My dad was the school janitor, and my classmates mocked him my entire life. When he died just before my prom, I made my dress out of his work shirts so I could carry a piece of him with me. People laughed when I walked in. But by the time my principal finished speaking, no one was laughing anymore.
It had always been just the two of us—Dad and me.
My mom died giving birth to me, so my dad, Johnny, did everything himself. He packed my lunches before heading to work, flipped pancakes every Sunday without fail, and sometime around second grade he taught himself to braid hair by watching YouTube tutorials.
He was also the janitor at the same school I attended, which meant years of hearing exactly what everyone thought about that.
“That’s the janitor’s daughter… Her dad scrubs our toilets.”
I never cried in front of them. I saved that for when I got home.
Dad always knew anyway. He’d place a plate in front of me at dinner and say, “You know what I think about people who try to make themselves feel big by making someone else feel small?”
“Yeah?” I’d ask, my eyes watery.
“Not much, sweetie… not much.”
And somehow, that always made things feel a little better.
Dad told me honest work was something to be proud of. I believed him. And somewhere around sophomore year, I made a quiet promise to myself: I was going to make him proud enough to erase every nasty comment people had ever made.
Last year, Dad was diagnosed with cancer. He kept working as long as the doctors allowed—longer than they recommended, honestly.
Some afternoons I’d see him leaning against the supply closet, looking drained.
The moment he noticed me, he’d stand straighter and smile. “Don’t give me that look, honey. I’m fine.”
But he wasn’t fine, and we both knew it.
One thing he kept saying while sitting at the kitchen table after work was, “I just need to make it to prom. And then your graduation. I want to see you all dressed up and walking out that door like you own the world, princess.”
“You’re going to see a lot more than that, Dad,” I always said.
But a few months before prom, he lost his fight with cancer. He passed away before I even reached the hospital.
I found out standing in the hallway at school with my backpack still on my shoulder.
The only thing I remember clearly is staring at the linoleum floor and thinking it looked exactly like the kind Dad used to mop. After that, everything went blurry.
A week after the funeral, I moved in with my aunt. The spare bedroom smelled like cedar and fabric softener—nothing like home.
Then prom season arrived.
Suddenly everyone was talking about dresses again. Girls compared designer brands and shared screenshots of gowns that cost more than my dad made in a month.
