The district did not move quickly. School districts never do. There was an investigation, and a meeting, and a timeline, and a lawyer, and all of it happened behind a closed door at the county office, and all of it produced no news for eleven days. In those eleven days, life went on. I went to class. Ana and I started eating lunch together, at first with her friends and then, more often, at a two-person table by the window. I learned that she wanted to study architecture. She learned that I wanted to run my father's truck someday, maybe open a second one. We talked about food, mostly, because it was the thing we had in common. It was an easy thing to talk about, and it was also the only safe thing, because the other thing, the thing we did not talk about, was sitting in an office somewhere
