When we reached the health room, I turned and asked my father to wait for me on the bench in the hall, and he nodded and sat down without a word of argument, and that too was new — that when I said I wanted to do a thing myself, the answer was simply yes.

The nurse recognized me the moment I came through her door.

I sat on the paper-covered edge of the cot while she found the page in her log where she had noted our conversation from earlier that week.

“I told you the brace didn’t hurt me,” I said, looking at her desk.

“I remember, sweetheart,” she said, and nodded slowly.

I rubbed the seam of my jeans with my thumb.