I’ve been sitting out here in the garden since about midnight because the house is too quiet and my husband, George, he sleeps like a log, but I just can't close my eyes because every time I do I hear that hallway noise. You know the one? That roar of lockers and sneakers and kids just YELLING because they finally got out of a forty-minute lecture on the Great Gatsby. I taught English at the high school for thirty-four years and I thought I’d be happy once the grading stopped but now it’s just me and the tomatoes and honestly the tomatoes don't need me for anything. I keep checking my phone like a student is going to email me about a late assignment even though they deactivated my school account last Tuesday which felt like they were just cutting off my arm or something... just totally disconnected. The thing is, I saw Leo Miller at the grocery store yesterday—he was in my class back in '08, or maybe '09, he was the one who always wore that raggedy red hoodie and sat in the back—and he didn't even look at me. Not that he has to, I mean, I’m just an old lady in the produce aisle now, but in this town you usually wave. Everyone knows everyone here, like how Mrs. Higgins at the post office knows exactly who is getting a divorce before they even tell their own mother, but Leo just walked right past. And it hit me that I spent all those years thinking I was making a HUGE difference, like those movies where the kids stand on the desks and recite poetry, but really I was just a person in a room they couldn't wait to leave. I feel like I lied to myself for three decades about what I was actually doing. I keep thinking about this one girl, Sarah, she was so quiet and I should have pushed more, I should have ASKED what was going on at home but I was so busy worried about the curriculum and the state testing and making sure my lesson plans were filed in the blue folder by Friday.