You know that half-second? Right before the starting whistle. Right before your hand shoots up in class, even though your stomach’s doing flips. Right before you try something for the very first time and have absolutely no idea how it’ll go.

That half-second is loud. It’s where every “what if” lives. What if I trip, what if I’m wrong, what if everyone’s watching and I mess it up? And somehow, in that same tiny sliver of time, there’s also a flicker of something else. A “but what if I don’t?”

Mia spends a lot of time in that half-second.

Honestly, that’s by design. I didn’t want to write a kid who already had it figured out, who walked into every challenge cool, calm, and certain. Those characters are fun to read about, but hard to actually become. So instead, Mia shows up shaky. Unsure. Sometimes downright convinced she’s about to fail.

And then she goes anyway.

That’s the part I really wanted kids to catch onto. Courage isn’t some special ingredient some people have, and others don’t. It’s not the absence of the wobble. It’s choosing to move with the wobble still there, heart pounding and all.

Here’s the thing about kids and stories: they’re mirrors before they’re anything else. A child reads about Mia frozen at the start line, feeling that same flutter they’ve felt a hundred times: before a test, a tryout, a first day, and then they watch her run anyway. Something shifts. They’ve just seen their own fear get a little smaller, right there on the page.

That’s the gift I hope every reader walks away with. Not “be fearless.” Something better: be brave enough anyway. You’re ready. Go all in.