“Mr. President.” From behind our side’s wooden podium, Miles addressed the freshman senator from Georgia, who was, for the morning, acting president pro tempore. I couldn’t help but notice that this man sat in his elevated chair with the posture of one scanning his phone under the desk. “The bill will fund a five-year Department of Education study, screening public elementary-school students for learning disabilities and mental illness.” Miles’s voice carried. “Catching these issues early will almost certainly offset future special needs and remedial education expenditures. It will touch every aspect of school retention, including lowering the number of suspensions and expulsions, not to mention dropout rates.”

“He’s not punching the opening hard enough.” I leaned back in the gallery’s auditorium-like seat, aggravated, though I kept my voice low. “I told him not to hold back. I knew he wasn’t listening to me.”

This bill was a good idea, maybe even a great one. For months we’d worked on it, consulting every expert that would take our calls, attending meeting after meeting with the suits in the Office of the Legislative Counsel. And it was personal. For Miles, who hated school, flipped trays in the cafeteria and cursed his bus driver, who got suspended more than once before he was diagnosed with dyslexia at seventeen. For me, who spent my entire sophomore year eating lunch alone in the girls’ bathroom, whose anxiety went undiagnosed until I was eighteen.

“I envy the way the British do it,” Bo said, sinking into his seat and crossing one khakied leg over the other. “Speeches over there are given to full houses. You look your detractors and skeptics in the eyes as you dismantle their arguments. There are cheers and applause when you get it right.”

“What are we doing here,” I asked, “except screaming into the wind?”

“Hoping someone will hear us,” Bo said. In the army, he’d worked with computers. He never elaborated on his particular duties, but often I caught him staring at people as though deciphering lines of code. Now I was the target of such a gaze. “You all right over there? You seem to care about this one speech a lot.”

“I always care,” I said, defensive.

Bo nodded. “I know you do. But—I say this with all due respect—why are you here? Both of us didn’t need to come.”

He was right. I’d been micromanaging. “I want to be sure,” I said, “that we’re making some progress, somewhere. After my father...you know.” I lifted a shoulder. “I feel that I need to—”

“Prove yourself?” Bo finished for me.

“Is that lame?”

Bo shook his head. “I get it.”

“You’re not going to tell me to back off?” I asked.

“If I did, would you listen?” Bo smiled.

“Probably not.”