Lucas has spent his whole life keeping his head down and his heart guarded, especially when it comes to his grandmother’s job at his high school. But on prom night, a single choice forces him to decide what really matters… and who truly deserves to be seen.

I moved in with Grandma Doris when I was three days old. My mother, Lina, had died just after giving birth to me … I’ve never known her, but Gran told me that she’d held me once.

“She did, Lucas,” Gran would say.”Your mama held you for three minutes before her blood pressure dropped. Those three minutes will hold you for a lifetime, sweetheart.”

As for my father? Well, he never showed up. Not once, not even for a single birthday.Grandma Doris was 52 when she took me in. Since then, she worked nights as a janitor at the high school and made the fluffiest pancakes every Saturday morning. She read secondhand books in an armchair with the stuffing poking out of the seams, doing all the voices, and made the world feel big and possible.

She never once acted like I was a burden.

Not when I had nightmares and woke her up screaming.Not when I cut my own hair with her pair of sewing scissors, making my ears look so much bigger. And definitely not when I outgrew my shoes faster than her paycheck could keep up.

To me, she wasn’t just a grandmother. She was a one-woman village.

I think that’s why I never told her about the things people said at school, especially after they found out that my grandmother was the school janitor.