It was something quieter and far more unsettling: a composure, a stillness, the look of a person who has been carrying something heavy for a long time and has learned to carry it without letting it show.

She did not cry.

She did not ask questions.

She did not cling to the social worker’s hand or shrink from the enormous gray building rising in front of her.

She simply walked, in complete silence, through the corridors of the prison, past the checkpoints and the heavy doors and the eyes of everyone she passed.

And the prison, which is not a place that falls silent easily, fell silent around her.

Conversations stopped as inmates watched the little girl go by.