When Someone Is Sad

Audrey noticed it right away at recess.

Maya was sitting on the big rock by the fence — the one shaped like a whale — and she wasn't doing anything. She wasn't reading. She wasn't picking at the dandelions that grew in the crack beside it. She was just sitting there, looking at her shoes.

That was strange, because Maya was the one who always wanted to play. Maya was the one who'd grab your hand and say, "Come on, come ON, let's go before recess is over!" Maya was the one who could never sit still, not even during the read-aloud when Mrs. Patterson did the funny voices.

But today, Maya was very, very still.

Audrey stood near the swings and watched for a moment. She figured maybe Maya was tying her shoe. But Maya didn't bend down. She figured maybe Maya was waiting for someone. But Maya wasn't looking around.

"Hey, Audrey! Come play foursquare!" called Devon from across the blacktop.

Audrey looked at Devon. She looked back at Maya on the whale rock.

"Maybe in a minute!" she called back.

Audrey walked over to the rock. Her sneakers made soft crunching sounds on the wood chips. When she got close, Maya didn't look up.

"Hi," said Audrey.

"Hi," said Maya. But it was a very small hi. The kind of hi that sounds like it had to squeeze past something heavy to get out.

Audrey stood there for a second. She wanted to ask, "What's wrong?" but something about the way Maya was sitting — shoulders curled in, hands tucked between her knees — made Audrey feel like maybe Maya didn't want to answer a big question right now.

So instead, Audrey said, "Can I sit here?"

Maya moved over a little on the whale rock. She still didn't look up.

Audrey climbed onto the rock and sat down. It was warm from the sun. She could feel the heat through her jeans.

They sat.

A ladybug landed on Audrey's knee. It walked in a tiny circle, like it was looking for something it had lost. Audrey watched it. Maya didn't seem to notice.

Audrey didn't say, "Look, a ladybug!" the way she normally would. She just watched it quietly until it opened its little red wings and flew away.

They sat some more.

Across the playground, kids were yelling and laughing. Someone was counting for hide-and-seek. The foursquare ball made that echoey bouncing sound it always made, like a heartbeat for the whole playground.

Audrey kicked her feet back and forth. Not in an impatient way. Just in a sitting-on-a-rock way. The kind of kicking you do when your feet don't quite touch the ground and they want something to do.

She looked at the sky. There was one cloud that looked a little bit like a mitten. She almost pointed it out, but then she thought maybe Maya wasn't in a cloud-pointing mood. So she just looked at it by herself and decided it was a very good mitten cloud.

A few minutes went by. They felt longer than regular minutes. Playground minutes usually zoomed past like race cars, and suddenly the whistle blew and recess was over and you couldn't believe it. But these minutes were slow and quiet, like minutes that had decided to walk instead of run.

Audrey picked at a little piece of moss growing on the whale rock. It was soft and green and kind of amazing, if you really looked at it.

Then Maya sniffed.

It was a quick, short sniff, the kind where someone is trying very hard not to do anything else after it.

Audrey's chest got a squeezy feeling. She didn't like it when Maya was sad. She wanted to fix it. She wanted to say the exact right thing that would make Maya smile and hop off the rock and say, "Come on, come ON, let's go play!"

But Audrey didn't know the right thing to say, because she didn't know what was wrong. And even if she did know, she wasn't sure there was a sentence in the whole world that could fix a feeling that big. Sometimes feelings were just big, and they took up all the space, and there was nothing to do but let them be there for a while.

So Audrey stayed on the rock.

After a little while, Maya's hand slid across the warm stone and found Audrey's hand. Maya didn't grab it or squeeze it or hold it the way you hold hands when you're crossing the street. She just rested her hand on top of Audrey's, like she was checking to make sure it was really there.

Audrey turned her hand over so their palms were touching.

They sat like that.

The wind blew a little, and the big oak tree near the fence made that rustling, shushing sound, like it was saying, "It's okay, it's okay, it's okay."

Maya took a deep, shaky breath. The kind of breath that sounds like it's carrying something heavy and is trying to set it down gently.

"I don't really want to talk about it," Maya said quietly.

"Okay," said Audrey.

And that was all.

They watched a squirrel run along the top of the fence, its tail bouncing with every step like a fuzzy question mark. They watched two first-graders argue about whose turn it was on the slide and then somehow become best friends again three seconds later. They watched the wind push an empty chip bag across the blacktop like a tiny silver tumbleweed.

Then Maya said, "Audrey?"

"Yeah?"

"Thanks for sitting here."

Audrey nodded. "I like this rock," she said.

And Maya almost smiled. It wasn't a full smile. It was more like the beginning of one — the part where your mouth thinks about smiling and starts to get ready but isn't quite sure yet. Like the first tiny bit of light that peeks over the edge of the world before the sun actually rises.

"It does look like a whale," Maya said.

"I've always thought so," said Audrey.

They looked at the rock beneath them. Audrey patted it.

"A good whale," said Maya.

"A very good whale," agreed Audrey.

They sat for a little while longer. The shadows on the playground had shifted, the way they always did near the end of recess, stretching out long and thin like they were trying to reach something far away.

Then the whistle blew.

All across the playground, kids stopped what they were doing and started moving toward the doors. The foursquare ball rolled to a stop. The hide-and-seek kids came out from behind the big recycling bins.

Maya slid off the whale rock. Audrey slid off too.

They walked toward the building together. Not fast, not slow. Just together.

Halfway across the blacktop, Maya reached over and held Audrey's hand. Not the resting kind from before. The real kind. The kind that means something too big and too important for words.

They walked through the doors and down the hallway and back to Mrs. Patterson's classroom, where it smelled like dry-erase markers and somebody's orange from snack time.

Maya let go of Audrey's hand and went to her desk. Audrey went to hers.

And when Audrey sat down, she looked across the room at Maya, and Maya looked back at her, and this time Maya smiled. A real one. Small, but real. The kind of smile that doesn't mean everything is fixed or everything is better. The kind that means: you were there, and it mattered.

Audrey smiled back.

Then Mrs. Patterson said, "All right, everyone, take out your math journals," and the afternoon went on the way afternoons do.

But for the rest of the day, every now and then, Audrey would look at Maya, and Maya would look at Audrey, and something warm and quiet would pass between them — something that didn't need words or explanations or even a name.

Just the feeling of not being alone.