There were two days I should’ve said no. Both of them happened in white dresses. The first time, I thought I was saying yes to adulthood. Yes to doing what every small-town Midwest girl was expected to do: Say yes at the right age, to the right boy, in the right church, and then vanish neatly into a version of womanhood that looked good on paper. I wasn’t saying yes to love. I was saying yes to programming. I didn’t even know it was allowed to be a no. The second time, I told