-eng- Camp With Mom And My Annoying Friend Who ... Here

For the first time, I really looked. Leo wasn’t performing. He was fidgeting. His leg bounced. His hands moved constantly. And his eyes—usually hidden behind jokes—looked small and tired.

Then, at the summit, Mom pulled me aside. “You’re being quiet,” she said. “Not your usual quiet. The mean quiet.”

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She didn’t scold me. Instead, she pointed to Leo, who was sitting on a boulder, alone, tracing patterns in the dirt with a stick. “Look closer,” she said.

“Because ‘I’m scared of silence’ sounds crazy,” he shrugged. “Talking about Minecraft sounds normal.” For the first time, I really looked

“I know I’m annoying,” he said, poking a log. “My dad says I don’t know when to stop. But when I stop… the quiet gets loud, you know? Like, in my head. It’s scary.”

I thought about all the times I’d rolled my eyes, sighed loudly, or turned away. I thought about my own quiet—how I used it to hide, too. Maybe we weren’t so different. Maybe annoying was just another word for lonely. His leg bounced

I stared at him. All this time, the chatter wasn’t noise. It was a shield.

“Why didn’t you just say that?” I asked.