The Gala
The alarm went off at 4:47 a.m., though Ella had been awake for twenty minutes already, staring at the water stain on her ceiling that looked, depending on the light, like either a rabbit or a question mark. This morning it looked like the question mark.
She was out the door by five, a travel mug of lukewarm coffee in one hand and a garment bag slung over her shoulder like a soldier's kit. The subway platform at that hour held only the truly desperate and the truly determined, and Ella supposed she qualified as both. By the time she climbed the stairs at 125th Street, the sky had gone the color of a bruise healing, purple bleeding into gray, and the Harlem Youth Outreach Center sat dark and quiet on its corner like it was holding its breath.
She let herself in with the key that had worn a groove into her keychain over three years, flipped on the lights in the main hall, and stood for a moment amid the folding chairs stacked against the wall, the basketball hoop with its net hanging by three threads, the mural the kids had painted last spring—a skyline done in blues and golds, the Empire State Building leaning slightly to one side because twelve-year-old Marcus had insisted…
