Unwritten Documents

She was upset. He didn't know why, but she was upset and had the waterfall of tears to prove it. Others around her tried to comfort her, but they were doing it wrong.

What happened the last time she was like this?

It was during math class. She had no friends and was working alone.

They'd had a sub that day... His name was Mark Mccalliv. He was an old man who liked to go off on rants about who-knows-what and had no clue how to deal with rowdy middle-schoolers.

They had an easy but long two-page assignment with coordinate grids. She sat, lonely in the back of the classroom. His friend and him sat at the only desks behind her.

He heard her voice for the first time that day... She'd turned around to speak to them.

"S-sorry, but may I borrow a pencil? I-I really only use pens a-and I don't trust myself not to mess up..." She stuttered quite a lot, and her voice was minuscule. What was her name?

"Sure. Go right ahead," his friend, Mike, spoke up. He handed her a sharpened but otherwise pretty much untouched pencil.

"Th-thank you... I'm sorry, but what w-was yo-y-your name? I-I'm really terrible at remembering names," she asked as she stared at her hands.

"Oh, it's no big deal. My name's Mike, and the silent one over there is Cheney. We call him William. I'm not sure why he's not talking, though," Mike replied. "Your name's... Graciella, right?"

She nodded. "I-I'm surprised you remembered my name. I'm not a particularly m-memorable person," she said, her voice falling in decibel level by the second.

"You're in our English class, right," he spoke up. William was sure she was, but had decided to check. She nodded her affirmation and opened her mouth to speak, but something hit the side of her head. She stared at it blankly a moment. A pen was lying on the floor next to her seat.

"Wh-who threw that," she turned and spoke as firmly as she possibly could. Two boys, roughhousers even in the middle of class if William remembered correctly, sat at a disturbed cluster of desks staring straight at her. Fear crossed their faces for a second, the two pointed at each other, but her steely gaze only hardened.

"I'll th-thank you not to throw anything else in my direction again. I'm blaming both of you."

William hadn't though she'd had it in herself to speak so strongly, but apparently she did. She turned back to Mike and quietly thanked him for the pencil, then set to work on the assignment.

A minute later, she was hit by another thrown object: one of the hollowed-out tennis balls put on the bottom of desks to stop them from scratching the floor. She looked up, looked towards the two boys again.

"What was that for," she spoke towards them. They stayed silent until she turned away. As she went back to her work, the boys erupted into roughhousing. They were soon joined by one other, and Graciella was soon hit by another tennis ball.

This time, though, she was hit hard enough for it to bounce right off her back and land at the boy who threw its feet. She whipped her head around and shot a death glare at him.

"You too, Brandon? Stop. Throwing. Things. At. Me."

This continued several more times before she just stopped reacting. The three boys had ignored Mr. Mccalliv's warning to make them stop. She hunched over, her long blonde hair hiding her face, and started whispering to herself. Mike and William had just barely been able to hear her whisper, "what did I do? Why are they throwing things at me? What... Did... I.... D-d-do....?"

Shortly after that, she was hit once again. This time around, William heard the impact.

She sat there, her shoulders shaking every time she was hit again, as the process continued. It was finally stopped when a girl sitting in front of her- William thought she was named Gabby- looked at her and started shouting at the group of boys.

"What's wrong with you three!? She's crying!" The girls in the class began to gang up on Brandon, while a few others attempted to comfort the crying girl. They gave up when she made no response; she looked at them as they went back to their work. She looked back down at her paper: it was tear stained and no where near done.

She stayed like that for a while. William and Mike talked to each other as 'class' continued. She cracked a tiny, tiny smile as she listened to them talking...

Soon, she turned around and placed Mike's borrowed pencil with a note written in small, black handwriting on top of his paper. He didn't notice for a few minutes until William pointed it out.

Mike looked at the note and picked it up to read.

'Thanks for cheering me up, you two.

~Graciella'

Oh.

...

William, back out of his flashback, looked right at the girls surrounding Graciella. She stayed terminally upset in the situation.

He looked at her, and spoke up to the others. "When she's upset, she needs to hear people talking, but not to her. Let her be," he said over the others. They stared at him a moment and nodded. The group went back to their usual chatter.

In five minutes, Graciella turned to William and smiled, talking as animatedly as she possibly could. Her smile lit up her reddened, bright blue eyes and William was sure this time that he'd done the right thing