Luke Hartwick

I kept knocking on his door, but it was locked and he wasn’t replying. But he doesn’t usually lock his bedroom door when he leaves…

That excitement is what helped me to skip over all of the disclaimers in the contract that Dr. Phelps put before me. Since that day, I’ve re-read the contract a hundred times, sick at the thought of what I overlooked.

When Caden’s teacher asked me to come in for a parent-teacher conference, I figured she was going to sing his praises as a self-reliant, good kid. But instead, she just gestured for me to sit in a tiny, plastic chair and proceeded to lay a spiral notebook on the desk in front of me, without saying a word.

The realization was like a knife in my chest. We used to always get into mysteries with each other when we were younger. If I was there, I would absolutely have gone with them. But then what?

I felt like I had this reasonable parenting thing down…until I saw what was on his browser history. Then I lost it.

I won’t blame you if you think this is fiction.

“Daddy likes to drink,” she tells her doll. “And I like to pour him drinks.”

They told me I had a hernia at first.

I looked up and found a picture of myself from five years ago pinned to a Missing Persons board.

Being the new kid in school sucks. I thought by now I would have been used to it, because of all the moving my family has done over the years. But I guess there is no getting used to the stares and the condescending curiosities. Sometimes I wonder if they know my secret. Can they tell just by looking at me?

“I’ve been thinking a lot lately,” he said one day when we were walking home from the bus stop. “About the ánt’įįhnii.”

For a while all I did was field calls, like the other operators. But then I started realizing that some of these people were calling from only a few blocks away from me.

Now, when I think back to the excuses my parents used to make, I feel like an idiot.

I should have known something was off by the puzzled looks on the police officers’ faces as my wife recounted everything that had happened.

I had gotten texts from people with the wrong number in the past and never thought twice about telling them so and moving on with my life. But this time was different, because this time I was lonely.

I remember often asking about my mother. Along with all of my other uncertainties, there was the lingering question of why I could never see her. I always got the same answer, “You’re too young to understand, Luke.”

Here’s something I don’t advertise on my SitterCity profile: I hate children. But I do love video games and easy money, so that makes for a pretty smooth operation when it comes to taking care of other people’s kids for a few hours.

I have to confess, I love those shows on television about buying storage units and hunting through antiques, looking for something valuable. I’ve always had a fascination with old things and it seems like a relatively easy way to make some extra money. I imagined it must be almost like a treasure hunt. I imagined wrong.