Tom was in Captain Reese’s office for the lieutenants’ meeting. There was a conference room, but Reese liked them squeezed in around his desk. 

Gail, Tom’s wife, was in her third trimester with their fifth child. Seven more and Tom would have his own basketball team, Reese said. “Or Gail just really wants her a girl.”

Luke, Josh, Eric, Paul. The new baby was a boy too. They hadn’t told anyone. Gail thought the boys would be hurt if they believed their parents were disappointed. “Which we most certainly are not.”   

“My theory is Tom can’t keep his pants zipped.” Reese reached across the desk to answer the phone. “‘Please hold for Mr. Bramlett,’” he said, handing Tom the receiver. Mr. Bramlett was the principal at Luke’s school. Tom laughed with the others when Reese said Bramlett was too important to dial the number himself

Tom remembered the principal from new student orientation in September. Zero tolerance for this, zero tolerance for that, we expect a lot from these young people, and we know what to do when they disappoint. Luke, sitting on a metal chair between his parents, looked grave.

Today Mr. Bramlett said Luke had created a disturbance in the cafeteria, thrown a tray at another boy, yelling “You’re a big fat dick,” when the tray fell short of the target.

Kids’ stuff, may as well call him a kaka head. There must be more to this than he was being told. Luke was rarely the aggressor, not even with his little brothers. Tom suspected a shakedown, wished he could talk to the other boy, guessed that wouldn’t be allowed. 

“So are you, Mr. Hobart,” Luke screamed at the teacher who tried to intervene. Couldn’t make himself say “dick” again, maybe.

Mr. Hobart had chased Luke till Luke went into a supply room, locked the door behind him. 

What a leadass, letting a thirteen-year old outrun him.

“Barricaded himself. The other students witnessed his out of control behavior and were disturbed by it.” 

Luke would need someone in his corner.

“We called the mother first, but there was no answer.”

Gail was the lead teacher at the most popular preschool in town. She’d gone to a doctor’s appointment between the morning and afternoon sessions. Nothing Bramlett needed to know. “I’ll be there as soon as I can,” he said, imitating the principal’s urgent tone. 

Reese used to tell a story about going down to the police station to pick up his boy who’d been at the lake drinking with some other kids. When the cops told him his dad was on the way Jason begged to be locked up instead. 

He’d stopped telling the story after Jason was hired at the prison. 

Today he told Tom to take all the time he needed.  

Luke was still behind the door when Tom got to the school. The halls, smelling of sweat and broccoli, were empty, Mr. Bramlett told him, because the students had to stay in the cafeteria while the situation was resolved. “Disrupting our routine.”

A woman Tom remembered from the Orientation, a guidance counselor, was sitting on a chair in front of the closet door, leaning forward. “He’s not engaging, Mr. Bramlett.”

Chrissakes.

“Nobody’s mad at you, Luke,” Tom said into the door. He heard the intake of breath from the other two, guessed they weren’t on board with that.

Luke’s voice, when it came, was slow. “I’m sorry.” 

“That’s fine, but open the door now.” He’d ask to take Luke out of school for the rest of the day, buy him lunch if he hadn’t eaten, get him talking.

Today was Friday. Maybe by Monday things would have blown over.

He couldn’t hear movement from behind the door. The woman whispered to the principal.

Luke was slow to answer. “I can’t.”

“Yes you can, partner.” 

Nothing. 

Tom asked for the key to the closet. Mr. Bramlett said the janitor took them with him when he left the campus for lunch.

Tom wondered why the principal didn’t have his own key. “I can take care of it.”

“Break it down?” 

The door was plywood. A good kick or shoulder thrust would send it flying open.

“That would send a terrible message to the students.”

Tom, hoping he wouldn’t have cause to regret the delay, took a plastic card from his wallet, his library card, flexible, but stiff enough to hold the latch back, jimmy the lock. Inside, Luke sat on the floor between metal shelves full of textbooks and copy paper, looked incuriously at his father. 

His hands were clammy, Tom noticed, pulling him to his feet. He heard rumbling from Luke then, his stomach or lower down, took him across the hall to the boys’ room.  

Luke stood for a long time in front of the toilet bowl, before jerking his head down and vomiting hard. Thin stuff. Whitish, sour smelling. Tom saw the pills at the bottom of the bowl, counted twenty. 

He spoke softly, not wanting Mr. Bramlett or the woman to hear.

“What did you take?”

“My throat hurts.”

The pills looked like the Tylenol Gail took for backaches. They kept the bottle on the top shelf in their bathroom medicine cabinet. Luke would have made sure his parents were occupied before going into their bathroom, taking the pills a few at a time so Gail wouldn’t notice. 

“I have to go,” he said. 

Tom backed out of the stall. Luke, usually modest, didn’t close the door. When he came out he was gray and sweaty, fumbled with his belt.    

“Wash your hands,” Tom led him to the sink, turned on the water, checked the temperature, “use soap.”

He hadn’t flushed the toilet. Tom did it himself. Same sour stink, but he didn’t see more pills.

Tears from the force of vomiting were drying under Luke’s eyes. Tom wet a paper towel, used it to wipe them off, and the sweat on his forehead, the crud around his mouth. “I think it’s flu,” he told the others when they went back.

“Son,” Mr. Bramlett said heavily, “none of this was necessary. If you’re sick, let us know. We’ll take care of you.” Three days of in-school suspension starting Monday and an interview Wednesday to determine if he could return to school. “You didn’t give us a choice,” he said, “because of the assault.” 

Attempted assault.

Luke leaned into his father’s chest. The left side, avoiding the badge on the right. 

“There will be consequences for his disruptive behavior and use of offensive language as well,” the woman told them.

“I’m taking him to Urgent Care now,” Tom said, laying his hand on Luke’s forehead. 

“Of course,” Mr. Bramlett said, as if he’d asked for permission. He smiled at Luke. “Get better, okay?”

Luke allowed his father to guide him through the halls of the school to the car, didn’t say anything till they were in Urgent Care.

His color had improved. The vomiting probably took care of the pills. Maybe he could just take him home. They could call around, find a counselor for Luke. 

Inside they stood at the counter, Tom holding Luke’s thin shoulders. The triage nurse asked Luke how many pills he’d taken. Tom resisted the urge to look around, see if anyone was listening.

Luke didn’t answer.

“Fine. We’ll pump your stomach.”

Tom felt Luke flinch, tightened his grip.

“Twenty-three.” 

I guess we don’t have to, she said, looking bored.

When Tom started at the prison he sometimes escorted inmates who’d overdosed to the clinic. When it was clear they hadn’t taken enough to be in danger some of the officers expressed contempt, said pills were for pussies, the offender had done it for attention.

Gail would be back at work by now. She’d want him to call her but Tom hoped, after Luke saw the doctor, to make a neat package of it, tell her it was a kid thing and Luke had learned his lesson.  

“Answer their questions.” Tom said. “They can’t help you if you don’t tell the truth.”

“You said I had flu.”

So that’s how it’s going to be, thirteen years old, ready to take his dad on. 

You want them to put you on the crazy train?

“I was wrong to lie.” 

Luke was called back then. Tom went too, smiling encouragingly at Luke when the nurse drew blood, asked him if he was steady enough on his feet to go down the hall on his own to the bathroom when she asked for a urine specimen.  

The nurse practitioner’s first question was how old Luke was, as if she couldn’t read it in his chart. Tom answered, but she looked at Luke. “Do you want him to stay?”

The doctor’s office had sent them a letter when Luke turned thirteen explaining his legal right to confidentiality.

“No.” 

Luke watched him go.

This morning Gail had told them her afternoon class would make giant soap bubbles today. They’d go outside for that, and he imagined her, among the excited children, helping them dip the bubble blowers they’d made from pipe cleaners into the soap, wave the big, bright bubbles out slowly.

The nurse practitioner came out with Luke, said he was medically clear.   

Tom was ready to go home but she said she’d called the County Crisis Response team because, “it appears to have been a serious attempt.”

Luke must have said something to her. 

The nurse practitioner told him to stay with Luke till the team came. You think you can trust me, he wanted to ask.

After she’d gone Luke said he didn’t want to go to the hospital.

“It hasn’t been decided. That’s why they’re coming to talk to you.” 

Luke had been away before, for camp and sleepovers. Tom noticed he slept better after Luke came home. I like having my whole posse here, he’d told Gail. “If you have to go to the hospital that’s what you’ll do.”

Luke rolled his eyes. Tom had sent him to his room for that last week. You didn’t need to punish him, Gail had said.

When he asked her what he should have done instead she said he should have told him he’d hurt his feelings. “The way you hurt mine now by asking my opinion so you could tell me I’m wrong.”   

“Whatever it is,” he told Luke today, “we’ll get through it.”

For a moment he thought Luke was working up to say something mean, say you can’t do anything for me, but he asked when Mommy was coming.

Last night he’d heard him laughing with her in the kitchen, cleaning up after dinner, mixing the orange juice for breakfast.   

He wanted to jump on Luke with both feet, say with all your mother has on her plate, you pull a stunt like this. He wished he could go back to how he’d felt in Reese’s office, sure of himself, tender towards Luke. 

“We’ll call her now,” he said. But the Crisis Response Team came, two of them, a man and a woman, rolling from the hips, like detectives on TV.

“Hey, hey, hey,” the man, Kevin, said. A boy in Tom’s eyes because he wore jeans. The girl, Stacy, did too. Both of them smiling, sure of their welcome. 

They sent Tom from the room, interviewed Luke together. It would be quicker, Tom thought, if one would interview him while the other talked to Luke.

He went to his car to call Gail, rolled his window down a little, because of the vomit smell. Are you alone, he asked, though he knew her class was over. She’d be getting her room ready for Monday. 

She said she was glad he’d been the one to go to the school, didn’t say he should have called her sooner. Nicer to me than I deserve, Tom thought. “You knew just what to do.” 

She’d had no idea, she said.

An impulse, Tom told her. That’s probably all it was. “He’s asking for you.”

“What should we tell your mom?” The two younger boys went to Tom’s mother’s house after school and she took them to Gail. 

She’d call his mom, they decided, ask her to keep the boys a little longer, say Luke had gotten sick at school and Tom took him to Urgent Care. True, so far as it went.

Gail attracted sympathetic looks in the waiting room, as if she were a patient herself. Tom asked her if the doctor had said anything about why she was so tired. 

Gail said not to worry. “You’d be tired too, if you were carrying an extra thirty pounds in front.” 

 When Stacy and Kevin came out, Luke behind them, Stacy touched the floppy white collar on Gail’s pink maternity dress. “Cute.” 

Gail responded politely to this before taking an abashed Luke into her arms.

Kevin said they’d talk to Tom first. “Mama Bear needs time with her cub.” 

Tom felt his face assume the look of impassivity it wore when he interrogated offenders, reminded himself of the anxious talk he and Gail had in the waiting room. We’re good parents, she said. They’ll see that.

A nice kid, Kevin told him. He’s really a nice kid.

“We like him.” He saw the glance Kevin and Stacy exchanged, told himself to warm up. He was polite, anyway, relieved when they gave him questions he could answer: how old Luke was when he crawled, talked, any health problems, his sleep habits, school, how he got along with his brothers, feelings about the pregnancy, any changes Tom had noticed in his behavior, was there any family history of mental illness? 

He and Gail were careful with money, Gail especially, raising a garden, making her own clothes, saving for the boys’ college. The boys wore Nikes and Levis like their classmates, took music lessons, had good Christmases, but they didn’t eat out often, only had basic cable. Maybe that bothered Luke.

Wait till they ask, he told himself, thinking of how inmates will sometimes give up stuff you wouldn’t have guessed if you just let them talk.

Luke had been concerned, needlessly, that he’d have to give up his single man cell when the baby came, Tom told them, laughed when they did, because he’d used prison talk.  

He wasn’t enthusiastic about school this year, not the way he’d been when he was younger, but his grades remained excellent.

Tom hoped this wouldn’t set him back in school. He had hopes for the boys, didn’t want any of them working at the prison, thinking they were too good for the job, stirring the pot, making even the mellowest inmate go off, turning sullen like Jason Reese, who could barely bring himself to say hello to his father when he saw him at work, went with his girlfriend to her parents’ house on holidays.

No spanking, he said, when Stacy asked about discipline, then regretted mentioning it because that wasn’t her question. He wished he’d had time to change out of his uniform. Goons, he’d heard officers called. Neanderthals.  

“I try not to yell.”

Stacy told him not to be too hard on himself.

Kevin chuckled. “It must get wild sometimes with four of them.”

He could still make Luke cry. Last summer at the mall, Luke, who was allowed to walk around the stores on his own, made a mistake about where he was supposed to meet them. It took almost an hour to find him. 

On the way home Tom had frightened all four of them, Gail too. Leave me alone, Luke, gone small in his corner of the back seat, had sobbed. Stop, please stop. 

Nothing he was proud of. 

“I don’t know,” he said, in response to a question neither of them asked. “I had no idea he was thinking of anything like this. I didn’t know he was unhappy. I don’t know why he would be.”

“Sure,” Kevin said. “A lot of times that’s the way it is. We know it isn’t a neglect thing.” 

He wasn’t sure he should ask but what had Luke said when they asked him why?

Nothing, according to Stacy. “He just didn’t know. “ 

In the lobby while they waited he bought a can of Sprite for Luke, told him it might settle his stomach, wished Kevin and Stacy could see him being solicitous.

Luke gulped it.

“Slow down. You don’t want to be sick again.” They were going to have to tell the younger boys, Tom thought, and his mother, and God know who else, because the boys wouldn’t be able to keep this a secret.  

Gail finished with Kevin and Stacy quickly, came out to wait with them. They’d spent more time with Tom.  

Nothing they could talk about in front of Luke who had softened, it seemed to Tom, become less defiant. “I’m really sorry,” he said again.

Oh honey, Gail told him, holding on to him, oh honey, I love you so much.

Tom said what he’d said earlier, at the school. Nobody’s mad at you. “We’ll get this sorted out.” He’d have had to take the pills first; the timing didn’t make sense otherwise. Had he believed he would die and threw the tray as a final fuck you?

“I’m in trouble,” Luke said to his mother. 

“It doesn’t matter.” 

He leaned into her side, said he shouldn’t have upset her. She drew him closer, told him not to worry about that. “I love you so much.”

  “Let’s put this in perspective,” Tom said. 

A favorite expression of his. He saw Gail and Luke exchange smiles. 

“Dad. I was suspended.”

He pictured Luke running through the halls, Hobart chasing him. “Nobody died, did they?”

Another favorite expression. Gail didn’t like it, said discouraged the boys when they tried to tell him something. 

Luke laughed. Gail did, too, sounding shaky. 

“I didn’t mean it the way it sounded.”

They were still laughing, Tom as well, when Stacy came to take them back to the little room.

A family joke, they told her. 

“My dad’s funny,” Luke said, smiling. 

Back in the room Kevin said Luke meant business. He’d admitted he knew the amount he’d taken wasn’t lethal, was planning on swallowing more in stages, intended to die, but then he got sick. When they’d asked he’d turned over the sixty or so pills.

The first thing I should have done, Tom thought. Searched him, and his backpack. But he’d never spied on Luke, never checked his computer use, or shook down his room. 

Kevin and Stacy asked Luke if he would be safe. What would he do if the thoughts he’d had before came back? What would he do differently?

No eye contact but he answered the questions. He wanted to live. He’d be homesick at the hospital and he knew school would be bad at first, but it wouldn’t get better if he waited. He’d tell his mom and dad if he had thoughts again.

Thoughts. It came out smoothly, as if he were used to thinking them. He promised, he said solemnly. He meant it.

Kevin and Stacy nodded, said Luke had been an active participant in developing his safety plan. 

Kevin passed out copies, gave them an extra one to put on the refrigerator door.

A list of things Luke could do when he felt depressed. Read books, listen to music, be silly with Eric, written in Luke’s small, careful printing. 

Not magic, Tom thought, holding his copy, still warm from the printer. He saw his name on the list of people Luke said he could talk to. Good job, he told him.

Kevin told them their insurance company would be contacting them Monday to set up an appointment with a therapist. “Do it,” he said, standing before them, hands on hips, “or you’ll be seeing us again.” 

They looked ready to move on, say hey, hey, hey, to someone else. Tom guessed he’d seen the last of them, hoped so. Of course he and Gail would take Luke to the therapist, go themselves. Nobody had to make them. 

Kevin tousled Luke’s hair, a gesture Tom knew his son disliked. “You got a real good guy here. Take care of him.”

So that was that. 

Just over three hours they’d been there, Tom said, when they were outside. “It seemed longer.” 

Everything looks the same, Luke said. “To me, it feels as if things should be different.”

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Jane Snyder’s stories have recently appeared in Jaded Ibis, Wrath-Bearing Tree, Swamp Ape, and Heavy Feather. She lives in Spokane.