The Noise

• Grace Tickle, Grade 9
• Short Story
• 2022

I used to have this best friend. His name was Daniel — Danny to me. We were the closest of companions. There was not one thing that we wouldn’t tell each other, not one thing we would ever go through alone.
However, as we grew older, we grew further apart. There were no longer play-dates or sleepovers, no longer fun days at the park.
It had gotten to the point that it felt as though he had disappeared completely. He was just… gone. There’s no other way to describe it.
Of course, at this time, during the midst of World War Two, it was extremely hard to know what was going on in the world. Nazis would roam the streets with guns in their hands and red flags with strange symbols were hung from street poles.
Danny had even started wearing a strange yellow star when we went out.
The only way I could possibly relax was to go up to my room and reminisce on the most joyful of my memories, the ones that reminded me of a time where it was just so easy to be happy. Most of which felt impossibly far away - unreachable.
There was this one time, though, that I frequently thought of when laying on my bed up in my room.
Danny and I were in the town square with our Mothers. I remember there was this ice cream stall. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen — it had the ability to make even a rainbow look dull. As soon as Danny and I saw it, we immediately ran over to it, begging for a scoop. Mama just smiled and laughed, buying one for both Danny and I. But, of course, in all of the commotion, I dropped mine.
I can remember feeling so sad and hopeless. But then I looked up to see those big, brown eyes of his. Danny just extended out his hand and offered me his scoop. Without a word.
But that time is long gone now.

I am currently lying on my bed at age fifteen, still thinking about that day. That unconventionally perfect day.
But sometimes going too deep into the past can transform a cut into a wound. So I stand up from the bed and take a breath.
Yet I am stopped by a strange sound — that heavy, muffled noise you hear in a double-story house when someone is above you.
I survey my surroundings. What on earth?
But, no matter how crazy I might seem, I just know it is above me.
I walk out into the hallway and look up towards the attic, eventually finding the hatch and folding down the ladder. I climb up cautiously, my heart beating faster and faster.
It is when my head rises just above the attic’s flooring that I see it.
A person. A person looking right at me with these big, brown eyes.
My voice grows shaky.
“Daniel…”