No one asked her to dance. Not the man who borrowed her notes twice. Not the stranger who caught her eye from across the room.
Not even the one person in that ballroom who had held her hand during the most difficult weeks of her life, before deciding that the easier version of her life didn’t include her.
300 people in the ballroom of Chicago’s most expensive hotel. A live orchestra. Chandeliers worth more than most houses.
And Soledad Diane Mercer sat alone at a table near the edge of the dance floor, her hands in her lap and a pressed flower in her pocket that she had carried with her for four years.
No one knew about the flower. No one knew about the boy who had accidentally given it to her.
And no one, not a single person in that room, knew what was about to happen when a young man from Englewood, in a suit he had pressed himself, walked through the door.
The morning Kendrick Jerome Wallace arrived at Harwick University, he took a bus from Englewood to a neighborhood that felt like it belonged in another country.
Not a different city, but a different country. He got off the bus with a duffel bag and a backpack and stood for a long time in front of the most expensive private university in Illinois.
The building itself gave the impression of a place where important decisions were made. He adjusted the strap of his backpack and entered.
The hall was filled with flowers, glittering chandeliers, and parents wearing watches that cost more than her mother earned in a year.
He found the check-in line and stood in line with the documents in a Manila envelope that he had prepared the night before and checked three times during the bus ride.
He was in the right place. He wasn’t sure he belonged there. The girl in the wheelchair was at the registration desk to his left.
He didn’t stare at her. Darlene had raised him better than that. But he noticed her, as one might notice someone who is carefully trying not to be noticed by everyone around them.
People walked around her without looking her in the eye, talking next to her, moving in space as if she were a piece of furniture in an awkward position.
He looked straight ahead. His face was composed, like that of someone who has learned that showing something costs more than getting it.
Then one of the tall flower arrangements next to her desk shifted slightly and a single flower fell.
It fell to the floor between them. Kendrick bent down and picked it up. He handed it to her.
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