Mom listened without interrupting. Then she asked if I was safe and whether I wanted her to come. I told her yes. She said she was leaving work. Her voice stayed steady until she asked about the dress. I told her it was torn, but that the collar was still there. She took a breath and said we could look at it together.
Dad ended the call and set his folder on his knees. “I came because Ms. Bell asked to meet me this morning,” he said. “I was already on my way when the office called about the bus.”
That explained the folder. For a moment I had imagined he had arrived with some perfect answer tucked under his arm, as if he had known exactly what would happen. Instead, the papers were the reason he had come to school in the first place. They were copies of the complaints we had sent over the past six weeks.
The first was mine. I had written that Annika and two friends had taken my schoolbag from my locker and passed it between them while I tried to get to class. They had emptied my notebooks onto the floor. A teacher had arrived after the bag was back in my hands and told us all to move along.
The second complaint described a group chat…
