I am thirteen, and I’m doing the same thing I do every day after school: hitting a tennis ball against the door of the garage over and over and over.

My life is no longer the early-stage garden of hope, with its rich black loamy soil and precious little seedlings, all carefully watered and weeded and fertilized on a daily basis in rapturous anticipation of the bounty they would one day produce.

I remember that last Day of school, the anticipation of the bell, riding home on the bus with oversized folders stuffed with all my...