I didn’t sleep that night. I kept thinking of possibilities, each one worse than the last. Drugs. A girl. A boy. Some older kid. Some man. Gambling. A fight club. Something on the internet. I thought about every after-school special I’d ever watched and every horrible news story I’d ever scrolled past, and I tried to fit my son into each of them, and none of them fit. That was almost worse.
The next afternoon, I dropped him off again.
“See you at six, Mom.”
“See you at six.”
He walked through the main entrance with his hockey bag, just like always.
This time, I followed him inside.
I waited about fifteen seconds. Then I got out of the car and walked through the doors and saw the back of his gray hoodie halfway down the main hall. Usually he would turn left at the end, toward the locker rooms. I’d watched him do it a thousand times when he was little and I still walked him in.
