He speaks at schools sometimes. He tells them the truth: that he was the kid nobody saved a seat for, and that it got better, and more than better — that the very thing that made him a target, the sensitivity, the noticing, the caring, turned out to be the thing that let him build something that mattered.
"The things they mocked me for," he tells rooms full of teenagers, "were the things that saved my life. They just showed up early, before I knew what they were for."
He wasn't invited to a reunion.
So he showed up anyway, and turned it into the beginning of something that will help kids who haven't even been born yet.
He didn't go there for revenge.
He didn't go there for closure.
He went there to close a door on the boy he used to be — gently, with respect, the way you'd tuck in a child who'd finally, finally fallen asleep safe.
