For twelve years, the whole school called her "Trash Girl" because her mother collected cans for a living — until graduation night, when she said one sentence into the microphone and four hundred people rose to their feet in tears.

A man in the bleachers clapped, once.

Then a woman.

Then a ripple, and a swell, until the whole gym was on its feet.

Not just the sixty-one.

Everyone.

Parents and teachers and teenage graduates in blue caps, and the old janitor leaning in the doorway with his broom, and the girls who'd laughed at my tray, and the boys who'd carved my locker, one at a time, rising out of their seats like people coming up from underwater.

Folding chairs scraped on the wooden floor, four hundred at once, in a long, rolling roar like thunder.

And then, over the noise, the voice of Mr. Granger, cracked and rough in the microphone, as he stepped up beside me.

"Ms. Walker," he said. "May I?"

I stepped back.

I reached under my gown, and I pulled out a black composition notebook wrapped in a plastic grocery bag.

I had meant to keep it.