She was right. That’s the thing. If you take that photo out, my grandmother is a woman who was rude in a group chat and nobody would have cared for eleven minutes.

It only worked because you could see me.

So my aunt used a picture of me unconscious as evidence, and it worked, and my grandmother lost her church committee and my uncle lost his restaurant and I got a billboard on Highway 99 for a family values foundation in Sacramento.

Everybody got something out of that night except me, and I did the part in the gym.

I went to see her.

Not to forgive her. I want to be clear about that because my father assumed forgiveness was what I was going for and I had to say the word no four times in one conversation.