Tonight’s mentoring session was not going well. Our group of mentors and mentees played a long game of Apples to Apples, but my mentee was not having it. She’s 18 years old, and like all the kids in this small program, she has specific medical and psychological conditions and is part of the foster care system. When the session began, she had just returned from the medical clinic because she was experiencing bad headaches, so she told me she didn’t want to participate today but wanted to sit and watch. Instead, she sat next to me and pulled out her smart phone, checking Facebook every five minutes and texting multiple friends. Well, I guess we weren’t bonding.

The last session, she was super quiet and hard to reach, which I expected would be the case. I tried to crack some jokes to soften her a little, and she eventually lightened up a bit (she was visibly on guard, as her shoulders were very tense). She gave me a hug before she left, and at the end of that session, I wondered if she just thought I was just some loser who was going to leave her like all the other people in her life had previously.

But after today’s session, the lead of the program told me otherwise. “I know she’s hard to crack, but she really is a sweet person,” our program coordinator told me. “After the last session, she actually texted me on her way home and told me how much she enjoyed talking to you and how amazing you were to her that day. She looks like she really wants to give you a chance. She’s the kind of person who, if she didn’t want to be here, she would just never come. And she came and wanted to be here today to see you.”

I smiled. Sometimes it’s the words unspoken that may never get shared that mean the most.