On the last day of class, Lydia arrived before everyone else. When we walked in, she was standing at the board with her marker. She had written one sentence across the center: “Thank you for listening. It means more than you know.” Nobody erased it. Mr. Anderson stood beneath it for several seconds before saying that the class had taught him something he wished he had understood years earlier. As everyone packed their bags, I went to Lydia and told her I was sorry for every time I had assumed she was shy, strange, or uninterested.

She smiled and typed something into her tablet. “You weren’t the only one. That’s why I wrote it.” Then she closed her notebook and walked out. I watched her disappear into the hallway and realized that she had never needed a voice to make herself heard. She had already been speaking every day. We were simply too busy listening for sound to notice.