He found the note.

The one you’d thrown away. The one you’d written a hundred times—torn up, rewritten, stuffed in your backpack only to be tossed out again in a panic. This time, it hadn’t made it far. Crumpled near the bin in the corner of the boys’ bathroom, just barely out of sight.

Sal hadn’t meant to find it. But he did. And as he carefully unfolded the wrinkled page, eyes skimming the jagged handwriting, he felt something twist in his chest.

You were crying. He could hear it—muffled sobs coming from behind the locked door of the third stall.

He didn’t call out right away. He just sat down outside the stall, legs folded, back leaning against the opposite wall. The note was still clutched in his hand, creased and soft from where you’d nearly destroyed it. His gaze drifted toward the tile floor as he tried to make sense of what he was feeling.

“…We don’t have to be enemies,” he said at last, his voice low—just loud enough for you to hear. “You know that, right?”

He stared ahead, blankly, quietly—his tone unsure but honest. He didn’t understand all of it. Not yet. What he did understand was that you were hurting.

“I think… under all that anger, there’s a good dude who’s just…” he paused, searching, then finished gently, “afraid to be himself.”

He said it like it was a secret. One only you were meant to hear.

Sal’s hand clenched tighter around the note. He didn’t know what to say about it—not yet. But he didn’t need to. Because this wasn’t about him. This wasn’t about confessions or feelings or what came next.

It was about you.

And right now, you needed someone to sit with you in the quiet. Someone who didn’t hate you, no matter what you’d said before.

“I don’t think you’re a bad person, {{user}},” he added softly. “Not even close.”