My 8-year-old son gave up his lunch money to buy a little girl with Down syndrome a red dress—the next morning, our lawn was covered with lunchboxes, but what was inside the biggest one made him go pale.

Four sentences. That’s all it was.

By Sunday night it had gone round three class group chats.

And on Monday morning, on their way to work, between about six and twenty past, fifty-one families drove past my house and put a lunchbox on my lawn.

Every one of them had a packed lunch in it.

Every one of them had a note.

I read all fifty-one that week and I want to give you three.

Felix — from Isla in 3B. My mum says you can have my Tuesday.

Don’t do that again. We didn’t know. — the Farrows, number 30

Dear Felix, I am in your class and I did not know you were not eating. I sat next to you. Sorry. From Marcus.

Marcus is eight. Marcus’s mother told me he cried when they read the newsletter.

There was also money. Not much in most of them — a five here, a ten there, a bag of coins from somebody’s car. It came to about four hundred dollars across the lot and every single one said some version of this is for the little girl’s therapy, not for Felix.