The next day, I tried not to look for her.
I failed.
Every hallway I turned into, every classroom I passed, my eyes drifted—searching for black hair, paint-stained fingers, a girl who seemed to belong to a different version of reality. I told myself it wasn't because I needed her. It was just curiosity.
But deep down, I already knew she was becoming something more than that.
I found her behind the school, sitting on top of a picnic table with her legs crossed. She had a notebook open on her lap—not neat, not organized. Just wild sketches and half-finished thoughts scribbled in loops and curls.
I took a breath and walked toward her.
"You're early," Olivia said without looking up, as if she had expected me.
"I didn't say I'd come," I replied.
"You didn't have to." She tapped her pencil twice against the paper. "People who want to disappear don't usually walk toward the same person twice."
I blinked. "Why do you say things like that?"
"Like what?"
"Like you… know things about people."
She shrugged. "I don't know anything. I just see what's already there."
And that was it.
That was the thing about Olivia.
She carried this quiet, accidental wisdom.
She spoke truths like they were obvious facts, like anyone could see them if they weren't too scared to look.
She wasn't trying to be deep.
She wasn't trying to impress me.
If anything, she seemed surprised I cared about her words at all.
"Can I sit?" I asked.
She nodded, pushing her backpack aside.
For a moment, we just sat in silence. The wind rustled the trees, lifting strands of my blond hair. Olivia's notebook lay open between us, filled with sketches of stars, forests, half-drawn silhouettes, and small sentences like:
People are constellations.
Most just don't know which ones they belong to yet.
I didn't realize I was staring until she said, "Don't read too much into it."
"But it's… good," I said. "It's meaningful."
She made a face like she didn't understand why. "It's just stuff I think about when I'm bored."
"Normal people don't think like this when they're bored."
She gave me a small sideways look. "Good. Normal is dull."
Her voice was steady, but there was a softness to her—like she was only half-aware of the way her words could shift the entire mood of a moment. Like she didn't realize she was giving me something I'd been missing: clarity, courage, a way to see myself.
I hesitated before speaking again. "Olivia, how do you… not care what people think?"
She paused, tapping her pencil against her knee.
"I do care," she said quietly. "Just not enough to change myself for them."
That sentence hit me like a gentle lightning bolt—soft, but blinding.
"How?" I whispered.
"Because," she said, glancing at me, "if I change myself for everyone else, then I lose the only thing I actually own: me."
She said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
Like it was simple.
Like she hadn't just said the smartest thing I'd ever heard.
"Kate," she added, turning fully to face me, "you don't have to fit in to be real. You don't have to match to matter."
Those words… settled somewhere inside me. A place I didn't know needed healing until she touched it.
Olivia didn't smile afterward. She didn't ask if her words helped.
She just returned to her notebook, as if she hadn't changed anything.
But she had.
She didn't know her own wisdom.
She didn't see the way her thoughts could open doors in other people's minds.
She didn't realize that every sentence she spoke, every scribble she made, every moment she existed—was an eye opener.
And I realized something then:
Olivia wasn't just different.
She was necessary.
And I was going to stay near her, even if she never understood why.