At any point, during the whispers, during the staring, during the laughter, he could have held it up and said a single sentence, and the cruelty would have stopped.

Most of us, in his place, would have.

Most of us, absorbing that much undeserved ridicule while holding in our pocket the thing that would end it, would not have been able to resist reaching for it, if only to make the pain stop, if only to be understood.

But Julian did not reach for it.

He walked across that stage, and stood before six hundred laughing people, and let them laugh, holding his vindication in his pocket, unused.

And I have come to understand why, though it took me a long time.