Tonight was another one of the slow nights in the library, the only other people being a girl from the student council who was doing research for an essay and a group of year-seven boys who wanted to use the computers. It was nine o’clock when I locked the door behind me and made my way back to my room, my thoughts still caught up in the plot of Little Women. I was ripped out of them only when I stopped in front of our door, key in hand and caught off guard by the loud banging sounding from inside.

Still vividly remembering the last time I had opened the door to a strange noise, I gave a loud knock and waited for Noelle to respond before entering.

As I pushed the door open, I wasn’t sure what to expect but it was certainly not the sight of Noelle standing on my bed with a hammer in her hand.

“Hey,” she said as if nothing unusual was happening. “I didn’t think you’d be back this early.”

“What are you doing?” I asked, closing the door behind me.

“And where are your crutches? You shouldn’t put so much weight on your ankle—”

“My ankle is fine. Care to lend me a hand?”

It was only when I climbed next to her onto the bed that I could see what she was trying to nail to the wall. “Fairy lights?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Can you hold this for a sec?”

I leaned forward and held the fairy lights up for her, keenly aware of her shoulder pressing against mine. She lifted the hammer and made quick work of fastening them to the wall above my bed. Once she was happy with the results, she tossed the hammer onto the mattress and turned around. As close as we were standing, the pained wince she tried to hide didn’t go unnoticed and I instinctively got off the bed, wrapping my arms around her waist to help her get down. As I did, her hands flew up to hold onto my shoulders, her touch as light as if two flower petals had settled there, and refused to let go even as she was standing on her own two feet again.

“You . . . you should really use your crutches,” I said, only too aware of the fact that my hands were still on her hips.

Noelle shook her head, her voice lower than before. “They’re annoying and impractical.”

It took everything in me to step back, making her rose-petal hands drift down from my shoulders. Wordlessly, I picked up her crutches where they were leaning against the wall next to my bed and handed them to her. Against my expectations, she accepted them without protest and used them to get back to her side of the room.

Sitting down at the end of my bed, I asked, “Why the fairy lights?”

“When I used to have really bad nightmares, the worst thing was waking up alone in the dark, so I always left a light on,”