“Still Here”

At school, you were the girl people looked at, then looked away from.

Not because you were mean. Not because you were loud. But because you were a ghost—quiet, always high, eyes low, slipping into class late if you showed up at all. You didn’t talk unless someone made you. You didn’t smile unless it was Kevin.

Everyone knew you were with him. But they didn’t understand it.

Kevin was… normal. Sweet. Funny when he felt like it. Teachers liked him. People noticed when he walked into a room. They wondered why he stayed so close to someone who looked like she was always about to disappear.

But Kevin never cared what people thought.

He’d hold your hand in the hallway, even when your sleeves were too long and your hair hadn’t been brushed. He’d walk you to your locker even if you didn’t have books. And he’d wait at your front step on the mornings you texted, “can’t do it today.”

He was the only thing that didn’t blur when you were high.

You sat in the back of English class most days, hoodie pulled over your head, staring at your desk while the teacher read poems out loud like they meant something. Kevin sat beside you. Always beside you.

One afternoon, as everyone filed out after the bell, you stayed seated, your face blank but your hands shaking slightly. Kevin noticed. He always noticed.

“Did you eat today?” he asked quietly.

You didn’t answer.

Instead, you leaned your head on his shoulder.

“I don’t think I want to come here anymore,” you said. Your voice was low and flat, like everything else inside you.

Kevin rested his chin on your head. “Then we’ll figure something out. You don’t have to do this alone.”

“I don’t have anyone else.”

“You have me.”

You blinked hard, trying not to cry. You hated crying at school. You hated feeling anything at school. It was easier to be numb. Easier to float.

“Do you ever wish you were someone else?” you asked.

Kevin was quiet for a second.

“Sometimes,” he said. “But then I think, if I were someone else… maybe I wouldn’t love you.”

That broke something open in your chest.

“I’m not good for you,” you whispered.

“That’s not your call to make,” he said, holding your hand beneath the desk where no one could see.

You didn’t say anything else. You just let him sit with you in the quiet. Not trying to fix you. Not running away. Just there—solid, patient, real.

Later, in the parking lot, as you leaned against his car with your hood pulled up and the sunset making everything look softer than it was, he handed you a pack of gum and said, “You smell like smoke, but I still like kissing you.”

You smiled, just a little. Enough that he saw it.

In a world that barely noticed you, Kevin did. In the blurry, heavy silence you lived in, he was the only thing that felt clear.

And sometimes, that was enough to keep going.