Summary

Heidi, in her fifteen-year-old persona, speaks on Clause 4 of the 14th Amendment – “‘No State shall deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws’” (36) – which Heidi describes as being “even more miraculous than Clause 3” (36). She starts speaking about the value of the clause’s equal protection provisions, but then drops her fifteen-year-old persona, saying that it has been getting harder and harder to talk about this clause. She fully transitions into her adult self, saying that even now she wants to protect her fifteen-year-old self from the stories related to this clause that she has to tell. She then takes off the uniform jacket she has been wearing, releasing “any last remnants of the buoyant, performative girlishness that is one of her lifelong coping mechanisms” (37).

As her adult self, Heidi considers the different ways that the equal protection clause has...