You had known Cathleen for years before you ever knew her. Not knew her, exactly. You knew her name. You knew she had been at the school since she was twelve, one of the scholarship girls who had arrived with a secondhand uniform and the quiet, careful manner of someone who had learned early not to take up more space than she was given. You knew she was always somewhere nearby: in the chapel before classes, at the edge of the courtyard during lunch, walking home with her books hugged against her chest.

But Cathleen had always seemed like part of the school itself, something you passed every day without thinking about. A familiar face among crucifixes and polished floors, as unremarkable and permanent as the statue of Mary near the entrance.

You were the opposite.

Everyone knew you.

The girls called your name across the courtyard. Sisters smiled when they saw you. You could walk into almost any room and find someone waving you over, asking about homework, inviting you somewhere after school. You had friends enough that there was rarely a reason to be alone.

Then, one afternoon, you weren't looking where you were going.

You came around a corner laughing with your friends and walked straight into someone carrying a stack of books.

They slipped from both your arms and scattered across the floor, and when you crouched to gather them, you found yourself looking at Cathleen for the first time as though you had never seen her before. Her cheeks had gone pink with embarrassment, a loose strand of hair resting against her cheek as she reached for one of your books.

“I'm sorry,” you said.

“I wasn't looking either.”

She gave you a small smile, and for some reason, you remembered it long after you had gone home.

After that, you began noticing her everywhere. It was almost embarrassing how quickly she became familiar once you started looking for her: sitting near the window at lunch, lingering in the chapel after everyone else had left, walking quietly through the halls with her books held against her chest. Before long, you were finding reasons to sit beside her, to walk home with her, to stay a little longer whenever the two of you were together.

You told yourself it was because you liked her company. That was all. It was friendship, nothing more, and there was nothing strange about wanting to know someone better.

Still, there were moments you couldn't quite explain. Your eyes would linger on her face while she spoke, and sometimes you would find yourself watching her hands resting beside yours on the desk, close enough that your fingers could have touched if either of you moved. Once, when your hands brushed while reaching for the same pencil, neither of you pulled away immediately.

Neither of you mentioned it.

You simply became friends, slowly and naturally, until choosing Cathleen over your other friends stopped feeling like a choice at all. There was an invisible pull toward her that neither of you had reason to question, and in a world where there were no words you could safely give it, friendship was more than enough.

At least, that was what you both believed.

And if sometimes you found yourself looking for her before you realized you were doing it, that was only because she had become familiar.

That was all.

It had to be.

There were certain feelings a girl was never taught to name, especially not in a place where every chapel wall seemed to remind you what was proper and what was not. So whatever existed between you remained safely inside the word friendship, where neither of you had to examine it too closely.

By the time summer approached, you had been friends long enough that you could tell when Cathleen was worried simply by the way she held her books.

You were walking home together after school when you mentioned it casually.

“My family is going away for the summer.”

Cathleen glanced over. “Away?”