"Today, Sunday, is the first day of Red Hat High, and I'm expecting 47 kids. It's 4:00 in the afternoon, and orientation starts at 4:30. Of those 47 kids, how many have arrived so far? Three, that's how many. Three anxious middle-schoolers and their families, all milling around the huge, empty meeting hall at Red Hat headquarters. The parents mostly make small talk about the weather outside, which is incredibly hot. Maybe it's global warming, they say --as if the fact that it's Raleigh in July isn't enough to explain the 95 degree temperature outside. I check my watch again: now it's 4:02 pm.
"I feel like an anxious party host, worrying that maybe all the guests just didn’t want to be rude when they accepted their invitations, when they never really intended to come to the party at all..."
