“This card was given to me at an awareness fair ten years ago,” she said. “I kept it in my wallet for nine of them. I never called the number. But just knowing it was there—a tiny purple lifeline in a sea of gray—it kept me from stepping off the curb on bad days. Awareness campaigns aren’t for the people on stage, Leo. They’re for the person in the back row who hasn’t said their name yet.”

She pressed the card into his palm.

He hated this part. The part where survivors stood on a stage and became exhibits.

“You don’t have to speak. But you should stop pretending you’re just here to hang the banner.”

Leo stared at the banner, a roll of double-sided tape sweating in his palm. The community center’s fluorescent lights hummed, bleaching the color out of everything. He was here to hang the backdrop for the annual "Voices of Hope" awareness campaign. It was his third year doing the grunt work, avoiding the microphones and the folding chairs that would soon hold a hundred sympathetic faces.

Marta stopped folding. For a long moment, she just looked at him. Then she reached into her pocket and pulled out a creased, coffee-stained business card. It was faded, but Leo could still make out the logo: a simple purple heart, the same one on the banner.