Seventeen Thousand Eight Hundred and Sixty

That night, no one ate dinner.

I locked myself in my bedroom.

At 10:43, someone knocked.

Harrison.

“Mom.”

I closed the book I hadn’t been reading.

“What?”

“We need to talk about today.”

“No, we don’t.”

“Yes, we do.”

I opened the door.

His face was tight.

“Sloan is devastated.”

I almost admired the sentence.

Not angry.

Not embarrassed.

Devastated.