You is kind. You is smart. You is important.

Ever morning, until you dead in the ground, you gone have to make this decision. You gone have to ask yourself, "Am I gone believe what them fools say about me today?

What you learn today?" I ask even though she ain't in real school, just the pretend kind. Other day, when I ask her, she say, "Pilgrims. They came over and nothing would grow so they ate the Indians." Now knew them Pilgrims didn't eat no Indians. But that ain't the point.

Truth. It feels cool, like water washing over my sticky-hot body. Cooling a heat that's been burning me up all my life. Truth, I say inside my head again, just for that feeling.

Here's to new beginnings," Stuart says and raises his bourbon. I nod, sort of wanting to tell him that all beginnings are new.

I have decided not to die.

And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed.