It wasn’t one big moment that made me notice her — it was the accumulation of quiet ones, the kinds of moments that slip between the cracks of a school day and go unnoticed by everyone rushing toward something louder. Every afternoon the cafeteria filled with sound: chairs scraping, plastic wrappers crinkling, laughter bouncing off the walls. In the middle of all that noise, she was still. She sat at the same end of the long table every day, back straight, shoulders tucked in, hands folded neatly as if she were waiting for permission to exist there. While the rest of us tore into lunches packed with careless abundance, she had nothing in front of her. No paper bag. No lunchbox.

Not even an apple rolling around on the tabletop. Just empty space. She never stared at anyone else’s food for too long, never let her eyes linger in a way that might be mistaken for longing. Instead, she watched the room with a composed half-smile, the kind that feels rehearsed, like something learned early as a shield. If someone noticed and asked whether she’d forgotten her lunch, she would laugh softly and brush it off. “Mom must’ve skipped it again,” she’d say, like it was a joke she’d told herself many times. But even as a kid, I could hear what she didn’t say: that sometimes there just wasn’t enough, that asking would only make things heavier, that hunger was easier to carry quietly.