Morning has barely arrived, and the rancid odor of rotting Sheetrock wakes me up, burning my lungs and stinging my nose — another day has passed since Hurricane Harvey tore through the city of Houston.

Filthy rainwater drips quickly and incessantly from my bedroom ceiling, filling the four large buckets I had set out the previous night.

I open my window and empty the buckets into the flooded street one story below.

Above my bed, the decaying patch of black mold has grown incredibly large, and I fear that it will make me ill.

My stomach growls.

For the fourth consecutive day, I sit down at my round kitchen table with a small can of tuna and a package of crackers, rationing each morsel to lengthen the amount of time before I allow myself to eat again.

As I begin walking to my bedroom to check on the buckets, I glance back at my kitchen table and loneliness consumes me once again.

Two years have passed since anyone else has sat around at this table with me.

Since 10th grade, I have hidden from my teachers, and friends that I have been living alone.

As I walk back into my bedroom, I see a new leak develop on my white ceiling, dripping water and dirt all over the floor. I find a pink plastic tub full of papers. As I pull out the papers and scatter them all over my carpet, I see affidavits, fake IDs, court papers, letters of incarceration

I think, How much longer will my mother continue to evade the police?

I’m a senior at Energy Institute High School in the Houston Independent School District. I am honored to share my journey. Before I continue, please remember this: Each of you has the power to help someone beat the odds.

I grew up with the odds stacked against me. I am one of six children and the first of my siblings to go to college. I don’t have my father in my life. I attended 12 different schools between kindergarten and 8th grade. And, for most of my life, my mother has been in and out of jail.

That is five strikes against me. When people think about the type of student who gets in to the most selective colleges in the country, no one is imagining a student with my story.

Because students with my story don’t go to the most selective colleges in the country unless they have a program like EMERGE in their lives. Most people with my story end up like my siblings have — high school drop outs and incarcerated.

But calculating the odds has always been part of my DNA. When you spend every weekend of your childhood running around casinos, while your mother gambles away everything, you learn quickly that to survive you have to pay attention. So, when I entered high school, I decided that I needed to attend one school for all four years. To do that, I had to live alone and not depend on my mother’s transient lifestyle.

For years, I avoided CPS. I learned to ask for warrants when the police came to my door. And I learned that my only way to a different life was going to be through education.

When I started high school, overnight, I transformed from a “C” student to an “A“ student, and I became the valedictorian of my high school.

In 10th grade, I attended the information session on my campus about EMERGE — a program that prepares high-performing students from underserved communities to attend selective colleges and universities. I heard about other EMERGE students who had gotten into schools like Penn, Stanford and Duke all on full scholarships. I knew this program was a “beat the odds” opportunity, so as soon as the application opened, I applied. A month later, I was accepted.

Over the last two years, EMERGE has taken me to visit colleges all over the country, connected me to a rigorous summer program at Princeton, helped me to increase my SAT scores and connected me to incredibly talented program managers. Maybe the most meaningful person EMERGE has connected me to is Judy Le, my mentor. Judy volunteered to be part of the mentor program this summer, and from the moment I was matched with her and she took me to go see “Crazy Rich Asians,” I knew she was the real deal.

In the last six months, Judy has taken me in and made me part of her family. She throws me birthday parties, cooks me Sunday dinner and even lets me call her and her husband Mom and Dad.

This fall, I decided to apply to the most selective college in the country — Harvard. Last year, they accepted 1,900 students out of 42,000 applicants. I did the math: That’s 4.5 percent admit rate. The odds were stacked against me.

On Dec. 13, 2018, I was alone in my apartment, back at the brown table in the kitchen, when I saw the email come through: Harvard Early Action Status Update. I froze. I opened the email and read every single word. “Congratulations,” it started. “I am delighted to inform you … .”

I got in!

There are thousands of students like me, waiting to beat the odds. Please add EMERGE to the organization you decide to get involved with. You just might change somebody’s life.

Ngo is a HISD alum headed to Harvard University. This piece is adapted from a speech given Feb. 13 at an EMERGE luncheon.