The Unsigned Note in Locker 31

Chapter 1Locker 30

On the first Monday of Cheshvan, Dina Rubin dropped her math book on the floor of the eighth-grade hallway, and a folded piece of paper fell out of the wrong locker.

It was not her locker. Dina's was number 30. The paper had slid out of the narrow gap above Locker 31, where the metal door never quite closed. It landed at her feet like a small, white bird.

She picked it up to push it back. That was all she meant to do. But the paper had unfolded a little, and five words, written in pencil in small neat letters, were facing up.

I can't keep doing this.

Dina stood very still. The hallway noise went on around her: lockers banging, a group of girls laughing near the stairwell, somebody's lunch bag crinkling. She looked at the note. She looked at the door of Locker 31.

She should have folded it and put it back. She knew that. A note in somebody's locker was private, like a diary, like a closed door.

But she had read five words already, and they sat in her chest like a cold stone. I can't keep doing this. Doing what? Writing? Walking to school? Pretending to be fine?

The bell rang. Dina shoved the note into her skirt pocket without deciding to, and ran to class with her heart going faster than the clock.

Chapter 2The List of Suspects

All through Chumash, the note burned in her pocket.

Locker 31 belonged to someone, obviously. But who? The lockers were numbered, not named, and the school had never posted a list. Dina only knew her own neighbors by sight. She knew that the girl on her left, Locker 29, was Shaindy Kahn, who sang off-key in the hallway and did not care. That was all she knew.

At lunch she sat with her usual group, Tzippy and Rochel and Bracha, and tried to listen to a long argument about whether the new bakery's rugelach was too sweet. Her eyes kept drifting around the room, doing something she had never done before. She was taking attendance of faces.

Tzippy: laughing. Rochel: laughing. Bracha: laughing. Shaindy, two tables over: eating alone, but she always did, and she looked fine. A girl named Esti Gold, whom Dina barely knew, sat at the end of a long table with a tuna sandwich she was not eating. Esti's shoulders were slightly hunched. She had been absent three times this month. She kept glancing at the door, as if she wished she could leave.

Dina stared at her a few seconds too long. Esti looked up, caught her eye, and looked away.

Is it Esti? she thought. And then right behind it, a sharper thought: You do not know that. You are guessing from a look and a sandwich.

She remembered what her mother always said when Dina decided she knew why someone was upset. "You see what happened, Dinaleh. You do not see why. The why lives inside them."

So she made two lists in her notebook, under the table where nobody could see.

What I know: There is a note. It says "I can't keep doing this." It fell out of Locker 31. It is written in pencil.

What I'm guessing: Who it belongs to. What "this" means. Whether it is serious.

The second list was longer. Dina did not like that.

Chapter 3Locker 31

At the first break after lunch, she waited near the lockers until the hall had almost emptied. Then she walked to Locker 31 and, as quietly as she could, slid the note back into the gap.

She did not know why she was still hovering. Maybe she hoped that somebody would come and take it, a girl she would recognize, who would look relieved and a little embarrassed, and everything would be fine.

Nobody came.

She was about to leave when she noticed what she had missed the first time. The gap above the locker door was wider than usual because a second piece of paper was jammed in it, folded smaller. It had been there under the first one. She pulled it out carefully.

It was a different handwriting. Round, loopy letters in blue pen, the kind someone draws when they want to look cheerful. It said: Dear whoever has this locker, I saw you in the hallway today and you looked really sad. If you want to talk, I'm usually by the water fountain after lunch. No pressure. - A friend.

Dina read it three times. Somebody had left a kind note, and somebody else, the owner of Locker 31, had not answered it. Or had answered it with the first note: I can't keep doing this.

She put both back into the gap. Her hands were shaking now. A cold feeling spread across her back, because she realized this was bigger than a mystery. Two people had noticed. One was trying. The other was hurting.

And Dina, who had read a private note, was now the third person who knew.

She could walk away. Probably nothing was wrong. Probably "this" was a school project or the carpool schedule.

But "probably" was a guess too.

Chapter 4Mrs. Rosen's Office

Dina's mother had a rule in their house, an old rule that Dina had always thought was a little dramatic. If you ever think someone might be in trouble, and you cannot be sure, you do not decide alone whether it is serious. You tell a grownup who can find out safely. It is never tattling. It is never wrong.

Right away, without waiting for the end of the day, Dina went to the school office. The secretary looked up with a tired smile.

"Is Mrs. Rosen in? The guidance counselor? It's not an emergency," Dina added, and then she thought, I don't actually know that. "I mean, I don't know if it's an emergency. That's why I'm here."

Mrs. Rosen came out of her small office with a mug of tea and a soft gray sheitel that always looked a little windblown. She did not ask any questions in the hallway. She just held the door and said, "Come in, sweetheart."

Dina sat down on the edge of the blue couch. She took a breath, the slow kind she practiced when she felt a wave of nerves. Then she began, "I do not know if this matters, but I noticed something," and said it all in order, the way she would tell a story: the note, the falling paper, the second note, the five words. She told Mrs. Rosen what she had actually seen: a girl named Esti Gold who had not eaten her lunch and had been absent a few times. "I noticed Esti," she said, "but I don't know whether the note is hers." She said it quietly and only to Mrs. Rosen, as an observation and not an answer, because Mrs. Rosen had once said in an assembly that the fastest way to hurt a person is to say a guess out loud as if it were a fact.

When she finished, Mrs. Rosen was quiet for a moment.

"Thank you," she said. "You did exactly the right thing. You noticed, you did not decide you were an expert, and you brought it to someone whose job is to help. That was not easy."

"I read it," said Dina, in a small voice. "It wasn't mine. I shouldn't have."

"You are right that it was private. And you are also right that you could not unsee it. Both things can be true." Mrs. Rosen set down her tea. "I'm going to take it from here, Dina. Do you want to know how?"

"Yes."

"I will read the note, and I will quietly check which student has that locker. I will not announce anything. Then I will talk with her myself, kindly and directly, and ask how she is doing, and whether she is safe. You don't need to do anything more. And if she wants to talk to a friend after that, that's her choice, not mine and not yours."

"What if it's nothing?"

"Then it's nothing, and a girl got a check-in she did not need. That is a very small price." Mrs. Rosen smiled. "What if it's something?"

Dina swallowed. "Then I'm glad I told."

Chapter 5The Water Fountain

The week passed slowly. Dina did not see anything change. She walked past Locker 31 on Wednesday and Thursday, but the notes were gone, and the door stayed shut.

On Friday, before Shabbos, after lunch, she saw a surprising thing from across the hall. Two girls were standing by the water fountain. One was Esti Gold. The other was Shaindy Kahn, off-key, loud, who always ate alone.

Shaindy was holding a loopy blue pen.

Dina was much too far away to hear a word, and she did not move closer. It was not hers to hear. She only saw Shaindy talking, with her hands going fast, and Esti listening. And then Esti laughed. It came out wobbly. It was the first laugh Dina had seen from her all month.

Dina turned and walked the other way. She did not need credit. She was not the hero of this. The hero was a girl with a blue pen who had noticed on her own, and a counselor with a mug of tea, and a girl who maybe, finally, had somebody to sit with.

Chapter 6What Dina Kept

By Sunday the dread was gone from her chest. Mrs. Rosen had stopped her in the hallway on Friday with a quiet "Thank you. She has people helping now," and nothing more. Dina did not need to know the rest.

But something had changed in the way she walked through the hall.

On Monday, she arrived early. She opened Locker 30, and for the first time in months she looked, really looked, at the faces around her. A backpack on the floor, a girl sitting alone on the stairs with a book she was not reading, Tzippy laughing too hard at something that was not funny.

She did not decide any stories about them. She did not rush to fix anything. She just noticed, the way you notice weather, and let her noticing turn into something small and ordinary. She said hello to the girl on the stairs. She sat down next to her for two minutes.

At lunch, she sat with Tzippy, Rochel and Bracha, as always. But when she looked across the room and saw Esti and Shaindy at the end of a long table, sharing a bag of pretzels without talking much, she waved.

Esti waved back with her whole hand, and then laughed at something Shaindy said.

Dina thought about the five words that had fallen out of Locker 31. I can't keep doing this. They had been true, in their way. Nobody can keep doing everything alone.

But nobody had to.