Everyone in Class 9A knew what the last desk meant. It wasn’t assigned. No one said it out loud, but the last desk, near the broken window and the dusty shelf, was for the student no one noticed. The one who never raised a hand. The one who didn’t laugh too loudly or speak too much. And that’s where Rida sat.

She came to school every day with her hair neatly tied, her notebook clean and her voice steady, but low. Not shy exactly, just invisible. She wasn’t bad at studies, but never topped the class either. She wasn’t unfriendly, but no one was close enough to her to know that she was good at drawing. And no one knew that she walked three kilometres to school every day,........

© Dawn Young Magazine