The silence in the principal’s office was no longer heavy; it was suffocating. It was the kind of silence that precedes a landslide—quiet, yet vibrating with the force of the destruction about to follow.

When you fall all the way to the bottom, the only place left to go is up. And I wasn’t just rising for myself anymore. I was rising for the life inside me that they couldn’t kill.

I picked up a pen and started my homework. I had a long way to go, but for the first time, I wasn’t afraid of the morning.