She’s sitting like that again, with her knees pulled up to her chest and her legs pulled in, curled up into a little ball. She does that a lot, seems to be comfortable with it as she does her work. The teacher asks her, Hey, how come you always sit like that? 
She smiles, and laughs a little, quick and sharp. It’s not a really great story, she says. Kind of sad actually.
That’s okay, he says. I like sad.
She begins.

The girl is in first grade. She’s sitting on the carpet and the teacher is reading the read aloud book, just like she does at the end of every day. The girl is sitting criss cross, back straight, because her mommy said that's how you get taller. So she sat like that every day. The teacher keeps reading, the girl keeps picking at one of the strings in the carpet. Her only friend was mean, and she kept throwing little rolled up balls of strings at the girl. She wanted to tell her to stop but didn’t have the courage.
Wait, he says. Why were you friends with her if she was mean?
She shrugs. She was the only girl who wanted to play with me, she says.
He frowns. Go on, he says.
Anyway, the teacher got to the part in the read aloud where the frog got run over by a car. The class dimmed a bit, and the girl couldn’t stop thinking about how scared that frog must’ve been just moments before it died. She got really upset, but she could hear her friend next to her laughing a bit, giggling, as if someone told her a joke. The girl grew angry. Why are you laughing? she said to her friend. The frog just died.
I know the frog just died, her friend said.
The girl was suddenly exhausted and started to cry, just like that. It wasn’t a real surprise. She cried all the time. Her friend looked at the tears rolling down her cheeks and grew disgusted. What’s there to cry about? she said. You’re so sensitive.
The girl felt ashamed. Her cheeks were hot and she felt like the whole class was watching her. So she curled herself up, pulled her legs to herself and hugged them, and cried into her knees. She stayed like that for a while until she felt better. Her black sparkle leggings were wet at the knees but it was okay. She felt better. She liked the way you could see little flecks of light in there if you tried hard enough. Her friend lost interest and started throwing little strings at someone else, and it was the safest she felt in a long time.

That was sadder than I thought.
Yeah, she says, I guess.
You know I’m going to have to ask you if you’re okay every time you do that now, right.
Yeah, she says, I know.