And with that, I stand and head out the door, determined to make the world hear me.

Taylor, who spends the dinner hour circling the table, hugging each of us in turn until we beg him to stop, tells us that Carly’s right—they should have told us we get time to talk at the hearing and “present our own side of the situation.” He’s been doing the research. He’s been reading the handbook.

“Our side is, ‘you are wrong and this is misogynistic garbage,’” Katherine says, scowling.

“I’ll present our case,” I say. “If you’ll let me. I want to do it. I know I can do it.”

“Are you sure?” Katherine says. “This is going to be way worse than speaking in class.”

I am 100 percent not sure, absolutely terrified, maybe going to die. But this was my idea from the start, so I have to be the one to end it.

“Yes,” I say. “I’m sure I’m sure.”

There are so many things to say, and I’m going to stand up and make sure everyone hears every single word of it, because all of it is important. Everything we’ve said to one another. Everything we’ve yelled about and everything we’ve thought and felt, all of it bubbling up in me. Ready to be set loose.

My mother calls after dinner, keeps ringing until I pick up. She wants me to know that I should have stayed in Miami if I wanted to be a stripper.

“You demanded that I send you to this school for what, Adeleina?”

Her words scoop my heart out. I’m hunched at my desk, my arms wrapped tight around my stomach.

It’s dark behind her. With her makeup off, her skin looks too pale, the freckles, the pale crescents under her eyes, glowing in the light of her screen. Her flip-flops squeak on the tile floor as she crosses the living room to pull out a stool at the kitchen bar. She reaches over to flick on the overhead light, and her face floods with color again. “So you could pull something like this?”

“Mom—” I say, but she’s not done.

“I was shocked when the school called, Adeleina, and embarrassed, and I told them it could not possibly be my daughter, because you’d never do something revolting like that to me, that they were mistaken, that they had the wrong number. I insisted that they had the wrong number.”

She’s fumbling around on the counter, and I recognize the sound. Sure enough, she drags an ashtray closer.

“Are you smoking again?”