Priya went first. She read a letter to her mother, in Urdu and English, about how divorce wasn’t the end of a family, just the end of a lie. Her mother, sitting in the back, wept into her hands.

She turned grammar into a game called “Sentence Surgery,” where students had to repair the most broken sentences she could invent—sentences like “him and me went to the store but forgot they’re money” —and the winner got to ring the silver bell. Kids who hadn’t spoken in weeks were shouting answers, racing to the board.

By Week Four, something impossible happened: kids started showing up early. They brought friends from the regular summer term, kids who weren’t even in the class, who sat in the back just to hear Melody read the anonymous “Truth Notebook” entries aloud—always with permission, always without names.