Now That You Mention It

Tufts had been so close. A free ride. The beautiful dorm room. Expenses. The pizzas. The friends.

I got up to turn off the lights.

Then I saw it.

There, on the messy, dusty blackboard filled with quotes from Shakespeare and Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth and homework assignments from the last two months, was my chance.

It had been there all along, written in Mr. A’s messy scrawl on the very first week of school, on the far left-hand side of the board. Underneath a caricature of Edgar Allan Poe and above a quote from Heart of Darkness, was my future.