But let me take you back to where this all began. Because to understand why what happens next is so extraordinary, you need to see what Darius’s life is really like.

5:30 a.m. Every morning, the alarm clock beside Darius’s bed doesn’t even work anymore. His body just knows when to wake up. He rolls out of the narrow twin bed he’s slept in since he was eight years old—the same bed his mother bought him before the accident. The floorboards creak as he tiptoes past his grandmother’s room. Miss Ruby is already awake. She always is at this hour, but she pretends to sleep because she knows Darius worries about her. Through the thin wall, he can hear the wheezes of her breathing, the way she struggles even while lying down.

Their house on Elm Street tells its own story. The yellow paint has faded to the color of old newspapers. The porch steps sag in the middle from decades of weight. Windows are held shut with duct tape because new ones cost money they don’t have. But Miss Ruby keeps it clean—spotless, even. Because being poor doesn’t mean you can’t be proud, she always tells him.