The engine murmured dully, as if it too resented waking up. The morning was cold— silent, tense, like breath held before a tear. Elija sat inside an old, faded blue Volvo — the same one her father used to drive.
His scent still lingered in memory — pine, gasoline, and something else. Silence. The kind that only lives in what is gone.
Five minutes earlier.
Warmth filled the kitchen. The scent of toasted bread and raspberry jam hung in the air. Her grandmother, wrapped in a thick, faded sweater, stood by the sink. The sleeves kept slipping off her wrists — like time.
"Eggs for breakfast, Elija?"
her voice was soft, worn with years.
"No, thanks. Just coffee. And... a spoon of jam,"
Elija smiled — not out of joy, but out of habit.
Sometimes, a smile becomes a shield when words no longer change anything.
"You look beautiful today," her grandmother said gently. "Your mother would be proud."
The air cracked open with silence.
Mom. Dad. They were like a Saturday that never came back. A journey that never made it home.
Elija nodded. Nothing needed to be said. Her grandmother had long understood — not talking about it wasn't about denial. It was about the pain being too much.
"If you ever—" Grandma began.
"I know. You're always there," Elija whispered.
She slipped on her jacket, grabbed her coffee thermos, and stepped toward the door. She paused, as if words hovered at the back of her throat. But the morning air was too thick for them to pass.
—
The car windows fogged over. A soft song played on the radio. Elija didn't catch the melody, only one line:
> "If the morning never comes back, would you still wait for it?"
The road to school was familiar. But today — it felt foreign. Maybe it was the light. Maybe it was what waited ahead.
The schoolyard was half-empty.
A thin veil of mist still clung to the treetops, heavy and slow, as if even the fog wasn't ready to leave yet.
Elija stepped out of the car. She pulled on her old, soft jacket — not warm, not new, but hers.
It didn't matter how she looked when her insides felt even more worn than the fabric brushing against her skin.
"Ah, there she is — my favorite melancholic witch!"
Elija smiled, a small one, but real.
Lorena.
She always appeared like wind — sudden, unexpected, but gentle. As if she could sense exactly when silence was needed… and when a little warm chaos was better.
"Morning, Lore," Elija murmured. "Late again? Like two trains with no tracks?"
"I'm late on principle," Lorena said dramatically, flinging her arms like she was on a theater stage. "My soul doesn't run on schedules."
"And you," she added, "look like you just woke up from a five-century nap."
"Thanks. It's my most poetic form of depression," Elija replied dryly.
They laughed — not loudly, but honestly.
In that tiny crack of laughter, for a second, everything felt... okay.
—
The classroom windows were fogged over, lined with delicate frost like veins on old glass.
Outside, the sun was only beginning to rise — bleeding soft gold over the edge of the rooftops, struggling to warm a world that still felt half-asleep.
Elija slipped into her usual seat. Third from the back. Always the same.
There was safety in repetition. In invisibility.
From the side of the classroom, things felt less harsh. Less loud. Like watching life through a window rather than sitting in its center.
Her desk was cold to the touch. The air inside still carried the bite of morning, and the radiator clicked uselessly beneath the windowsill.
She exhaled quietly, pressing her fingers into the edge of her textbook.
The spine cracked open like it, too, didn't want to face another day.
The classroom door swung open with purpose.
Ms. Rima stepped in — tall, wiry, her hair pinned up like she'd done it in the car, but her posture straight as ever. Her heels clicked across the floor in rapid rhythm, familiar and oddly comforting.
"Good morning, class," she called, cheerful in that determined way adults often were before 9 a.m. "Today, we're traveling to the Amazon Rainforest.
Well — in our minds, anyway."
She thwacked a rolled-up map against the board. The sound echoed slightly in the half-awake room.
From behind her textbook, Lorena leaned over to Elija and whispered, "Do you think she still lives in, like, 2005?"
Elija's lips tugged into a small smile. Not because the joke was funny, but because laughter was armor.
And Lorena was the only person who handed her pieces of it when her own felt too dented to wear.
"Now," Ms. Rima continued, unrolling the map with the enthusiasm of someone trying to wake up a room full of ghosts, "who can tell me why the Amazon is so important to our planet's climate?"
Silence.
Then Elija, almost automatically, lifted her hand. It rose slower than she meant to — like her bones had to remember how to move.
"Because it's the biggest source of oxygen?" she offered.
"Close," Ms. Rima nodded. "It helps regulate the climate of the entire Earth. Thousands of species live there — many still undiscovered.
And like some people," she paused, tapping the map lightly, "they prefer to stay hidden."
Like some people.
The words struck Elija deeper than she expected.
They rang in her mind, distant and close at the same time — like hearing your name in a dream.
Was she one of them?
Maybe she wasn't just hiding.
Maybe she had already disappeared.
—
The bell rang too loud.
Chairs scraped back across the floor. Voices filled the room like water rising too fast. Everyone moved. Spoke. Existed.
Elija gathered her things slowly, hands slightly stiff from sitting still too long.
In the hallway, Lorena caught up beside her.
"Hey," she said softly. "You doing okay today? You seem... different."
Elija kept walking.
"I didn't sleep much," she muttered. "I'm fine."
But Lorena didn't say anything.
She just looked at her. And Elija felt it — that quiet gaze. Not heavy, not judging. Just… present.
The kind of silence that knows more than it should.
The cafeteria buzzed with movement. Trays clattered, chairs screeched, laughter spilled and overlapped like broken glass.
Voices rose and fell, tangled in a current Elija never tried to fight — just float through.
She stood in line with her tray pressed close to her chest. The food ahead looked... suspicious.
"Spaghetti," she murmured under her breath. "Or something pretending to be."
A voice chimed in behind her. "Take both. That way, you've got at least one weapon."
Lorena.
Elija didn't need to turn around. She smiled — a real one, soft at the edges.
Lorena always arrived like the wind: sudden, playful, necessary.
They collected their food and drifted to their usual table — third from the left, by the window. Always by the window. The view outside was nothing special: a handful of brittle trees and a patchy lawn where autumn had collapsed without ceremony. But Elija liked the way the wind moved through it, how the leaves skittered across the pavement like they were trying to run away.
They sat.
The tray in front of Elija held a limp clump of pasta and a slice of bread that looked like it had lost the will to be bread. Still, it was warm. And today, that was enough.
Lorena was the first to speak.
"So… how are you?" she asked, voice quieter this time. It wasn't the usual casual check-in. It had weight. A pause inside it.
Elija hesitated.
Words came slowly these days — as if her thoughts had to cross some great river before reaching her mouth.
"I don't know," she said finally. "Everything feels... like fog. But not terrible, I guess."
Lorena nodded, picking at her food.
"My brother was screaming Linkin Park in the shower again," she said with a grin. "Truly spiritual. I think he summoned a ghost."
Elija laughed — quick, sharp, involuntary. The kind that escaped before her sadness could catch it.
For a moment, they were safe.
Between the noise and the chaos, they had carved out a space that belonged only to them — an invisible island floating in a cafeteria full of strangers.
Then Elija's voice softened. Her eyes lingered on the window as if searching for something.
"I have a weird feeling today," she murmured. "Like something's going to happen. Something big."
Lorena glanced at her, studying her expression.
"Maybe it's the new English teacher," she said. "Heard she's strict. And, apparently… hot."
Elija blinked, caught off guard by how that word landed.
Hot.
She wasn't sure why it made her stomach flutter.
"I don't care," she muttered, eyes lowering.
But she said it too quickly. And not convincingly enough.
Lorena didn't press. She just smirked and stabbed her fork into the lifeless spaghetti.
"You will."