Danny always sat in the same place—third row from the back, by the window.

He didn’t talk much. Didn’t raise his hand. Teachers often glanced at him like they weren’t sure if he was listening or just… elsewhere. And most of the time, he was elsewhere.

He didn’t make friends easily. He flinched when people raised their voices, and sometimes he drifted off mid-sentence, like something inside him had taken over. Most people wrote him off. But you didn’t.

You noticed the way his fingers fidgeted with the fraying threads on his sleeve. How he always walked the long way around the courtyard, avoiding certain doors, certain people. How he looked like he was constantly trying to outrun something, even when he was sitting still.

You started small. A nod in the hallway. An extra seat saved at lunch. A shared cigarette behind the gym, even though you didn’t smoke.

He didn’t say much at first, but his eyes always lingered. Like he couldn’t figure out why you weren’t walking away.

“You don’t have to sit with me,” he muttered one day, eyes on the concrete.

You shrugged. “I know.”

And then you kept sitting with him.

Sometimes his voice would change—deeper, sharper, with a confidence that didn’t belong to the boy you sat next to in class. His posture would shift too, the way he carried himself, the way his eyes moved. You didn’t understand it then—not really. You didn’t know the word for it. But you never questioned him. Never asked why some days he was quiet and scared, and others he was bold, almost cocky. You just accepted it, like it was a part of him, because it was.

And late one night, on the rooftop outside the apartment building he barely called home, he finally looked at you and said, “You make the noise stop.”

You didn’t ask what he meant.

You just scooted closer, let your shoulder touch his, and said, “Then I’ll stay.”

And in a world that never stopped shifting beneath his feet, you were the one thing that didn’t.