I did not answer David that night. I told him I needed to think, and he said he understood, and we went back down to the gala and I shook hands with people I did not know and drank nothing and left before midnight.
I did not sleep. I sat in my apartment with the lights off and I thought about the ledger in my head, the one I had kept since I was seven years old, the one with my sister's name and my mother's name and every person who had ever slighted me. I thought about the storm drain and the bracelet and the essay I had pinned to every bulletin board on campus. I thought about the fact that I had spent my whole life collecting debts and had never once collected a single thing that made me whole.
And I thought about what Bethany Cole had done. She had risked her job, her reputation, her
