Sprout

luck.” She placed her hand on the battered book in my lap as tenderly as if she were touching a barely healed wound. “You know you can’t bring this in, right?”
    I tapped the dashboard clock, which read 4:01. “It’s almost four hours to Topeka. We’d better get a move on.”
    She took Highway 61 up to Salina, picked up I-70 heading east. I had to turn around to see the sign
    HUTCHINSON 65
    that I’d passed twice now, once with my dad and once with Ty, but it seemed to have less significance this time around, not more. The sun rose directly in front of us and the world became tricolor: black smears of shadow and white sheets of snow and swathes of golden field. The ruler-straight lines of cedar windbreaks and the double-backed trails of cottonwoods following streambeds reminded me of the trees in my forest, on the one hand, and, on the other, of the river where Ty and I had first had sex, but what I found myself wondering was: what path had he followed? Had he taken the direct route represented by the cedars so he could get away as quickly as possible, or had he chosen the cottonwoods’ meandering path, as if he wanted someone to catch him before he got too far away? And why, whenever I contemplated this question, did my mind always flash on that Buick in Carey Park? Why did I feel as though I’d all but pushed him in the trunk and slammed it closed and watched it drive away?
    Mrs. Miller didn’t talk during the entire trip. Didn’t even ask perfunctory questions like “Are you hungry?” or “Do you need to use the restroom?” but when we got to Topeka, she pulled me aside before sending me into the gymnasium where the contest was being administered.
    “I did a little research,” she said. “Your mom was working full-time when she died. You were entitled to social security benefits that your dad never applied for. You can still get them—all of them, retroactively. It comes to about $30,000. It’ll pay for school if you stay in-state, and if you go for something private it’ll at least get you on your way.”
    I stared at her in confusion. “Why are you telling me this now?”
    Mrs. Miller nodded at the gym. At the five hundred students seated at long rows of folding tables and the judges walking between, the kids clutching their sharpened pencils, the monitors clutching cups of coffee, the big clock hanging above everything, its red digital letters set to
    1:00:00
    She looked back at me. “I can’t help but feel that I had something to do with what happened. That all the mixed messages I was sending you about when it is or isn’t okay to say you’re gay somehow made you think your sexuality was something you should hide to protect yourself. The truth is, that’s how it gets power over you. Not when you’re open about it, but when you have to spend all your energy keeping it secret.”
    It took me a moment to realize what she was really saying.
    “You mean Ty, don’t you? You think I couldn’t say I loved Ty because I was too scared to show him—or Ruthie, or Ian—who I really am?”
    “You weren’t scared, Sprout. You were protecting yourself. But sometimes when we think we’re protecting ourselves, we’re really hurting ourselves. And sometimes the people around us too.”
    A voice from the gym called out: “One minute warning. Places, please.”
    Mrs. Miller put her hand on my shoulder, turned me towards the open door.
    “I want you to forget what I told you when we first started. Everything I told you. What’s good writing. What’s bad. What you should say. What you shouldn’t. Write what you want to write. Say what you have to say. Screw them,” she said, nodding at the panel of judges seated at the far end of the room. “Screw me. It’s your life, not ours.” She gave me a little push, as though I were a four-year-old ballerina too scared to venture on stage. “Go on, Sprout. Take off that cap and let the world see just how green your hair really is.”
    “My cap?”
    Mrs. Miller pointed to the top of my head.
    “Oh. Right. My cap .” And I took it off, and Mrs. Miller looked like she was going to faint.
    “Don’t worry,” I told her. “I’m Sprout, not Samson. My strength doesn’t reside in my hair.”
    I took a seat at the first empty place I came to. There was an envelope in front of me, and a small stack of blue composition notebooks, and I was instructed not to open either until time was called. I lined up my pencils. One of them had a green