Prologue

The Year My Sneakers Grew Wings

They were just sneakers.

Old, beat-up, fraying at the laces. The kind that squeaked in the

hallway and collected pebbles in the soles. They smelled faintly of

rain and grass and something like dusty cinnamon.

They weren't fast. They weren't cool. They weren't new.

But they were mine.

And one morning—on the kind of day that starts like any other—I

woke up and they had wings.