The gym at Eastbrook High had been transformed so carefully that it almost looked like another world.

Soft lights hung from the rafters.

Gold streamers shimmered over the dance floor.

Round tables were covered in white cloth, and the punch fountain glowed pink beneath a spray of fake roses.

Everywhere I looked, girls in glittering gowns and boys in tuxedos moved through the room as if they had been born for elegant nights like this.

I stood just inside the entrance wearing a dress made from my late father’s old shirts.

Blue cotton.

Faded plaid.

The sleeves he used to roll to his elbows when he was fixing a broken desk or pushing a mop bucket down the science hall.

I had cut and stitched those shirts together at our kitchen table over three sleepless nights.

I had lined the bodice with fabric from one of his Sunday button-downs.

I had sewn one breast pocket inside the skirt where no one could see it, because I couldn’t bear to throw away every piece of him.

Near the hem, hidden between two seams, I had stitched his initials with trembling hands.

S.C.

Samuel Carter.

My father.

The only parent I had ever known.

He had died six months earlier, so suddenly that my mind still refused to accept there would never be another morning with his voice in the kitchen, never another grilled-cheese sandwich cut diagonally because he knew I liked it that way, never another ridiculous attempt at pancake animals on a Sunday morning.

He had raised me alone since my mother died giving birth to me.

He never let that fact turn into a wound inside our home.

He made our life feel small in the warmest way.

It was just us in a little house with thin hallway walls, a dented refrigerator, and a lamp in the living room he swore fixed every bad day simply by being switched on.

To everyone at Eastbrook High, he was Mr.

Carter, the janitor.

To me, he was everything.

And to some of the students in that glittering gym, he had always been a punchline.

The first whisper started before I made it three steps.

Then another.

Then a laugh.

A girl near the photo backdrop looked at my dress and said, “Oh my God, she actually did it.”

Her friend leaned closer.

“Did what?”

“She wore a dress made out of janitor shirts.”

The second girl’s face twisted with delighted cruelty.

“Stop.

No, she did not.”

A boy holding a cup of punch looked me up and down and laughed openly.

“Guess the dress code this year was maintenance chic.”

Someone else muttered, “She really wore the janitor.”

That one landed the hardest.

Because it was ugly.

Because it was clever enough to spread.

Because within seconds, people I barely knew were looking at me as if my grief had shown up in the wrong outfit.

My hands shook.

Not because I regretted the dress.

Never that.

I regretted that my father had spent years cleaning up after children who had learned their cruelty from adults who measured worth by titles, money, and whose father sat in what office.

I kept walking because that was what he had taught me to do.

Keep walking.

When I reached the edge of