The Weight of Quiet Things

Nina wasn't the kind of girl you’d notice in a crowd.

She walked softly, like her feet were afraid of disturbing the earth. Her hair always fell in front of her face, a curtain she rarely brushed away. At school, she sat near the window, scribbling in the corners of her notebooks, eyes drifting between clouds and corners. She smiled when spoken to but rarely spoke first. It wasn’t shyness. Not exactly.

It was something else. Something quieter.

Her sadness didn’t scream. It didn't sob in the bathroom or come wrapped in black eyeliner and torn jeans. It lived inside her like a whisper — soft, constant, and invisible to most people.

At home, her room was filled with paper birds. Hundreds of them. Hanging from the ceiling, resting on shelves, lined along her window. She folded them every night — tiny wings made from math homework, shopping receipts, or old letters. She never explained why. Not even when her mom asked.

“It’s just something I do,” she’d say, gently. “They make the silence look like it’s flying.”

Her mother didn’t press. She was always too tired after her long shifts at the hospital. And her father—well, he hadn’t been there in over two years. One day he just left. A note on the kitchen table, a hollow explanation, and gone. Nina never talked about it. Not once.

But she folded a dozen birds the night he left.

At school, her teachers called her “thoughtful,” “creative,” “a little withdrawn.” No one saw the shadows behind her eyes. No one noticed how tightly she gripped her pencil during tests, or how she sometimes stared at the clock without blinking, like she was holding herself together second by second.

Until Luca.

He was loud, messy, always doodling on his hands in permanent marker. He sat next to her in art class and talked enough for both of them. At first, Nina thought he was annoying. But he didn’t ask her the usual questions. He didn’t try to pull her into the light. He just existed beside her, comfortably.

One afternoon, they were painting landscapes. Luca glanced at her paper and tilted his head.

“Why is yours all grey?”

She blinked. “I didn’t realize.”

He shrugged. “Still cool. Like…a dream you forgot to wake up from.”

She didn’t smile, but her brush moved a little softer after that.

Weeks passed. They started eating lunch together. He told her about his ridiculous cat named Pancake and how he once broke his toe kicking a vending machine. She listened. Sometimes, she laughed. And one rainy Thursday, she gave him a paper bird.

“For your cat,” she said quietly. “To chase.”

He grinned like she’d handed him treasure.

That night, Nina made only one bird. She wrote something on its wings before folding it, something she never intended to share:

“I’m tired of pretending I’m okay.”

She tucked it behind her bookshelf, hidden from everyone — even herself.

But the next week, Pancake died.

Luca didn’t come to school for days. When he did, his jokes were thinner, his voice quieter. Nina noticed the way his eyes were red, the way he picked at his sleeves.

After class, she gave him a bird. A white one. No writing. No jokes. Just wings.

He looked at it, then at her.

“Thanks,” he whispered.

And that was when she knew — she wasn’t the only one carrying invisible things.

Spring came. The birds in her room multiplied, but now they shared space with drawings Luca gave her. Silly ones. Thoughtful ones. A scribbled portrait of her that somehow looked more like her than any mirror ever had.

And then, one evening, as the sky turned gold, Nina did something she hadn’t done in a very long time.

She cried.

Not because something bad happened. But because for the first time, someone had stayed.

She took the bird from behind her bookshelf, the one with the confession on its wings. She unfolded it, hands trembling. Then she took a pen and added one more line beneath her words:

“But I think I might be getting there.”

She refolded it slowly, carefully, and hung it in the center of her ceiling.

When her mother peeked into her room that night, she paused.

“You’re smiling,” she said softly.

Nina looked up at the wings above her and nodded.

“I think I am.”