Nine years. Eight brown paper bags every Friday. That was my routine, and I never thought a juice box and a sandwich would end up costing me my job.

My name is Arthur Rivera, but everyone at Lincoln Elementary just calls me Mr. Artie.

I’m sixty-eight years old, and I’ve been the head janitor here for nearly a decade.

It’s a good school, mind you. Built back in the seventies with nice red brick and big windows that let the morning sun in. I know every squeaky floorboard in the place, and I know exactly which locker doors tend to stick.

But you see a lot of things when you’re the one sweeping up the cafeteria after lunch. Kids are proud, even the little ones. They don’t want you to know when things are bad at home.

I first noticed Maya when she was only seven. She would eat her school lunch so slowly, taking tiny little bites of her pear and nibbling the edges of her sandwich. She was trying to make it last, bless her, because she knew there wasn’t much waiting for her at home.

Then there was Toby. He was a quiet boy who always slid his little milk carton into his jacket pocket at the end of the period. He was saving it for later, or maybe for a little sister.

And Leo. Leo would sit there on Friday mornings and tell his teacher he wasn’t hungry. But by ten o’clock, he couldn’t even focus on his spelling words. I could hear his stomach growling from three feet away while I was mopping the hallway.

So, I started the bags. Just eight of them.

Every Thursday night after my shift, I’d go down to the local grocery store. I bought the generic brands to keep the cost down. My pension isn’t huge, but it gets the job done.

I’d pack them in my little janitor closet behind the big yellow mop buckets. Each bag got a granola bar, a juice box, a turkey sandwich, and a nice red apple.

I never put names on them, and I never wrote any notes. I just waited until the classrooms were empty for afternoon recess on Fridays. I’d slip inside and leave a bag on those eight specific desks.

I did the math the other night, to be honest. Over nine years, it came out to about sixty-two hundred dollars out of my own pocket. My wife passed away ten years ago, so nobody was looking at my bank statements anyway. It was my money, and they were my kids.

Everything was fine until last Friday. I was placing the last bag on Maya’s desk. She’s ten now, in the fourth grade, and she’s grown so much.

Suddenly, the classroom door squeaked open. It was Mrs. Gable, one of the third-grade teachers. She had forgotten her car keys on her desk.

She looked at me, and then she looked at the brown bag in my hand.