I knew a little girl once

Once when I was young, there was a girl in my class. There was nothing special about this girl, she was like any other with long brown hair and eyes like nature. She was no different from I, a bit more quiet and reserved perhaps, no different from any other student in my class except.. For some reason the others decided she was different and made sure everyone else in her class knew so, they must have sat around and decided she was to be left out and ridiculed.... I must have missed the invitation.

It went on for years, they never spoke a word to her, pretended she didn't exist and when her name was called for attendance  they would giggle and mutter "Who?". Sometimes I think she wished they said hash things to her it would at least be some form of recognition, better than the endless silence and fear that came with a forced solitude. I bow my head in an act of respect to her for though I knew she was hurting the calm cool of her expression never changed and if there was a spark of pain in her eyes it never lingered for long.
There was one day, I remember, when she braved entering a lunch room full of her classmates I looked to her with cautious interest but lost sight of her in the throngs of media-moulded youths...... I saw her once again later,  she brushed past me and didn't stop to excuse herself for knocking papers from my hand, I would have muttered a insult under my breath had the light in the hall not caught in her tears and exposed to me the un-measurable depth of sorrow in her forest eyes.
She didn't come to class after that, I was the only one to notice. And I could never tell why she was crying, was it because of the tally marks of pain on her wrists or the bruises on her body that matched her  mothers hands a little too well. It didn't matter though, no one ever asked no one seemed to car enough and I can see now why they didn't understand why when one day she didn't come to school and the next few days her chair served no other purpose than to collect dust.
I must have been the only one who noticed, who questioned why she never smiled and why she never joined the lunch room during break why she flinched when voices grew a little too loud why the only time she seemed at peace was when she was curled in the corner with pen and paper in hand..
I must have been the only one to question, to spare her a glance that wasn't judging and cold. I didn't have the courage to approach her despite my endless questioning, I was selfish and feared if I was to be the one who offered her a helping hand, who showed her kindness, I would be cast out like she was..
So I never approached her and as I think of it now I should have, had I befriended this girl who had nothing maybe then the principal wouldn't have had to come in and ask for a moment of silence followed by a paragraph of words no one expected to come but me, her chair wouldn't be empty and riddled with dust and we wouldn't be forced to attend a funeral of a girl they spoke of as though they knew her well ,with well over used phrases of
"She seemed so happy.." "We never would have guessed" even "Why didn't she tell anyone"
It was annoying to hear such things from these people, from the ones who shunned her going through some false cycle of mourning or where they simply trying to redeem themselves...