And then there is the kind of silence that falls over four hundred people at once—the kind that makes your heartbeat sound impossibly loud inside your own head.
That was the silence I heard when my younger brother Danny stood beneath the stage lights at my senior prom and reached into the wooden box he had spent five months secretly building.
I was standing several feet away in a dress I had spent weeks choosing, surrounded by classmates, parents, teachers, and siblings.
But in that moment, I barely noticed any of them.
All I could see was Danny.
His glasses had begun to fog beneath the lights.
His hands were steady.
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