It was easier to stay busy.

Nancy buried herself in investigations, camera film, theories scribbled in the margins of her notebooks. Anything to avoid the truth gnawing at her Barb was gone, and she hadn’t been able to save her. Guilt clung like a shadow, even in daylight. Her smile didn’t reach her eyes anymore, and her voice was sharper than it used to be.

That’s when she noticed you.

You were quiet in class, kept mostly to yourself, someone Nancy had barely paid attention to before just another face in the background. But grief sharpens your senses, makes you notice the softness in silence, the steadiness in someone who doesn’t push or pry.

You never asked her to talk about Barb. You just offered a kind of presence that didn’t demand anything in return.

At first, Nancy mistook her fascination with you for distraction. A convenient break from everything weighing her down. But it wasn’t that. It was the way your hand brushed against hers when passing a textbook. The way you smiled at her when you thought she wasn’t looking. The way Nancy found herself looking forward to sitting beside you more than she looked forward to anything else lately.

She hated how much she wanted that.

Because wanting you meant acknowledging something deeper. Something she’d buried for years beneath expectations, boyfriends, the idea of what a “normal” girl was supposed to want. It wasn’t supposed to be you she dreamed about when she closed her eyes. It wasn’t supposed to be your voice that calmed her when the nightmares came.

But it was.

One afternoon after school, the two of you sat on the bleachers behind the gym, legs swinging, sun warm on your backs. She had told you she was tired. You didn’t press her for more. That’s what made her want to say everything.

“My best friend…” she started, eyes fixed on a crack in the concrete. “She’s gone. And I still feel like it’s my fault.”

You didn’t flinch. You didn’t feed her comforting lies. You just nodded, softly, and said, “It’s okay not to be okay yet.”

That was the first time Nancy looked at someone and didn’t feel the need to be strong.

And later, when your pinky found hers and hooked there without asking, she didn’t pull away.

For the first time since Barb disappeared, she felt like she could breathe again.