Clara Reed was eight years old the morning her teacher threw her hero into the trash.

It happened at 8:47 a.m., in Room 3B, in front of twenty-two classmates.

Ms. Harrow walked to her desk, picked up the blue folder, carried it across the room, and dropped it into the wastebasket by the door.

It landed on a pile of pencil shavings and eraser dust with a soft, flat sound.

Nobody breathed.

Then Ms. Harrow peeled a yellow sticky note off her pad, wrote something on it, and held it out.

“Come up here, Clara. Read this to the class.”

Clara stood up. Her legs felt like they belonged to someone else. She walked to the front of the room and took the note. Her hands were shaking so badly that the little square of yellow paper trembled like a leaf.

She looked down at it.

I am sorry I gave the class information I could not prove.

Clara’s throat closed up.

She looked at the wastebasket. She could see one blue corner of her folder sticking up out of the shavings. Inside that folder was a drawing of a dog she loved and a story about a man she loved even more.

“That’s right.” He looked down at the old dog lying between them, already half asleep. “And you know what I figured out? It’s the same with people. Especially little ones. Sometimes they’re telling you something true, and you can’t see it yet. And the only thing you can do is believe them long enough to go look.”

Clara leaned her head against his shoulder.

“That’s what a hero does,” she said. “I wrote that. In my report.”

“I know,” Ben said. “I read it.”