This was the first time I wrote myself down, and I have never forgotten how it felt to watch the pen move and know that the words on the page were finally, exactly, mine.

Chapter 17 — The Chaotic Mornings

For the next several days our mornings got worse before they got better, and I want to tell that part honestly, because the honest part is where the hope actually lives.

My father woke me at four fifty-eight every morning, because he had spent years slipping quietly out of the house before dawn and had no idea how long it takes a ten-year-old to eat cereal, find clean clothes, brush out tangled hair, and get to school without a grown-up barking the next order at every step.

The first morning I poured far too much milk in my bowl and made a mess.

The second morning I knocked over a glass of water.