Part 1: The Longest Night
At 2:13 a.m., I pressed the phone to my ear and whispered to the county help line, “Nobody’s bleeding… I’m fourteen… my little brother Liam is asleep in a laundry basket, and I can’t do this anymore.” My voice cracked like dry branches underfoot. The trailer groaned around me as if it could hear every word and was tired too, tired of leaning walls and creaking floors.
The woman on the other end spoke slowly, deliberately, the kind of calm that made it feel safe to admit how scared I was. “Tell me exactly what’s happening right now,” she said.
