“You did the right thing coming here,” I told him. “Thank you.”
He stood, wiping his face with his sleeve.
“I should go. I don’t want to make trouble for her.”
“Wait,” Wade said. “Would you be willing to say what you saw? To the school?”
“Somebody needs to worry about her.”
The man went still.
“They won’t listen to someone like me.”
“Then we’ll make them listen,” I said. “Miss Harmon was right there. She saw all of it. They can’t pretend no one did.”
He looked at me for a long moment.
He knew something I didn’t — that this would not be an easy fight.
“They won’t listen to someone like me.”
But he gave me a small, weary nod before slipping back into the night.
***
I barely slept that night.
The homeless man’s words, “What she’s doing isn’t an accident,” played through my mind on repeat.
By dawn I had made up my mind.
