It happened slowly, then all at once.
One day I was just the new girl who didn't know where to sit.
The next, I was someone who walked through the school knowing exactly who I was looking for.
Olivia.
I didn't even remember the moment we officially became friends. There was no dramatic conversation, no promise, no handshake. It was more like… we kept showing up for each other until showing up became the default.
Now, she waited for me in the mornings—leaning against the wall outside the entrance, her short black hair catching the early sunlight like soft waves of ink. She greeted me with a nod instead of a smile, but the nod was warm, familiar, like a secret only we shared.
"Your hair looks messy today," she said, squinting at my long blond waves.
"It's windy," I laughed.
"Nah. It's better that way." She tapped my shoulder. "Less perfect. More real."
That was Olivia—compliments disguised as chaos.
We walked together, weaving through the hallways like we'd always done it. People stared sometimes, not because we were strange but because we didn't match. Olivia was sharp edges and shadowy thoughts. I was soft hair and hazy eyes. She didn't care what people thought; I cared too much.
And somehow, it worked.
At lunch, we sat outside under a tree because Olivia hated the cafeteria lights.
"They're fake and annoying," she said. "Like people pretending to be brighter than they are."
She unpacked her lunch: a piece of fruit, a notebook, and a pen.
Her priorities, in that order.
"What are you drawing today?" I asked.
"Not sure yet," she murmured, flipping to a blank page.
I watched her, still amazed by how easily she existed. Hair a little messy, shoelaces uneven, expression unreadable—yet she held herself like she belonged in her own world, even if she didn't belong in this one.
"What's it like?" I asked suddenly.
"What?"
"To not care."
She paused, pen hovering over paper. "It's not that I don't care," she said. "I just choose what to care about."
"Like what?"
She pointed her pen at me. "Like you."
My heart stuttered.
She didn't say it dramatically.
She didn't look up.
It wasn't a confession—just a fact. Simple. True.
I swallowed, unsure what to do with the warmth rising in my chest.
"You choose me?" I whispered.
"For now," she said, smirking. "Unless you annoy me."
I nudged her shoulder, laughing. "I'll try not to."
"Good luck," she replied, drawing something that looked like the beginning of a sky.
A midnight one.
And I realized something:
We weren't just becoming friends.
We already were.
In the quiet way two lonely people find each other.
In the subtle way her oddness made sense to my softness.
In the gentle way she opened my eyes without meaning to.
Olivia wasn't like the others.
She wasn't loud or shiny or trying to be anything at all.
But sitting beside her, eating lunch beneath a tree, listening to her breathe calm into the chaos—
I felt something I hadn't felt since moving here.
I felt like I belonged.