“The Parents Who Abandoned Me at 16 Showed Up to My Uncle’s Will Acting Like It Was Theirs”

schools on the list, places close to Chicago where I could stay near the only stability I’d ever known. Henry circled names I thought were impossibly out of reach—Stanford, MIT, Carnegie Mellon.

“You’re out of your mind,” I told him. “Those schools are for geniuses or people whose parents donate buildings.”

“And for students who clawed their way up from continue reading …