Margaret Walks Across the High School Stage on a Warm June Morning
“I told him we already paid for the prints and the checks had cleared,” she said. “And then the track coach told him to just press the button before the principal came out of the office.”
“Vance did not try to stop you?”
“He was still inside with the board members,” Kayla said. “I think he was trying to explain why the local paper had a reporter waiting by the gate.”
She reached into her canvas bag and pulled out a small blue notebook, the cover worn at the corners where she had carried it in her backpack. “I found this under my bed yesterday when I was clearing out my desk. It has Olivia’s handwriting on the first three pages.”
“What did she write?” I asked.
“It is just a list of books we were supposed to read for advanced English,” Kayla said, handing it to me. “But she drew a little picture of a frog wearing a crown on the margin of the second page. She always did that when she was bored during the lectures.”
