Track marks, unmistakable, crisscross her flesh. My sweet girl who would lay her arm across my lap and plead, “Tickle me,” is marked with the telltale signs of heroin use. I feel all the air rush out of my lungs, and in its absence, the truth hits me again like a sledgehammer. Why did I have to see this, so undeniable, to finally understand what had been going on? The changes I could have noticed but didn’t: her sweet personality shifting from loving to moody. Just a teenager, I said. Friends that changed, the new people she hung out with, her hair, which she had dyed, pulled back, and stopped
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