She sat silently listening to her teachers words. She usually is one of the first to volunteer, to argue, the first to say whatever comes to her mind. But not today, not on this topic..."how would you feel?" She looked immediately down at her paper, playing with her pen, doing anything possible to avoid eye contact with the teacher, with her friends. The thoughts about how she would feel, how she did feel, racing around in her head, racing around a path they knew well.

She just wanted the conversation to end, to change, to focus on anything but that. She wanted to be able to look up again, to look her teacher in the eye, to look at her friends, instead of trying to hide her face, hide her emotion, hide what could have easily been tears. She wanted to say all of the things in her head, she wanted to to answer the question that still lingered in the air, "how would you feel?" but instead she held her tongue, she put on her mask, and when the conversation ended, she looked up again, looked up and rejoined the class.