Hanna couldn’t help but smile as the whole room burst into applause and laughter. Sam was not the least bit shy. He grinned and made an exaggerated bow.

“Sam,” Miss Walters said, “you read very well, but please remember that modesty is always becoming.”

“Yes, Teacher,” Sam said.

“You may return to your seat.”

As Sam passed Hanna’s desk, he was still smiling.

Is he smiling at me?

Alarmed, she tried to draw back deeper into her bonnet. She did not want to be singled out.

Not even by a nice-looking boy with a friendly smile.

5

HANNA WALKED HOME after her first day of school. It was only a few blocks, but it felt like miles, her feet heavy, her head heavier. She had done nothing but sit at a desk all day. But the effort of worrying—what Miss Walters thought of her, whether the other students could see her face despite the scoop bonnet, how she would ever amass enough courage to take it off . . . It had all been more exhausting than she could have imagined.

Supper was ready when Papa came in from the building site. Hanna had made the batter for sourdough pancakes the evening before and left it to rest down cellar overnight. She fried slices of salt pork and cooked the cakes in the drippings, and made brown-sugar syrup as well. It was one of Papa’s favorite meals. He might come up with a hundred reasons why she shouldn’t go to school, but his evening meal would not be one of them.

“Everything all right today?” he asked as he forked up a bite from his second plateful of pancakes. He was hungry after a full day’s work building the new shop.

Hanna chose her words carefully. “I might need to catch up a little in arithmetic. But I’m ahead in every other subject.”

“Hmm,” he said. He finished his food in silence. Then he looked at her closely. “Any trouble?”

She shook her head, knowing that her anxiety and discomfort weren’t the kind of trouble Papa meant. He was asking about trouble with the other students—the sort that came about because she wasn’t white.

If she were white, she wouldn’t have to wear the bonnet.

If she were white, she wouldn’t have to ask about attending school.

If she were white . . .