She used to come through the door still talking, mid sentence, practice bag swinging off one shoulder. That was the version of my fifteen year old I had grown used to. The change came slowly enough that I explained it away. Quiet at dinner. Long stretches alone in her room. That nervous glance at her phone whenever it lit up, like she was bracing for something. Every time I asked, she said she was tired. Then one evening Lila came home from cheerleading with red eyes and walked straight past me without a word, locked her door, and refused dinner no matter how often I knocked. The next morning she said she felt sick, so I kept her home. Less than an hour later the principal called and asked me to come see what they had found in her locker.

I drove there certain I had failed her in some enormous way I had not yet identified. He led me down the hallway, took a slow breath, and opened the door. Inside were forty two folded notes. Not from anyone cruel. They were letters from a girl named Priya, a freshman on the junior squad, and Lila had been keeping every one. Priya’s parents were separating and she had started leaving notes because she could not say things out loud. Lila answered all of them. She had also been quietly covering Priya’s team fees out of her own babysitting money, which was why she flinched at her phone, because the balance kept running out and she did not know how to ask me for help.