How odd.

My mother was telling me about a missing girl during lunch yesterday. Apparently this 10-year-old girl never went home after school the other day. Her parents came over my mom’s school, asking my mother’s fellow teacher, the girl’s class adviser if she came in that morning. She didn’t. They asked her classmates and friends if they’ve seen her, but apart from having seen her the day before when they left each other to go home, they haven’t even had a glimpse of her since.

I wasn’t really minding much what my mother was telling me, but a thought came to mind that maybe she got kidnapped. Worse, I thought, she could have been raped. Even worse than that, killed. This just flashed through my mind as possible scenarios when things like these happen. Then I remember thinking that she might have just run away from home. It isn’t that unnatural for a girl that age.

Then hours later, when my mother came home, she told me that some of the girl’s neighbors found her body. She’s dead. That momentary idea of mine during lunch, about her being raped and killed, was after all true. She was gagged. Her ribs were broken in several places. Her clothes were all torn to shreds. And her neck was slit.

Although this is terrible news to hear, I felt oddly nothing. I wasn’t surprised. I wasn’t that horrified. Although I didn’t know this poor girl, I should at least feel something about what happened to her, right? Outrage, perhaps? Anger? Hatred for people who could be so inhumane as to do this kind of thing to anyone, let alone an innocent 10-year old 4th grader who was just coming back home from school.

Instead, I felt decidedly nothing. How apathetic I’ve become.