The stories we don’t want to tell

On the afternoon of April 20, 1999, my mom was driving me to an after-school activity when she told me, “I have to talk to you about something.”

I was in eighth grade. Old enough to know when someone waits for a quiet moment to say, I have to talk to you about something, it’s not good news. I glanced to her from the passenger seat of her gray Subaru station wagon and waited.

I still recall today the exact piece of road we traveled as she told me earlier that day, two students had entered t...