And Mr. Sibley—what mind full of hate had he met?

Macey read on.

A civil rights leader said to the young Reverend King, as he first began to lead, “The Lord has laid his hands on you, and that is a dangerous thing.”

Macey imagined the hands of the Lord falling on her shoulders, touching her forehead, His voice saying, You must do this.

The chapter ended way too soon. Macey had hardly learned anything. The book went on to Marilyn Monroe. Macey could not believe it. How did they go from bombing a minister’s house to a sex goddess?

Hands fell on her shoulder, and Macey almost screamed.

“Sorry,” said her father. “I thought you knew me.”

“I was in the fifties,” said Macey. “I thought you were the hands of the Lord.”

Macey had not read under the covers in years.

She didn’t have to now. It would never cross her parents’ minds to check whether her lights were out. But it felt safer under the covers, with the heat and weight of blankets tucking her in.

The story picked up in chapter forty-four.

Little Rock, Arkansas. No black child had ever been in the same school with a white. Two thousand white children at Central High. Nine black children willing to be the first. The governor ordered the National Guard to the school to keep the nine children out.

Macey read that twice, to be sure. To keep nine children out of the building?

Yes, the state brought in its own army, whose soldiers said, We’re here to keep the niggers out.

Macey hated having that word in the room with her. She put her finger over the word to clean up the page and read on.

Fifteen-year-old Elizabeth Eckford came to the school alone. Black and alone in a dress she had made herself for the new experience. “Here she comes!” shouted the crowd. “Here comes one of the niggers!”

Macey did not like crowds. She didn’t like being squashed onto bleachers for a football game and she didn’t like taking the subway at rush hour, pressed forward by a crowd that might shove her off the edge.

A crowd holding stones.

To throw.

At you.

Screaming: “Go home, you black bitch!”

A Guardsman lifted his rifle—but not to protect Elizabeth. He pointed it at her. Bayonet and all, he pointed it at a fifteen-year-old girl. Someone yelled, “Lynch her!” and the mob pressed closer.

Macey could not keep the book under the covers with her. She dropped it to the floor, and it fell facedown, pages splayed and bent, like what the crowd wanted to do to Elizabeth Eckford.

I’m fifteen, too, thought Macey. What if I sewed my own dress, and ironed it that morning, and prayed with my parents, and walked up to a school—a school! a perfectly ordinary school!—me and my skin, because I can’t go without it—and hundreds of sweaty, angry, shouting people who think I’d be better off with a rope around my neck surrounded me?