Two weeks later, the grades were posted. Next to my name, it did not say ‘A+.’

“Watch her,” he said.

A machine will never cry because the wind is still. A child always will.”

I sat up straighter in my exam chair.

“Understanding,” I wrote, “is not the processing of information. It is the capacity to be wounded by it.

My heart stalled. Then it sank.

I walked out into the April sunshine. The campus courtyard was empty. The air was perfectly still.

It twitched. Not quite a smile. Something softer. A recognition.