like forever, she smiled.
Just a little.
But enough to make me think maybe, just maybe, this day wasn't gonna kill me after all.
She didn't say anything after that smile. Just turned her eyes back to the river like she was waiting for it to speak first.
I stayed where I was close enough she knew I wouldn't leave, far enough not to crowd her. People like us... we don't do well with closeness right away. Gotta earn it. Inch by painful inch.
"You come up here a lot?" I asked.
She gave a dry laugh. "This your usual pickup line?"
"Nah. Normally I go with 'Hey, wanna trauma-bond over coffee?' but the bridge vibe felt more… intimate."
That got a tiny smirk. Barely there. Like a flicker of warmth in a freezer. But I caught it.
"What's your name?" I asked, squinting against the cold wind that whipped through us.
She hesitated. Like even that was a risk. But eventually, she said, "Raven."
Of course it was.
"I'm Eli," I said. "Eli Winters. Yes, like the depressing season and yes, I live up to the name."
"Noted," she said softly.
A silence stretched between us. Not the awkward kind. The heavy, quiet kind that feels like it means something. Like both of us were standing on the edge of some invisible cliff neither of us knew how to describe.
"I wasn't gonna jump," she said after a while, her voice low. "I just wanted to see what it felt like. Being that close."
I nodded, not pushing. I knew that feeling too well. The wanting to almost die. The flirtation with the fall. Not the impact just the idea that maybe you could disappear, and the world wouldn't even blink.
"I come here for the same reason," I admitted. "Well, that and the view. Makes you feel small. Like maybe your problems can get lost in all that open space."
She finally looked at me again. Really looked. Her eyes weren't just dark they were stormy. Like they held secrets and screams, locked up in silence.
"You're weird," she said.
I grinned. "Takes one to know one."
A gust of wind hit us. Hard. She shivered and hugged herself tighter.
I pulled off my jacket, ignoring the sting of the cold, and held it out. "Here."
She blinked. "You'll freeze."
"I'm already emotionally frozen. What's a little hypothermia?"
She didn't take it at first. But then, slowly, she did. Slid it on like she wasn't sure she deserved it. Like kindness was a language she'd forgotten how to speak.
It swallowed her. My jacket was too big for her tiny frame. But it looked right. Like maybe it was always supposed to be hers.
She glanced at me, then at the sky, then back at the river.
"I don't know why I stopped," she whispered. "I didn't plan on stopping."
"Maybe you just needed someone to see you."
Another silence.
Then, barely audible: "Thanks for seeing me, Eli."
"Thanks for not jumping, Raven."
We stood there a little longer, side by side, not saying anything.
Just breathing.
Existing.
Together.
And for the first time in a long time, I didn't feel like a ghost.
We eventually left the bridge, not because the cold got too brutal or because either of us wanted to, but because the silence had done its job. It said everything we didn't know how to say yet.
Raven kept my jacket. I didn't ask for it back.
We walked side by side down the frozen path toward town. Her footsteps were quiet, almost ghost-like, but they matched mine. Like she was learning my rhythm, or maybe I was learning hers.
"Do you usually skip school too?" she asked, her voice finally cutting through the crunch of snow beneath our boots.
"Only when I want to avoid a nervous breakdown in third period," I said casually. "So, y'know, like four times a week."
She laughed. Not a full-on laugh. More like the sound someone makes when they remember how laughing used to feel. But I'll take it.
"What about you?" I asked. "You from here?"
She shook her head. "Just moved last month. My mom thinks changing zip codes fixes mental illness. Spoiler alert: it doesn't."
"Oh, I know that game. My dad moved us here after my mom left. Thought fresh air and 'small-town values' would clean out whatever demons I had. Joke's on him. The demons packed first."
She looked at me like I'd just translated a language only she spoke. "You don't talk like other people."
"Yeah," I said. "It's a side effect of being a little too broken to function normally. You either drown in silence or get really good at saying weird shit to stay afloat."
She nodded like she understood that on a cellular level. Like she was that.
We passed a frozen pond. The surface was glassy and cracked in places, like a metaphor just waiting to happen.
"You ever skate?" I asked.
She raised a brow. "Do I look coordinated?"
I looked her up and down dramatically. "You look like the kind of person who'd do a triple axel just to crash on purpose."
She grinned. "Exactly."
We paused near the pond. She sat on a bench dusted with snow, and I joined her, brushing off a spot with my sleeve.
"So what do you draw?" she asked, eyeing my sketchbook poking out of my bag.
I hesitated. Then handed it over.
She flipped through the pages slowly. I watched her face instead of the drawings—always more interesting to see someone feel art than just stare at it.
There were portraits. Landscapes. Weird mashups of nightmares and fairytales. One page had a girl with broken wings stitched together with thread. Another had a faceless boy screaming into a jar full of stars.
"This one," she said, pointing to the winged girl, "is me."
"Funny," I said, "I thought it was me."
We looked at each other.
And I swear to God, in that moment, I felt something I hadn't felt in years.
Seen.
Not pitied. Not studied. Just understood. Like someone cracked open my ribs and peeked inside without flinching.
She handed the book back gently, like it was something sacred. "You're really good."
"Yeah, well. Practice and trauma are a hell of a combo."
She smiled again. Less sad this time. Still small. But real.
"You wanna hang out again?" I asked before I could overthink it.
She didn't even pause. "Yeah. I do."
And just like that, the world tilted a little.
Didn't fix itself. Didn't turn magical. But it shifted. Enough to notice.
Enough to make me think maybe the next day wouldn't be just another rerun of misery
We didn't head back right away. The town was in no rush to see us, and honestly, I wasn't in a rush to return to a house with more ghosts than furniture.
She walked with her hands shoved deep in the jacket pockets, and I watched her out of the corner of my eye. Her lips were a little chapped. Her hoodie sleeves frayed. She kept glancing down at her shoes like they had answers.
"I didn't think anyone would be there," she said suddenly.
"At the bridge?"
She nodded, kicking a bit of snow as we moved.
"Yeah," I said. "Neither did I."
It wasn't awkward silence after that. It was just… quiet. Comfortable. Like the kind of silence that only happens when two people have seen the same kind of darkness and stopped pretending it wasn't real.
The town came back into view through the frost-glazed trees—wooden signs with peeling paint, distant smoke from chimneys curling into the sky like prayers nobody believed in anymore. Our version of civilization.
She slowed her pace when the first houses appeared. I did too.
"Do you always walk this way?" she asked.
"Only on days I feel like dying a little less," I replied.
She didn't laugh this time. She just nodded like that made perfect sense.
"Where do you live?" I asked.
She hesitated. "Near that gas station with the broken sign."
"Oh, the one that always smells like regret and expired burritos?"
"That's the one."
We stopped at a fork in the road, where the snow had been stomped down by boots and tire tracks. I could see my own house from here—barely. Just the edge of the roof and the chimney coughing out smoke like it hated itself.
"I should…" she started, but didn't finish.
"Yeah," I said. "Me too."
Neither of us moved.
"Hey," I added, before she could turn away. "You didn't do it."
She blinked at me.
"Jump. You didn't do it. That's something."
She looked down at the snow. Then back at me.
"You showed up," she whispered. "That's something too."
And just like that, she was gone. Walking down her path, hands in the sleeves of a borrowed jacket, her figure shrinking into the snowfall.
I stood there for a minute. Maybe two.
And for the first time in forever, I didn't feel completely alone.
I turned and headed home, still cold, still tired, still haunted… but with this strange flicker inside me. Like someone lit a match in a dark room I'd stopped checking a long time ago.
Maybe tomorrow, I'd see her again.
Maybe tomorrow, I'd have a reason to wake up.