“Sweetheart, it’s—”

“Mom, please. It’s—it’s the most important thing I’ve ever done. I have to do this.”

Mom patted my knees and sighed. She kept patting and sighing and I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to jinx it if she was thinking herself to a yes.

“Okay,” Mom said finally. “How about this. You are already doing really well in school so I’m okay if you take the day off tomorrow. But I will drive you to campus. Hold on, just listen. I know it’s a secret, but I will drive you to campus in the morning and then I’ll walk you to whatever building you need to go to, and I’ll stay nearby. And you have to call or text me every half hour. Is that a deal?”

I bounced up out of the quilt and wrapped my arms around her shoulders. “Deal!” I said.

It was going to happen. I was going to talk to Mr. Trent Hickman whether he liked it or not.

“Libby, I want you to understand that I’m letting you do this because you have earned my trust, okay?”

I wrapped my arms around her shoulders again so hard she made a sound like a deflating basketball and then laughed. “You’re the best mom in the whole world!” I said.

This was actually happening. Like for real.

Like tomorrow.

Tomorrow.

I felt the Scared Me raring up for the biggest, wailingest scream of her life.

Like Ms. Trepky said, Scared Me could fuss as much as she liked. I was doing it anyway.

The Day

I woke up forty-five minutes before my alarm went off and couldn’t go back to sleep. I lay in bed for a while, but soon enough I couldn’t do that, either.

It was barely six thirty in the morning, but I got up and got dressed and packed my backpack. By then it was six forty-five.

The schedule was all worked out. Mom and I would leave at eight thirty. That meant I could get to the steps of the Norlin Library, where Mr. Trent Hickman was going to speak, by nine. His lecture wasn’t scheduled until ten, and maybe an hour was overdoing it, but I planned to catch him on the steps of the library and talk to him about Cecilia before he even got inside. I thought that maybe if he was sort of rushed or had something else on his mind, he would be more easy to convince—that he’d listen to me, and take my letters that I’d printed out nice and neat and carefully placed in a manila envelope.

At seven I heard someone moving around in the kitchen and smelled toast.

Mom and Nonny stood at the coffeemaker, watching the brown drizzle with tired eyes. Nonny’s belly was at full basketball status now, and had been for a while. February 17 was coming fast, and even getting up and down from the couch was hard for her.

They both looked at me, and Mom laughed. “I see you’re dressed and ready to go. And barely an hour and a half to spare!”