Her stomach felt sick. The only thing she could think about was home. Her friends, her school, her own house. Her parents. She never knew that being homesick made you literally sick. She typically wasn't one to be sad, she was just the one who was constantly making jokes and running around so that no one would try to look any deeper.

Yet even now, her pillow was damp with the tears of several months that hadn't had a chance to escape. She never cried. It felt wrong somehow. She was scared someone would come in and see, but she had the door locked and music playing so that if anyone tried, she would play it off as forgetting she locked it, and that would give her enough time to get herself in order.

She couldn't think of a valid reason why her homesickness was a secret, but she couldn't bring herself to tell anyone. She just wasn't the type. She never cried.

What was that? She held her breath. Someone stomping quickly up the stairs. Then that familiar creaking of the hallway floorboards, then a key in a lock, a door opened and then slammed shut. The girl in the room next door? What was her name, Sammy? Tammy? She rolled over to face the wall, listening. Her eyes naturally focused on the photo of Mum and Dad she’d pinned there. Perpetually at the theme park wearing stupid hats; she remembers that day as if it were yesterday. Just the three of them, a spur-of-the-moment decision because Dad had said he was bored. Then the wall spoke to her, a series of pitiful sobs – muted by a pillow? She chewed her bottom lip and wondered what must have happened to her? Had she heard my sobs too?