The Rooftop light

“The Rooftop Light”

When Alex turned sixteen, the world started to lose its color.

Not suddenly, not all at once—but like a slow fade, like the dimming of a lightbulb that everyone else swore was still bright. He would sit in class, hearing the buzz of the fluorescent lights louder than the teacher’s voice. People talked to him, smiled at him, even liked him. But it all felt distant, like he was behind glass.

And then there was Maya.

Maya had the kind of laugh that made you look up, even when you didn’t want to. She was always doodling in her notebook—strange constellations, eyes with galaxies in them, tiny paper cranes. But what most people didn’t know was that Maya had stopped believing in happy endings a long time ago. She had perfected the art of pretending: bright hair, louder music, jokes that hid the sharp edges underneath.

Alex noticed the cuts on her wrists before anyone else did. Not fresh, but not old either.

He didn’t say anything. Not right away.

One late October evening, when the sky was the color of wet charcoal and everyone else had gone home, they both ended up on the school roof. It was their unspoken place. The place neither of them had to talk if they didn’t want to. A quiet where broken things could just exist.

“I feel like I’m in a glass box,” Alex said finally, his voice low. “Like I’m screaming and no one hears me.”

Maya sat beside him, pulling her sleeves over her hands. “I used to imagine setting mine on fire. Just… watching it burn. Thinking maybe then someone would notice.”

They were quiet for a long time. Just the wind and the slow dark creeping over the town below them.

“You ever think about… not doing this anymore?” Maya asked. She didn’t look at him.

“All the time,” Alex answered. “But I keep waking up.”

She nodded. “Yeah. Same.”

And then she reached into her bag and pulled out a tiny paper crane. She handed it to him without a word. On one wing was written: “You’re still here. That’s something.”

It wasn’t a fix. Not a cure. But it mattered.

Over the next few months, they exchanged more cranes. Each with a line. A lyric. A memory. Some were silly, others dark. But they kept going.

On the worst days, they met on the roof. Sometimes they talked. Sometimes they just sat. But they never sat alone anymore.

Years passed.

They lost touch for a while. Life got busy. Pain came and went in waves, as it always does.

Then, one spring morning when Alex was twenty-three, he got a package. No return address.

Inside was a crane. Faded, a little torn at the edges.

It read: “Still here. You too?”

He smiled through tears.

And wrote back.

⸻

Some stories don’t have perfect endings. But sometimes, the light on the rooftop is enough to get you to the next morning