Sarah was a lonely girl. She ate breakfast alone, in complete silence, without even a cat to share the quiet of the kitchen. Her parents did not appear to send her out the door, nor did she exude any sort of desire to see them. She went about her morning ritual with a mechanical efficiency that made my heart ache—to be so young, and yet so without enthusiasm for what life had to offer. She had been robbed of joy at an early age.

I followed her onto the school bus, unseen by the boisterous crowd. I sat in the back, next to a skinny boy who smelled of curry and never took his eyes off his handheld video game. Sarah sat a few rows in front of me, beside a chubby girl with braces and frizzy hair. They did not say a single word to one another. Sarah ignored the chaos around her—the flying pieces of paper, the insults, the laughter and shrieks of outrage—and instead opened a small paperback she carried in a pouch of her knapsack, reading with an intensity that took her far from the world around her.

She was used to her solitude, I realized, and quite comfortable with it. Perhaps she even preferred it.

It seemed sad in one so young.

I followed her through the halls of her junior high school, where she walked alone unheralded by others—but not entirely unnoticed. The boys recognized her emerging beauty. They cast sidelong glances at her as she passed by, afraid to comment, yet captivated by her unconscious grace.

I wondered what that beauty would do to her desire for solitude. The world would not leave her alone for long.

The other girls gave her a wide berth, some resentfully, as if they had decided that Sarah was a snob who did not want to associate with them. But others avoided her out of a vague fear I could feel entwined with all the other confusing emotions these adolescents carried inside them: she was the girl whose mother had died, the girl whose sister had died. She must be cursed. Which meant that if you got too close to her, perhaps it would happen to you.

As she moved through the minutes of her morning, going from classroom to classroom, I sensed a gradual relaxing in her, a blooming of her spirit. Though she remained silent, never offering an answer in class, she seemed content. I realized she had found a refuge in the ammonia-scented halls of this brick-and-linoleum palace, however shabby a palace it might be. Her remarkable strength touched me. I marveled at the power of human beings to adapt and endure, to keep going in the face of fear, and to somehow find a corner of the world where they felt safe.

I could not share in her peace. After a while, the jostling, erratic energy of her schoolmates began to wear on me. So many adolescents gathered together seemed to trigger a chemical reaction in their basic physiological makeup. Impulses sparked and danced from them without rhyme or reason, as if they were little more than sacks of ions dancing off one another, or flaying wires intermittently jolted with electrical current. The bombardment of so much uncontrolled energy annoyed me. Walking through the halls was like being set upon by a cloud of mosquitoes. I was amused that I could still feel such an emotion. I felt human again, if only for a moment, but after a while I began to crave peace. I was glad when the morning passed and lunchtime arrived.

Sarah’s solitary existence continued, even in the middle of the noisy cafeteria. She sat alone at a table in a far corner of the vast room, hidden by a pillar from the hopeful eyes of the boys. An austere lunch sat untouched before her while she buried her nose in a book.

It seemed a lonely life for such a young girl, walking and eating alone among so many people who could have been her friends. I was relieved when, a few minutes before the bell, another girl approached Sarah’s table. She was a few years older than Sarah and every bit as breathtaking. Her deep brown hair was straight and cut well below her shoulders. It shimmered each time she turned her head. Her skin was perfect, smooth and unblemished, and still lightly browned from the summer sun. She was tall and slender, and carried herself with a confidence usually found in older women. She towered over Sarah as she stopped by the table to say hello.

She smiled at Sarah, revealing perfect teeth. “How’s it going?” she asked in an unexpectedly alto voice. “Did you find someone to lend you the notes?”

Sara smiled back. “Jeanie let me look hers over. I think I did okay. You missed the bus this morning.”

The other girl nodded. “Overslept again. My dad was pissed when he heard.”

“You shouldn’t have told him,” Sarah said. “He’d have never known.”

“They called him,” the girl explained. “Too many tar-dies in one month.” She hesitated. “But you know how it is. They cut you slack.”

“You played the dead mother card?” Sarah asked, laughing.

“It ought to be good for something.”

Sarah’s eyes seemed suddenly to focus on some place far away. “Yeah, it ought to be,” she agreed. Their eyes met. “You going home on the bus today?”

The other girl nodded.

“See you then,” Sarah said.

“Sure. I’ll save you a seat.” The girl walked gracefully away, her hair swaying with each step, another beautiful young woman left without a mother, another young life left without a real home to call home.

At least Sarah was not alone.