“Emily hasn’t been in class all week,” her teacher told me. That made no sense \u2014 I watched my daughter leave every morning. So I followed her. When she stepped off the bus and got into a pickup truck instead of going inside, my heart stopped. When the truck pulled away, I drove after them.I never thought I’d be the kind of mother who follows her child, but when I discovered she’d been lying to me, that’s exactly what I did.Emily is 14. Her dad, Mark, and I split up years ago. He’s the guy who remembers your favorite ice cream but forgets to sign permission slips or book appointments. Mark is all heart but no organization, and I couldn’t carry it all by myself anymoreI thought Emily had adjusted well.But the terrible teens have a way of bringing problems to the surface.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Emily seemed like her usual self.She was a bit quieter, maybe a little more glued to her phone than usual, a bit overly fond of wearing oversized hoodies that covered half her face, but nothing that screamed “crisis.”She left for school every morning at 7:30 a.m. Her grades were good, and when I asked how school was going, she always said it was fine.Then I got a phone call from the school.I answered right away. I assumed she had a fever or forgot her gym shoes.I almost laughed; it was just so out of character for my Emily.”That can’t be right.” I pushed back from my desk. “She leaves the house every morning. I watch her walk out the door.”There was a long, heavy beat of silence.”No,” Mrs. Carter said. “She hasn’t been in any of her classes since Monday.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
“Emily hasn’t been in class all week,” her teacher told me. That made no sense \u2014 I watched my daughter leave every morning. So I followed her…. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":40073,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"views":87,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40072"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40072\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40074,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40072\/revisions\/40074"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/40073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}