When I reached the bottom of the basement stairs, I found six teenage girls sprawled across beanbags and blankets in front of a movie projector.
Including Brooke.
At first I almost laughed from relief. They weren’t hurt. They weren’t in danger. Then I noticed something that made my stomach tighten. Every girl looked exhausted. Not normal sleepover tired. Deeply asleep in the middle of the afternoon, impossible-to-wake tired.
Brooke’s friend’s mother appeared from the laundry room carrying a basket of towels. She jumped when she saw me standing there. I asked what was going on, and she immediately started talking too fast. The girls had stayed up late. They’d been watching movies. Teenagers sleep all day sometimes. But while she was talking, I noticed a row of energy drink cans and, beside them, an open bottle of over-the-counter sleep gummies.
My heart sank.
Brooke woke up when I touched her shoulder. She looked groggy and confused. On the drive home, I asked her directly if she’d taken anything. She shrugged and said, “Mrs. Reynolds always gives us one of those gummies after midnight so we don’t stay up all night talking.” Then she added, “She says all the parents like it because we come home tired enough to sleep.”
I had to pull over.
Not because Brooke was in immediate danger, but because suddenly every sleepover made sense. The exhaustion. The sleeping half the next day. The way she’d always seem foggy for a day or two afterward.
That evening I called the other parents.
Most of them had no idea.
The woman’s explanation was that she was overwhelmed trying to supervise a house full of teenagers and thought the gummies were harmless because they were sold over the counter. Maybe she believed that. It didn’t matter.
Brooke never slept there again.
A few weeks later, my mom was teaching her how to make cinnamon rolls in our kitchen when Brooke looked up and asked, “You know what I like better than sleepovers?”
“What?”
She smiled and stole a piece of dough.
“Coming home.”