An Act Of Kindness

She sits alone; quite content it seems with being alone as well. She’s reading, what she is reading you don’t know but she is engrossed in this book. She must be engrossed because the noise in this cafeteria is rather loud yet she’s not taking any notice of the din around her.

This is the first time you’ve noticed her but you can’t understand why. Sure she’s not like the normal girls at this school, she’s not blonde and she’s not skinny. Well she’s not fat either but she’s certainly not one of the skinny girls, she looks like a normal girl. Maybe that’s why you’ve never noticed here, because in this place you have to look anything but normal to be classed as anything but boring.

Maybe if you spoke to her you’d know why she was alone. You’d know that her friends stopped calling her this summer for no reason. They gave her no reason at all, they haven’t said a word to her since school started again and that was three months ago. They walk past her in the hallway, they’ll look at her but there is no kindness anymore, there is only smirks and jeers.

Did you know that her parents are divorcing? No of course you wouldn’t, because since her friends stopped talking to her she hasn’t said a word to anyone about her life. She’s not sure what to make of the divorce. She doesn’t want them to split up but she doesn’t want to listen to anymore fights.

Please, please for me and for her just walk over to her. Ask what she is reading, ask her if she’s ok, ask her to join you at your table. Please do this for me and for her because the thoughts currently running through her head make it clear that this would be her last day at school, her last day ever, if she had her way.

So you do it, you walk over. You’re nervous because she looks smart and you’ve never been good at talking to smart people, you’re not stupid; I’m not saying you are but you never know what to say so you don’t sound at all stupid. So you carry on walking until you’re standing right next to her table. She doesn’t even notice you’re standing there ever though you’re casting a shadow across her book. You clear your throat and say hey, you say you noticed she was sitting alone and wondered if she wanted to join you at your table. She looks up and it’s then that you see it. You see that she needed someone to ask her to sit with them. She needed it since her friends stopped talking to her.

That night she walks into her room, in her bedside drawer she’d stored two bottles of painkillers, she glances at them and remembers that lunchtime. She had fun sitting with you and your friends. She hopes you ask her to join the next day. She finally has a reason for the next day. She picks up the bottles and carries them over to her bin. She drops them in the bin and there they stay.

I say this as a thank you from both me and her. Because that day, the day you asked her to join you in the cafeteria, things changed. She realised she had a reason to wake up in the morning. She’ll never tell you this but that day you saved her and for that we are both truly thankful.