Harry didn't sleep.
Not really.
He laid on the old mattress with a tear-stained pillow under his head and the ceiling fan spinning with a rhythm that sounded like a broken lullaby. The night was long, the silence—louder. Each tick of the wall clock mocked his inability to escape into dreams.
When the first light of dawn slipped through the cracked windowpane, Harry was already up, staring. Not outside, but inward—at memories he didn't ask for.
His mother used to hum every morning. A soft tune, like the earth sighing after rain. But now, the only music left was the clinking of plates from the neighbor's kitchen and the far-off cry of a rooster who didn't know the world had stopped turning for a boy next door.
Harry pulled his notebook from beneath the bed. Its pages were filled with messy handwriting, doodles, and poems he would never read out loud. He opened to a blank page and wrote:
> "If pain had a voice, mine would scream in silence."
Then he closed it again.
That was when he heard it.
A knock—soft, unsure—on the window.
He froze.
Their house didn't face the street. The backyard was nothing but weeds and a crumbling wall. No one ever came from that side.
Another knock. Three times. This time, deliberate.
He tiptoed to the window and peeked through the dusty blinds.
A girl.
About his age.
She didn't smile, didn't wave. Just stood there with a hoodie pulled over her head, eyes locked on his.
Harry opened the window slightly, heart thudding like a drumroll in his ears.
"Who are you?"
The girl tilted her head. "You wrote something… on the wall yesterday."
His chest tightened. The wall behind the school. He had scrawled something during lunch, when no one was looking.
> "I am the echo of a voice no one wants to hear."
"You saw that?" he asked, unsure whether to be embarrassed or terrified.
"I read it," she replied, her voice barely above a whisper. "And I didn't want you to think you were the only echo."
He didn't know what to say. No one had ever understood him like that, not in words. Not in silence either.
"I'm Harry," he managed.
The girl nodded. "Zara."
And just like that, something shifted. Not the pain. Not the grief. But maybe… just maybe, the silence had found someone else to sit with.