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.

By seventh grade, someone had scratched it into my locker with a key.

Trash Girl.

It followed me through every hallway like a second shadow.

The shirt came later.

In fifth grade, I tore the sleeve of my one good school shirt on a bike pedal.

It was blue with a small collar, and I loved it.

My mother mended it that night at the kitchen table, under a dim bulb, with the only thread in her sewing tin.

Red.

Bright, ridiculous, unmistakable red.

"It'll hold, honey," she said, handing it back.

I looked at the stitches, thick as little scars, marching up my sleeve.

I cried so hard I got the hiccups.

"Everybody's going to see," I said.

"Let them see," she said. "It's a good mend."

I wore it anyway.

I wore it for seven years, because we couldn't afford another.

The only adult at Caldwell High who ever looked at that sleeve and said something about it was Ms. Fairchild, my English teacher.