Before we left that meeting, the principal knelt beside me.
“You did something very brave.”
I shook my head.
“I was scared.”
He smiled.
“Being brave doesn’t mean you weren’t scared.”
Grandma squeezed my hand.
And that was when I finally understood something.
Mrs. Carter had tied my hands because she thought that would keep me powerless.
But the thing she had really been afraid of was never my hands.
It was my voice.
And once I finally used it, every secret she had tried to hide began to fall apart.