Chapter 13

When Denise came out of the bathroom, eyes dry, face composed, Andre was sitting at the kitchen table."I'm not going today."Denise stopped. "What?""The review, the panel. I'm not going." He looked at his hands. "If I go and I'm right, Sinclair loses everything. And he'll make sure you never work at that school again. If I just stop, if I say I made it up, copied it, whatever he wants me to say, maybe they give you your job back."Denise sat down across from him. She didn't speak for a long time. The kitchen faucet dripped. Outside, a garbage truck rumbled past."Andre.""Mom, I can't—""Look at me."He looked at her. Her eyes were red but steady. Her hands were flat on the table, the hands he knew better than his own: cracked knuckles, a scar on the left thumb from a broken mop handle three years ago, calluses layered over calluses, hard as stone."I have scrubbed toilets in that building for six years," she said. "I have cleaned vomit off bathroom floors at 2:00 in the morning. I have picked up trash that students threw on the ground three feet from the can because they knew someone like me would get it. I have done every single thing they asked me to do, every night, without complaint, because I needed this job. Because you needed this job."She reached across the table and put her hands over his."But I did not scrub those floors so you could learn how to be invisible. I did not work those nights so you could learn how to make yourself small. I did it so you could walk into any room in this world and know that you belong there." Her voice broke on the last word, then steadied. "You go today. You hear me? You go."Andre stared at her hands covering his. He felt the roughness against his skin: six years of chemical burns and cold water and floors that never stayed clean."What about your job?""My job is to raise you right. And right means you don't let a man like that win because he's louder." She squeezed his hands. "You go."

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