Educated

way she laughed and smiled. Just be Shannon, I thought to myself. And for five minutes, I was. Charles was looking at me strange ...

say when or why, I decided that I didn’t need the jacket after all. For the rest of the night, I didn’t have to remember to be S ...

Every night for a month, when I came in from the junkyard, I’d spend an hour scrubbing grime from my fingernails and dirt from m ...

20 Recitals of the Fathers Charles was my first friend from that other world, the one my father had tried to protect me from. He ...

Dad said I was becoming “uppity.” He didn’t like that I rushed home from the junkyard the moment the work was finished, or that ...

there, I ran out and jumped into the jeep before he could say a word. The next night he was quicker on the draw. “Isn’t Tara bea ...

I didn’t understand it as meaning anything at all. I’d only ever seen one black person, a little girl, the adoptive daughter of ...

I figured there’d been a mistake. I recalled that the Emancipation Proclamation had been issued in 1863. I couldn’t account for ...

“Sure I do,” he said. “You’ve got black all over your face, like a nigger!” For the rest of the afternoon—for the rest of the su ...

21 Skullcap Dad paid me the day before I returned to BYU. He didn’t have the money to give what he’d promised, but it was enough ...

but rots you slowly from the inside for the rest of your life. She told me if I took a drug now, even if I didn’t have children ...

would need to do, or not do, to get along with the other girls in the apartment. No keeping rotten food in the cupboards or leav ...

“Then go talk to your algebra professor,” he said. “You’re failing. Ask for help.” It had never occurred to me to talk to a prof ...

22 What We Whispered and What We Screamed When I arrived at the peak, Mother was making the Thanksgiving meal. The large oak tab ...

I folded napkins from paper towels and put one at each setting. When I placed one at Shawn’s plate, he again jabbed his finger i ...

situation might still be saved, that Charles might yet be convinced it was all a joke. Tears streamed from my eyes—my big toe wa ...

The stomach ulcers returned, burning and aching through the night. Once, I awoke to Robin shaking me. She said I’d been shouting ...

The morning of the exam I limped to the testing center and sat in the drafty hall. The test was in front of me. The problems wer ...

gift from God, the Einstein to disprove Einstein. Richard would move the world. Shawn would not. He’d lost too much of his mind ...

Shawn sees the red jeep. He watches me lick my thumb and scrub dirt from my face, and he becomes excited. “Let’s go!” he says. “ ...