Source A: The chair beside mine

An original contemporary non-fiction-style practice text, written for this question.

When Mara returned to school, the chair beside mine had disappeared beneath gifts. There were cards, biscuits, three bunches of flowers and an envelope of money collected after a burst pipe had flooded her family’s flat. We had built a small hill of kindness on her desk before she had even taken off her coat.

We spoke in softened voices, as if her sadness were a sleeping animal that might wake if we made a sudden noise. Teachers let unfinished work pass without comment. At lunch, people carried Mara’s tray and pulled out her chair. Each gesture seemed thoughtful on its own, but together they made her look like something breakable.

Before the flood, Mara had been the person who challenged every rule in science club and argued fiercely about whose turn it was to use the microscope. Now nobody asked about the experiment she had designed. We asked whether she was all right, whether she was coping and whether she needed anything. We wrapped her in cotton wool and then wondered why she could no longer reach us.

Within two days, students who had never spoken to her knew her as “the girl from the flood”. The phrase travelled along corridors more quickly than her name. When she entered a room, conversations paused. People smiled at her with their heads tilted to one side. She became a story everyone could feel sorry about, while the person inside that story grew quieter.

On Friday, I found her alone in the canteen. I sat down and began the sentence we had all been using: “If you need anything—”

“You keep offering me things,” she interrupted, “but nobody asks me anything.” She pushed the unopened envelope towards me. “Ask me what would actually help. Ask me what I want. I haven’t broken.”

She took my pen and made a list on a paper napkin: a lift to collect boxes on Saturday, copies of the lessons she had missed and somewhere dry to store her science project. Her handwriting was quick and untidy, just as it had always been. The list did what our pity had failed to do: it made room for her decisions.

The following week, Mara and I argued for twenty minutes about the experiment. She accused me of measuring the wrong liquid; I told her that her instructions were impossible to read. Then she laughed. For the first time since her return, nobody called her brave, tragic or inspiring. She was simply Mara, disagreeing with me.

Our kindness had been genuine, but we had offered it from a distance. We had placed Mara below us so that we could lean down to help. It was only when we stopped treating her as a disaster and started listening to her as an equal that the chair beside mine truly belonged to her again.