I thought about this for a minute. "Maybe I should move to New York
City right now and graduate from high school there. Then I'd be
considered in-state."
Miss Katona squinted at me. "But you live here," she said. "This is your
home."
Miss Katona was a fine-boned woman who always wore button-up
sweaters and stout shoes. She had gone to Welch High School, and it
seemed not to have occurred to her to live anywhere else. To leave West
Virginia, even to leave Welch, would have been unthinkably disloyal,
like deserting your family.
"Just because I live here now," I said. "doesn't mean I couldn't move."
"That would be a terrible mistake. You live here. Think of what you'd
miss. Your family and friends. And senior year is the highlight of your
entire high school experience. You'd miss Senior Day. You'd miss the
senior prom."
I walked home slowly that evening, thinking over what Miss Katona had
said. It was true that many grown-ups in Welch talked about how senior
year in high school was the highlight of their lives. On Senior Day,
something the school had set up to keep juniors from dropping out, the
seniors wore funny clothes and got to skip classes. It was not exactly a
compelling reason to stay on in Welch for one more year. As for the
senior prom, I had about as much chance of getting a date as Dad did of
ending corruption in the unions.
I'd been speaking hypothetically about moving to New York a year early.
But as I walked, I realized that if I wanted to, I could up and go. I could
really do it. Maybe not right now, not this minute—it was the middle of
the school year—but I could wait until I finished eleventh grade. By then
I'd be seventeen. I had almost a hundred dollars saved, enough to get me