My stomach went cold. I've heard those words in a lot of rooms.
"Okay."
"You know about Colby."
I knew about Colby. Everyone at Halverton East knew about Colby Kuchar. Three weeks earlier, on a Tuesday after practice, Izzy had gone back into the boys' locker room for the goggles he'd forgotten and found a junior named Colby Kuchar on the tile floor by the showers, gray-lipped, not breathing, with a vape pen still in his hand. Izzy had yelled for Coach Volkov, rolled Colby onto his back, tilted his head the way I'd taught him to do on a CPR dummy in our living room in Pittsburgh when he was eleven, and started compressions. He'd done compressions for four minutes until Coach got there with the naloxone from the AED cabinet. Colby had come back. Colby had spent two days at St. Brigid's, in my ICU actually, though not on my shifts, and was home now, and alive, because my son had gone back for his goggles.
The school had sent a letter home. The local paper had run a short piece without naming either boy. Coach Volkov had told me, after, at the car, with his hand on my shoulder, that he'd been coaching for twenty-two years and had never seen a kid that calm. I'd been so proud I'd had to sit in the car for ten minutes before I could drive.
"What about Colby?"
"The day before. Monday. I saw him in the parking lot after practice, by the tennis courts. He was getting something from somebody in a car. A white Jeep. I saw who it was." He swallowed. "And after, after Colby, Mr. Ferraro called me in, the counselor, and said that the school was trying to figure out where the pills came from and if I knew anything I could tell him in confidence. So I did. I wrote it down. I wrote the name down on a piece of paper because I couldn't—" he tapped his own throat, "—and he said thank you, and he said it was confidential, and he said he'd pass it to administration, and he said not to talk about it with anyone. So I didn't. Not even you. He said not even parents, because it could get around."
"Whose name did you write down, Izzy?"
He looked at me.
"Cade Harrower," he said.
I said, "Harrower."
"He's a senior. He drives a white Jeep. He's—" Izzy pulled his sleeves down further over his hands. "He's Mr. Harrower's son. And he lives with his grandma. On the corner. Mrs. Tillotson."
I sat in the dark with that for a long time.