Jenna never raised her hand in class, never forgot her homework, and always ate lunch alone. Wherever she went she carried a small brown notebook, which she wrote in during lunch, recess, and study hall.

One recess I came up to her and said, “Hello.”

She dropped her pencil and looked up, eyes wide. One hand clasped the other. “Leave me alone. I’m busy.”

I told my mom about it. She said Jenna was a solitary creature, and if she didn’t want to be bugged, I shouldn’t bug her. Still, it seemed impossible that someone could be so alone without being lonely.

I sat next to her at lunch. “Hi, Jenna. Read any good books lately?”

“Leave me alone. I’m busy.” Maybe she wasn’t lonely after all.

The next day I found a letter on my desk:

I’ve been rereading A Wrinkle in Time. It is amazing! All the characters are well fleshed out and flawed but loveable--except IT, who is truly reprehensible. I wonder if Meg should have killed IT once she saved Charles Wallace. That would have killed all the Camazotzians, but then IT couldn’t hurt anyone else. Like the Hiroshima bomb, to stop the war. Have you read it? Have you read any of the sequels?

It went on like that for three pages. At the end was a poem she said she’d been writing about me:

It isn’t finished so don’t judge too harshly.
Melissa flying with her lake-sheen hair.
Basketball sweeps through the air
And rattles in the net.
That’s all so far.

Jenna was sitting just two desks over. I put down the letter and whirled around. Then I hesitate, turned back to my desk, picked up a pencil, and began to write.

I guess it’s true what they say: still rivers run deep.