The local cop in the squad car would look at the fifteen-year-old boy in a hoodie on a street corner as a criminal in training, instead of as an aspiring writer who might one day be the poet laureate and deserved a chance. The people in the neighborhood saw the policewoman in her car as a threat, instead of as a mom who coached basketball, taught Sunday school class, wanted more than anything in the world to make it home safely to tuck in her three children, and deserved the right to do so.
