She had already received a call from Mrs. Chen. The competition had begun, and I had not arrived. They had both been trying my dead phone.
“I’m okay,” I said quickly. “I found a woman. She fell. I tried to call, but my battery died, and then I had to—”
“Where are you?”
I gave her the street.
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
There was a pause, and I could hear hospital sounds behind her.
“Stay with the adults who are there. I’m coming.”
I looked at Michael. “She says she’s coming.”
He nodded. “Then I stay until she gets here.”
The ambulance took Eleanor to the hospital where my mother worked, though I did not know that until later. Michael could have followed immediately. Instead, he stood with me under the awning of a closed bakery while rain ran along the gutter.
Neither of us knew what to say.
I kept looking at my watch.
10:19.
10:23.
10:31.
The numbers hurt more than I expected.
I had known at 10:00 that the competition was gone. But some part of me had still been running toward it in my head, imagining a door opening because the reason was good enough.
At 10:34, Mrs. Chen arrived before my mother.
She got out of her car without an umbrella and ran straight toward me.
“Skye.”
I had never hugged a teacher that hard.
“I missed it,” I said into her coat.
“I know.”
“They won’t let me in.”
“I know.”
“I studied eight months.”
“I know that too.”
She did not tell me it did not matter.
That was one of the kindest things anyone did for me that day.
