He nodded.

“That’s fair.”

I returned to the schedule.

Change, I had learned, was not a single grand gesture.

It was what people did after the room stopped watching.

PART 19

Selena’s winter science fair was held in the middle-school gym of a neighboring district, where the fluorescent lights hummed and every display board seemed to lean at a slightly different angle.

Her water sensor prototype sat between a model bridge and a study of urban heat.