It was Anya who started it.
They were sitting at lunch - Scarlett, Maisie, and Anya - and Anya was having a hard day. Not a dramatic hard day. Just the ordinary kind where everything felt slightly wrong and the morning had been difficult and she couldn’t quite shake the feeling.
“What do you do?” Anya asked. “When things feel heavy. What actually helps?”
Scarlett opened her mouth to answer - and then stopped.
Because she wasn’t sure.
She knew things helped. She knew that after the assembly, certain things had made the difference between one day and the next feeling slightly more bearable. She just hadn’t ever named them.
“I’m not sure,” she said honestly. “I’d have to think about it.”
She thought about it all afternoon.
And on the walk home, she started to notice them - the things that had helped, quietly, without her particularly registering that they were helping at the time.
Telling Lenny about it. That had helped - not because he fixed anything but because saying it out loud made it feel less enormous.
The walk to school with Pudding bounding ahead. Something about the moving and the cold air and the distraction of whatever Pudding found interesting had consistently, reliably made the mornings a little more manageable.
The drawing she’d done on the Saturday after the assembly - not because she’d planned to, just because she’d picked up a pencil and started, and an hour had disappeared and she’d come back feeling lighter.
Daniel’s story about the Christmas play. The fact that he’d told it so matter-of-factly, without embarrassment, and she’d almost laughed.
Maisie saving her a seat. Just that. Just the small warm certainty of knowing the seat would be there.
By the time she got home, she had a list in her head.
She told Lenny about it that evening.
“I didn’t realise I had them,” she said. “Tools. Things that actually help. I’ve just been using them without knowing.”
“Most people have them,” said Lenny. “They just haven’t named them yet.”
“Why does naming them help?”
“Because once you know what they are,” said Lenny, “you can reach for them on purpose. Instead of waiting to stumble across them by accident.”
Scarlett thought about Anya’s question at lunch.
She knew what she’d say now.
She’d say: talk to someone you trust, move your body, make something, laugh about something when you can, and notice the small things that tell you you’re not alone.
Not a perfect toolkit. Not a cure.
Just the things that had helped her, quietly, without fanfare, when things were hard.
That, she thought, was enough.
🫶 Dream big dreams.