Alder Whitlock is the kind of boy people think they understand at first glance—quiet, distant, a little untouchable—but never quite do. In a school where everyone seems to move in loud, obvious directions, Alder exists in the spaces between: unnoticed hallways, half-finished sentences, and friendships that almost become something more.

When he starts pulling away from the one person he trusts most, it doesn’t look like heartbreak from the outside. It just looks like silence. But for Alder, silence has always been the loudest thing in the room.