Tracy.....
Something shifted after that afternoon behind the library.
She didn't run when I passed by anymore.
She didn't speak either — not directly. But her eyes stayed on me a little longer, and sometimes her steps slowed, just enough that I could tell she wasn't in a rush to escape me.
I began to notice the things no one else did.
The way she tugged her sleeves down when nervous. The soft tap of her fingers against her bag strap when thinking. The faint wrinkle in her brow when the word "marriage" was mentioned.
And then I saw it — really saw it — one quiet morning when I went back to the library earlier than usual.
She was there.
Alone at a table near the window, her back half-turned, sunlight warming the edges of her hijab. Her lips moved slightly — not in prayer, not in speech — but like someone reciting something too heavy to say aloud.
In her lap was a letter.
I knew the kind. Handwritten. Folded carefully. The kind you don't read in one go — because every line hurts a little.
She didn't notice me.
But I noticed her — all of her.
And it terrified me.
Not because of who she was.
But because of what it meant about me.
---
That evening, I helped Mama polish the altar linens. She was humming a hymn under her breath — a soft, sweet sound that used to soothe me.
But now, it made my throat ache.
She looked at me and smiled. "Have you thought more about the convent, Trace?"
I nodded vaguely.
How could I tell her that while I was polishing the cloths of the church, I was thinking about a Muslim girl with trembling hands and a ringless finger?
That while I knelt in silent prayer, I sometimes wondered what she sounded like when she spoke her own?
---
At school, people spoke less now.
Or maybe I just listened less.
I was watching her again — the way her hands stayed folded on her lap when someone laughed too loudly. How she slipped her books into her bag with precision. Controlled. Disciplined. Measured.
Like someone raised to survive without ever needing to explain.
But I saw the softness under all of it.
And it terrified me more than anything ever had.
Not because I didn't want to feel it —
But because I did.
---
> "There are feelings that exist in silence. Emotions that form without permission. And sometimes, what scares us most isn't being seen — it's being understood without needing to be explained."
I didn't sign this entry.
I just closed the page, tucked it behind the others, and whispered her name into the night.
Laila.
---