The Shocking Truth
I had a girl playing with something while sitting on the carpet. She was rolling it back and forth, and putting it in her mouth, and taking it out, and rolling it around again. I told her to give it to me when the other students started their independent work. She gave me this large green pill. At recess, I asked her about it. What she told me next was shocking.
She said that her mom and dad give her and her siblings one of these every night to make them sleep. I take the pill to our school admins and tell them what she told me before searching Google images to find out what it could be. I find a short list and go back to admin, where I’m told that it isn’t my job to worry about stuff like that.
I try several times that day to get answers and they say they think it’s melatonin, so I should stop overstepping my place. This girl and her siblings are in and out of foster care and often come to school with no food and filthy clothes. She once came to school in a sweatshirt covered in dried blood for three days in a row. Her parents wouldn’t even bother to sign the papers to get the kids the free school lunches. I forged the mom’s signature every month.