I had no answer for that either.
She took the folder and shoved it back in the cabinet.
Then she leaned on the counter with both palms flat like the room had tilted.
When she spoke again, her voice had gone tired instead of sharp.
“You got to be a child for one night,” she said. “I will not trade that back.”
I should have let it end there.
I really should have.
Instead I said the thing that had been growing in me all day at school, all evening in the gravel lot, all night in the kitchen.
“You keep saying I got to be a child for one night. But then you keep handing me choices big enough to break adults.”
She went still.
I wished it back the second it left my mouth.
But truth is like toothpaste.
Once it’s out, the whole room smells like it.
My mother stared at me.
Not angry.
Just wounded in that private way people get when the person they would die for says exactly where it hurts.
Then she whispered, “Go to bed.”
I did.
But I didn’t sleep.
I lay on the top bunk staring at the ceiling while Noah snored small and warm under his pretend sky.
Sometime after midnight I heard my mother crying in the kitchen without sound.
That is the worst kind.
The kind meant for no one.
Thursday came mean and fast.
School dragged.
The air itself felt like waiting.
At lunch, Rina handed me half her cookie and said, “Whatever happens tonight, don’t let polished people make you feel like they invented kindness.”
I looked at her.
“Did your grandmother say that?”
“She did.”
“Tell her I love her.”
“I will.”
When I got home, a garment bag hung from the shower rod.
Inside was a navy dress with tiny white flowers and a tag still on it.
No note.
Just a dress.
My mother saw me looking and froze in the hallway.
“I didn’t buy it,” she said.
“Who did?”
“Mrs. Holloway found it at the church exchange room.”
For a second neither of us moved.
The dress wasn’t a decision.
But it had the shape of one.
