One afternoon in late spring, she and I stood with our backs against a wall, calves aching, watching the room do the thing we’d daydreamed about. The fluorescent lights buzzed. Someone laughed so hard they hiccuped. We had too many size 7 women’s shoes and not enough 9s, and I wrote a pleading “9s please!” on the whiteboard and underlined it three times. Ethan used a sharpie on his own knee, then looked up, horrified, at the permanence of his choices. Molly sat beside him like a chaperone.

“You know what the best part is?” Savannah asked.

“The snacks?” I said, because there was a tray of brownies someone’s aunt had made, and I had eaten one as an act of community service.

She bumped my shoulder with hers. “Every bag is a little bit of the day you stopped me on the sidewalk. It’s that moment in a form someone can carry. It’s proof.”

Of what? I wanted to ask, though I already knew.