The lunchroom buzzed, loud with trays clattering and laughter echoing off concrete walls. Johnny sat with his lads — Gibsie, Joey, Hughie, and Feely — half-listening, half-looking across the room where she always sat.

Lizzie’s twin.

The quiet one. The one who hadn’t spoken since Caoimhe died. The one who moved like a ghost through school halls. Who hadn’t smiled — not once — in over a year.

Until now.

Johnny blinked, stunned.

It was small. Barely there. But it was real. A quick curve of her lips when she watched a pigeon waddle across the courtyard just beyond the cafeteria window.

Johnny couldn’t stop staring.

But someone else saw too.

“Are you kidding me?” Lizzie’s voice cut through the lunchroom like a blade.

Johnny turned just in time to see Lizzie, red-faced, storming across the tile floor toward her sister.

“You think now’s the time?” Lizzie’s voice cracked as she slammed her tray down on the table. “After everything?”

Her twin’s smile vanished. Her whole body stiffened.

“You don’t get to smile while I’ve been drowning!” Lizzie yelled, tears already falling. “You stopped talking, you stopped being, and you just left me here with nothing! You let me lose two sisters instead of one!”

Silence fell over the lunchroom like a dropped curtain.

Johnny was on his feet before he knew it, but he didn’t move forward. He didn’t want to make it worse.

Lizzie’s twin sat there, still frozen. Her hands curled in her lap. Her mouth parted like maybe — maybe — she might try to speak.

But she didn’t.

Lizzie wiped at her face, trembling.

“I needed you,” she whispered. “You were the only one who knew her like I did.”

Her twin's throat bobbed with a swallow.

Johnny stepped closer then, carefully, and placed a hand on the back of Lizzie’s twin’s chair — solid, quiet support.

Lizzie looked between them, shook her head, and backed away. “Forget it,” she said, voice barely audible now. “You already left.”

She turned and disappeared through the cafeteria doors.

The room remained silent.

Johnny didn’t speak. Just stood there beside the girl he’d loved for years — the girl who didn’t speak but said everything with her silence.

And in that moment, she finally looked at him.

Really looked.

And Johnny nodded.

He was still here.

Even if no one else knew how to stay.