Valeria raised her hands, nodding. She then asked Kyle if she could listen to the recordings he had made of the noise on his phone.

The app doesn’t make recordings, it’s a spectrogram, he replied. It graphs sound in real time.

It’s almost impossible to record the hum itself, I said. We’ve tried, but there’s too much ambient noise.

But it does pick up enough to measure, he clarified. It’s not in our heads.

He looked straight at Brenda as he said this, for the first time since they arrived. She narrowed her eyes at him, and then, while still holding Kyle’s gaze, she asked if I had ever taken her son back to my house.

Mom, no, Kyle replied, exasperated.

I can assure you, Mrs. Francis, that I would never invite a student—

Assured, do you think I’m assured?

Mom, I’ve told you.

Told me? You didn’t tell me about any of this until I forced it out of you. And only thanks to your daughter, Ms. Devon.

I’m sorry?

Brenda’s face dropped. You don’t—you don’t know about my little exchange with Ashley this morning?

I felt like I had been hit in the stomach with a baseball bat. I wasn’t sure if I could withstand what I was about to hear.

Well, Brenda continued, clearly relishing this turn, let me tell you then. I was in the kitchen making coffee. Kyle had left his phone on the counter, and I noticed it light up with a WhatsApp message. ‘Do you want to ruin her?’ Brenda looked at me, and then at Valeria, eyebrows raised in theatrical indignation, before continuing. That’s what it said—‘Do you want to ruin her?’ So, as you can imagine, I made him come downstairs, unlock his phone, and show me the whole conversation because I damn well wanted to know what kind of son I’m raising.

My throat burned, and no amount of swallowing made it better. Oh Ash, I thought. What have you done?

So once I figured out what was going on, Brenda continued, I messaged her back. I said—‘This is Brenda Francis. You tell your mother Yes. I sure the hell do.’

And what did she reply? I heard myself ask.

Brenda removed Kyle’s phone from her pocket. Nothing yet, she said, and then looked up at me. But she’s read the message.

But she’s read the message. Those words gutted me more than any other. Even now, I still wonder why Ashley never came to warn me of the impending shitstorm before it knocked on my classroom door. Did she want to punish me? Or did she stall out of guilt; out of fear of what she’d accidentally set into motion? I’ve tried not to let it eat away at me.