Now, his fur felt stiff and matted. He’d gotten old. Just like me. Just like Delaney… She’s not a smooth little girl anymore; she’s coarser, rougher around the edges...
She’s keeping a secret.
I took her phone out of my pocket and clicked the home screen. Taking a deep breath, I clicked on the messages again. It felt wrong – so damn wrong – looking at this image.
It was a picture of a naked boy.
A boy, or was it a man?
It was impossible to know for sure because his head and neck were missing. Only the space between his chest and thighs was exposed.
He gripped his penis in his hand, crudely.
It was hard to discern his age; he had some hair on his chest and the rest of his body, but there was really no way to tell. Was this a teenage boy my daughter hadn’t told me about? Or was this someone else … a predator? A stranger?
My mom brain was spinning out of control…
Luckily, from what I could tell, Delaney hadn’t sent any of her own pictures.
But who knew what she had erased?
If she is sending pictures of herself, oh my God… What if this boy became angry and shared naked pictures of her all over school? Or worse, all over the internet?
There were no words exchanged, only the one picture. And it came from a number without a name, someone she didn’t keep in her address book.
No name, no face, his identity a complete mystery.
I scanned through the rest of Delaney’s messages, the guilt I’d felt earlier temporarily forgotten.
I saw messages from Michael and a few from Samantha. Messages from me. But other than that, there were no messages from her school friends.
Has she erased some of them? She must have, I decided.
The internet history on her cell phone showed no results. I wasn’t so old that I didn’t understand what this meant: Delaney had either deleted her search history, or she was using in-private browsing.
No photos either – possibly stored on iCloud? I considered.
Besides the photo messages from the mystery man/boy, there was nothing suspect on her phone. I shut it off and stood up, placing it face down on her dresser.
Her dresser was neat, brushes and combs lined up evenly. An open makeup bag in the middle. I picked through it, fingers brushing over the new reddish-brown shadow I’d seen on her earlier. My heart ached.
I want my daughter back.
I stared at my own face in the mirror. My black hair was turning gray; the wrinkles on my forehead and between my brows were deepening by the day.
Worries like these probably don’t help with wrinkles either.
I imagined Delaney standing in this exact same spot, staring at herself every day in the mirror. She was beautiful, in that way that’s almost grotesque. Too perfect. Too unflawed. But she’d lost weight.
Was she self-conscious? Was she hurting more than I realized?
Monstrous beauty can seem like a blessing, but it’s also a curse. Sometimes the monsters don’t know how powerful their beauty is…
So, what if she’s exchanging sexy pics with a boy? Is this really as big a deal as I think it is?
Wasn’t I doing the exact same thing at her age? I considered.
No, I wasn’t. Not because I wouldn’t have, but because I was so busy grieving the loss of my parents after their car accident, and the drama I dealt with in school…
I mean, I have to talk to her about the pictures. And the alcohol. There’s no question about that.
I couldn’t brush it under the rug and pretend I didn’t know.
I had to make sure she was at least using protection if she was considering sex...
What if she’s already had sex? I shuddered at the thought of it.
But what could I do about it if she was?
She’s not a child anymore.
I couldn’t take her phone away – she needed it for safety.
I looked around the sweet, childlike room. It was in stark contrast to the girl who had that racy photo on her phone.
But love makes you do crazy things.
If anyone could understand that, it was me.
If Michael had asked me to send him nudes back in the day, would I have sent them?
I thought about the tickle of his words on my ear, the feathery kisses and the watery smiles and his rough fingers massaging my breasts…
Yes, I would have.
Because when you’re crazy about someone, you’ll do almost anything, consequences be damned.
I opened and closed Delaney’s dresser drawers. I sifted through tangles of clothes in her closet.
There was nothing – no pot, no pills, no whips or chains, no deadly secrets hiding between the sheets or inside the drawers.
Just a picture of a boy, that’s all.
I can handle that. After all, there are worse things a teen can do.
I had to talk to her.
Talk, not lecture, I decided. I wanted her to be able to open up to me. I never had that in a mother – a person to confide in – and I craved to be that person for Delaney. The person who made her feel safe, the person she could talk to and trust.
But does anyone trust their parents at this age? I don’t know … it’s hard to say when I’ve never experienced it…
I turned her lights back out and tightly wedged her door shut.
Somewhere in the house, I could hear my own cell phone ringing.
I ran for it, digging through my purse, desperately.
“Laney, baby?” I answered, breathily.
“Mom…” She sounded like my little girl again.
“How’s Sam? Is she okay?” I closed my eyes, saying another silent prayer despite my ignorance on all things prayer related.
“She’s going to be alright, I think. But her neck is broken. It could have been so much worse, Mom. She was this close to damaging her windpipe. And of course, if she’d
