Nyah's knee healed the way most things in her life did on the surface first. The swelling went down. The limp softened into something less noticeable. Her parents took that as resolution. School accepted it as a temporary inconvenience. No one asked what lingered beneath the skin. Nyah felt it every time she stood still. Movement had always been her language. Without it, she didn't know how to translate herself into something the world could understand. So she sat more. She lay down longer. She learned how to be quiet in ways that scared her.
At night, the fan hummed. The house breathed around her floorboards settling, distant traffic, her father's radio murmuring from another room. She stared at the ceiling, counting rotations she no longer practiced. You're wasting time, the voice returned. You're falling behind. She pressed her palms into the mattress, grounding herself. Stillness is recovery, she told herself but stillness wasn't recovery. It was suspension. School blurred. Nyah's grades slipped for the first time. Not dramatically. Just enough to be noticed.
"You distracted," her math teacher said, tapping a red pen against her paper. "This not like you." Nyah nodded, eyes on the desk. She didn't explain that numbers swam now, that focusing felt like trying to hold water in her hands. At lunch, Amaya sat beside her, legs stretched out, eyes scanning her face.
"You haven't practiced," Amaya said. Nyah's fingers tightened around her water bottle. "I'm resting."
"For how long?" Nyah didn't know how to answer that.
Amaya sighed. "You want to walk after school?"
Nyah hesitated. Her knee twinged in warning. "Okay." They walked slowly, pace dictated by Nyah's body. The afternoon heat wrapped around them, thick and familiar. Amaya talked about school gossip, about a teacher who smelled like old books, about nothing in particular. It helped. "Nyah," Amaya said eventually. "You don't have to disappear to heal."
Nyah stared at the ground, watching her feet move. "I don't know how else to do it." Amaya stopped walking.
Nyah took two more steps before realizing. She turned back. Amaya's expression was serious. "You scare me sometimes." Nyah's chest tightened. "I'm still here."
"Physically," Amaya said. "Yeah." The word landed harder than intended. Nyah opened her mouth, then closed it. The truth felt too heavy, too sharp.
"I don't know how to be less… this," she said finally. Amaya softened. She stepped closer, lowering her voice. "You don't have to figure it out alone." Nyah nodded, though the idea felt unreal.
That night, the thoughts came back louder. The quiet had given them room to stretch. You're nothing without skating and You're failing at even that. Nyah sat up, heart racing. Her skin buzzed, restless. She swung her legs over the side of the bed, knee protesting.
"I just need one spin," she whispered. She stood. The room tilted. She adjusted, centered herself. She turned. Pain flared through her knee, sharp and unforgiving. She stumbled, caught herself on the bed, breath coming fast. The spin was ugly and uncontrolled.
In her head, she saw it clearly how it should have been The clean edge and The smooth rotation. The contrast broke something in her. She slid to the floor, back against the bed, arms wrapped around herself. Her breathing turned shallow, rapid. The panic hit hard. Her vision tunneled , her hands tingled and the room felt too small, too close.
Stop...Stop...
She pressed her forehead to her knees, rocking slightly. "I can't," she whispered. "I can't do this." The thought followed, calm and clear.
You don't have to. Nyah froze.
The clarity scared her more than the chaos ever had. She stayed on the floor until exhaustion dragged her into shallow sleep. The next morning, she woke with a headache and a hollow ache in her chest. At breakfast, her father slid a plate toward her. "Eat." Nyah stared at it. Food felt distant, unnecessary. "Nyah," he said, firmer this time. She took a few bites to satisfy him, chewing mechanically.
"Your mother worried," he added quietly. "You don't talk much these days."
Nyah's jaw tightened. "Talking doesn't change anything." He studied her, something unreadable in his eyes. "Sometimes it changes more than you think." She almost laughed.
Almost.
Later, alone again, Nyah opened her notebook for the first time in days. The pages looked unfamiliar. Like something written by someone braver. At the back, she added a new line beneath the old ones. If I stop moving, I disappear. She stared at it until the words blurred. Stillness wasn't rest. It was danger and she was standing too close to the edge to pretend otherwise. The thing about silence is that it convinces people you're handling it. Nyah handled it so well that no one noticed when it began to fail her.
The breaking point didn't arrive with drama. No shouting and no tears in public. It came quietly, on a Wednesday afternoon, in the middle of a classroom that smelled like dust and old chalk. They were doing group work. Nyah hated group work. She sat at the edge of the desk cluster, hands folded, eyes fixed on the paper in front of her. The others talked over her voices overlapping, ideas bouncing back and forth. Someone nudged her notebook accidentally.
"Sorry," the girl muttered, already turning away. Nyah nodded. It was automatic.
Her chest tightened.
The noise blurred into a dull roar. The walls felt closer. The air felt wrong too thick, too warm. She tried to breathe through it.
In. Out. Her knee throbbed, a reminder of everything she wasn't doing. Her hands started to shake. Not here, she told herself. Not now. The thought didn't listen. Her vision tunneled. Sounds dulled, then sharpened all at once. Someone laughed too loudly. A chair scraped. Chalk screeched against the board. Nyah stood abruptly, chair legs screeching in protest.
Every head turned.
"I-" Her voice cracked. She swallowed. "I need..." The words wouldn't come.
The teacher frowned. "Nyah? Sit down." The room tilted.
"I can't," Nyah said, louder than she meant to. Panic surged, hot and fast. "I can't..."She bolted.
The hallway was empty, mercifully quiet. She made it halfway to the bathroom before her legs gave out. She slid down the wall, breathing hard, hands pressed to her chest like she could hold her heart still. You're dying, her mind insisted.
This is it.
"No," she whispered. "No."
She squeezed her eyes shut and imagined the rink. It came but warped. The ice was cracked. The surface uneven. She stepped onto it and immediately lost balance. The image shattered. She sobbed then. Silent, shaking sobs that wracked her body until her throat burned. She pressed her face into her knees, ashamed even alone.
It took a long time before her breathing slowed. Too long. The bell rang. Footsteps echoed down the hall. Nyah wiped her face quickly, pushing herself upright just as Amaya appeared around the corner. Their eyes met. Amaya didn't ask what happened. She crossed the distance in two strides and crouched in front of Nyah, hands braced on her knees, eyes searching.
"You okay?" she asked softly. Nyah shook her head. That was it.
Something in her face must have given it away how close she was to falling apart, how thin the thread had become. Amaya exhaled slowly. "Come on." She didn't grab Nyah's arm. She didn't rush her. She just stayed there, solid and present, until Nyah stood on her own. They walked out of school together without saying a word. They ended up at the seawall. The air smelled like salt and algae. Waves crashed against concrete, relentless and loud. Nyah sat with her knees pulled to her chest, staring out at the water.
"I panicked," she said eventually.
Amaya nodded. "I know."
"I thought I was dying."
"I know."
Nyah's fingers dug into her sleeves. "It keeps happening. And I can't stop it." Amaya leaned back on her hands, eyes on the horizon. "How long you been dealing with this?"
Nyah hesitated. The truth tasted bitter. "Years."
Amaya turned to her sharply. "Years?"
Nyah nodded, shame flooding her. "I didn't want to be a problem."
Amaya's jaw tightened. She looked away, blinking hard. "You're not a problem," she said. "You're hurting."
The distinction hit Nyah harder than anything else had.
"I think about not being here," Nyah said suddenly, the words tumbling out before she could stop them. Her voice was barely audible over the waves. "Not dying exactly. Just… not existing." Amaya froze.
The silence stretched.
Then Amaya reached out, fingers curling around Nyah's wrist not tight, not desperate. Just enough to be real. "I'm glad you told me," she said quietly. "Even if it scared me."
Nyah's eyes burned. "I don't want to scare you."
"You don't get to decide that," Amaya replied gently. "You just get to decide if you stay alone with it."
Nyah stared at their joined hands. For the first time in a long while, she didn't pull away. That night, the house felt different. Nyah moved through it like someone newly aware of their own weight. She ate dinner without being told. She answered her father's questions with more than nods. In her room, she opened her notebook again. She flipped past the diagrams, the lists, the desperate calculations. On a blank page, she wrote:
I told someone. The words looked small but they felt heavy. She lay back on her bed, staring at the ceiling fan as it spun its tired circles. The thoughts still came but now, there was a crack in the silence and through it, something like air.
Being seen didn't feel like relief. It felt like exposure. Nyah woke the next morning with the weight of the previous day pressing down on her chest. Her body remembered before her mind did the seawall, the salt air, the words she had let slip. I think about not being here. The sentence replayed on a loop, each repetition tightening something in her ribs.
She lay still, listening to the house wake up. The clink of dishes. Her father's radio murmuring. The sound of life continuing, unchanged. Except she was changed.
At school, people looked at her the same way they always had. No one knew. No one could tell. That almost made it worse. Amaya found her by the lockers.
"You good?" she asked quietly. Nyah nodded. The lie came easier than it should have. Amaya didn't call her on it. She just stayed close, matching her pace between classes, a steady presence at her side. That steadiness made Nyah uneasy.
"Don't hover," she muttered at one point.
Amaya stopped walking. "I'm not hovering."
"It feels like it."
Amaya studied her for a moment. "Okay. Then I'll walk slower."
Nyah felt a flash of irritation, then guilt. She hated how sensitive she'd become, how every kindness felt like pressure.
"Sorry," she said, barely audible.
Amaya shrugged. "We're both figuring it out."
The guidance counselor called her in that afternoon. Nyah sat stiffly in the chair, hands folded tight in her lap. The room smelled like cheap air freshener and paper. "I heard you left class yesterday," the counselor said, voice too gentle. "That must have been scary."
Nyah nodded, eyes fixed on the carpet.
"Do you feel overwhelmed often?" Nyah hesitated. A pause too long.
"Yes," she said finally. The counselor scribbled something down. "Have you had thoughts about hurting yourself?"
The question landed heavy.
Nyah's mouth went dry. Her heart thudded painfully against her ribs. She thought of the rain , the seawall and the stillness on the imaginary ice.
"I don't want to die," she said carefully. "I just… don't want to be here sometimes."
The counselor smiled softly, like that was something she'd heard before. "That's important to say." Important didn't feel like enough. They talked about breathing exercises, about stress and about "finding balance." The words slid off Nyah like water. Balance required ice. She left with pamphlets she never read. At home, her mother waited for her in the living room.
"Your school called," Marcia said. Nyah's stomach dropped.
"They said you had some… episode."
Nyah swallowed. "I panicked."
Marcia crossed her arms. "Why you didn't say anything?"
Nyah stared at the floor. "Because you wouldn't understand." The slap wasn't hard ,It wasn't meant to be but the sound echoed. Marcia froze, hand still raised, shock flickering across her face.
Nyah didn't cry. She backed away slowly, eyes locked on her mother's, something cold settling in her chest.
"I'm going to my room," she said calmly.
Marcia didn't stop her. Behind the closed door, Nyah sat on the floor, shaking. Her skin buzzed, nerves firing wildly. The thought came again soft, seductive.
You don't have to do this. She pressed her back to the door, grounding herself in the pressure. She thought of Amaya's hand on her wrist. Solid and Real. She stayed.
Later, her father knocked once before entering. He didn't sit. He stood awkwardly near the door. "Your mother shouldn't have done that," he said quietly.
Nyah didn't respond. "She worried," he continued. "She don't know how to show it." Nyah laughed then a short, humorless sound. "Neither do you." The words surprised them both. Her father flinched, then nodded slowly. "Fair." He left without saying anything else. That night, Nyah wrote again. Being seen hurts.
She added another line beneath it.
But disappearing hurts more. She closed the notebook and lay back, staring into the dark.
The ice appeared again faint but intact. She stepped onto it carefully. She didn't move. She just stood there, breathing and for the first time, the stillness didn't feel like a threat.