What Friendship Can Do Quietly
Lukas's mother sat down with him on a Saturday in November.
"How are you doing, kid?"
"I'm fine."
"How is Mara doing, kid?"
He looked at her. His mother had a way of asking the second question that made the first question pointless to lie about.
"I don't know, Mum. She doesn't tell me much. At school. We talk on the way home. But not about — that. About other stuff."
"Have you told her you're tired?"
He looked surprised.
"I'm not tired."
"Lukas. You are a little tired. That's normal. It's a lot, what you're doing. You don't have to pretend it isn't."
He thought about this.
"I am a little tired," he admitted, quietly.
"Right. Now: have you told her?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because then she'll think she's a burden."
"And maybe she is — sometimes. We are all sometimes a burden. That doesn't mean we don't love each other. It just means love takes work. Mara should know that. You can be tired AND keep showing up. That's a real friendship. Pretending you're not tired isn't."
Lukas thought about this for a week.
The next Saturday, walking home from a small thing the school had done, Lukas said, very carefully:
"Mara."
"Yeah?" (At home, on a walk away from school, Mara could speak. Her voice was a little quiet but it was there.)
"This is hard. The not-talking-at-school thing. For you, I know. I want to say also — for me. A bit. I'm tired sometimes. I'm not going to stop