One morning, I found a note attached to a thick novel.
It starts slowly, but trust me.
I wrote beneath it:
That sounds exactly like what someone says before assigning another person six hundred pages of suffering.
The next morning, Lily had added one word underneath.
Coward.
I laughed so loudly one of my students asked what was wrong with me.
Gradually, something changed.
I stopped seeing Maggie every time Lily entered the room.
I started seeing Lily.
Then winter break came.
When school resumed, Lily was different.
At first, the changes were small.
An assignment arrived late.
Then another.
She forgot a reading response.
Then she failed a quiz.
That wasn’t like her.
Within several weeks, one of my strongest students was barely keeping up.
One Friday, I gave the class a short test.
Twenty minutes later, almost everyone was writing.
Lily hadn’t answered a single question.
