For four weeks, I’d watched her retreat into this grove while weekend visitors came and went. Every student had received at least one visitor since the start of the school year. Most students had visitors every weekend. Not one person had come to see Tinsley. As we walked back to the classroom, she prattled on about the opossums, sharing stories as if they were her closest friends. She was lonely. If I looked beneath her misbehavior and sass, I would see just how deep her loneliness ran. She was miserable. Maybe that misery began long before she moved to Maine. What had she really left behind
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