>You find Noelle sitting on the floor in the bathroom, dark patches of fur around her eyes, a blank expression on her face as she stares at the wall.
>”Hey…you ok.”
>Noelle doesn’t look at you, you see her ears perk up a bit at the sound of your voice.
>”Remember what I said about reading the room?”, Noelle responds, eyes unmoving from the faded tile. 
>You sit down next to her and wrap your arm around her. She doesn’t respond at first, then leans into your and rests her head on your shoulder.
>After a bit she finally responds.
>”I…I can’t do this anymore.” It won’t end Anon, It’s killing me. All I do is give and give and give. I try so damn hard to spread happiness and give the world some much needed hope, and it does nothing. My mother only cares about the funeral costs, I’m fucking over the entire track team if I ask for time off-“
>”Noelle, it’s just track, you have to let it go-“
>”NO I DON’T?! If I bail on them and they end up losing, they could drop my scholarship. Why do you think I collapsed that day?!”
>The day you first met. She seemed so chipper when she got up, you didn’t even notice the bags under her eyes, her heavy breathing. Not a runners breath. How many times did she run sick for that team?
>”N-Noelle. How bad were you feeling that day?”
>”Doesn’t matter. If I don’t keep running, then I don’t have a future.”
>That sounded like it had a double meaning.
>”Noelle…I saw the knife Dess gave you sitting on your nightstand.”
>You can hear her breathing start to waver
>”Noelle. Please be honest with me.”
>”I…I…didn’t…hurt myself, if that’s what you’re asking. Just took a bit of...”
>”Show me, please.”
>Noelle reluctantly pulled up her sleeves. There, on her right wrist, a couple misshapen patches of fur, lazily cut. 
>Without hesitation, you grabbed her hand and pulled apart her fur, checking for any sort of scarring. Nothing, thank god.
>”How long have you been doing this?”
>”Not long…I don’t think I could ever bring myself to actually touch skin. I just, it all gets so…so…”
>You turn just in time to catch her as she pushes her face into your torso, her body shaking as years of stress unload onto your jacket. You put your arms around her and pull her close to you.
>A lifetime passes as you sit with her, dry sobs echoing through the bathroom stalls, the quiet hum of the AC growing faint as all your attention goes to the battered doe sitting in front of you.
>Finally, the echos subside, Noelles sorrows now being drowned out by your own fears. She needs to see it. For her sake.
>Reluctantly, you pull out your phone and open the photo you took during the last day of school. The leap you never took.
>”Noelle. I need you to look at something.”
>”Y-yeah?”
>You hold your phone in front of her, she takes it from you and stares at it for a moment.
>”This looks like the rooftop of our high school in Hometown. What were you doing up there?”
>”We-ll”, you say, voice faltering, “this was my knife.” 
>Both the AC and Noelle were dead quiet now.
>”When I was in school, I didn’t have friends. Anyone I considered “real”. All I did was move from person to person, be judgmental, act like I was better than everyone else. When I made it to my Senior year, I looked around and saw everyone doing so much better than me. They had people that they cared about.”
>”Anon…I’m sure you had people that you cared about…”
>”H-heh, not really. My whole life I looked down on people, shut others out, never committed to friendships. I expected the world from people but couldn’t even give them dirt. Eventually, seeing how isolated I had made myself. It made me start to feel the opposite, that I wasn’t good enough for people. A few weeks before graduation, I snuck up to the roof of the school, and well…”
>”You never jumped.”
>”I chickened out…heh.” I guess despite everything I had done to hurt myself, some part deep inside of me still felt that I had a chance. A chance of my life getting better.
>Noelle says nothing.
>”I guess that no matter how much bad the world gets, we might as well stick around for it. When I look at my photo, your photo…I imagine just how much more there is out there. How much we’re missing out on if we use our knives.
>Another pause..more silence. Finally Noelle speaks up.
>”Then I guess we’ve still got a bit more running to do.”