I felt clammy, and I didn’t think it had anything to do with my cold. “What is it? Is he okay?”

He hesitated. “Is he… taking anything? Any medications?”

I blinked, unsure of where the hell this was going. “Why do you want to know?”

“Because he’s buying pills on campus.”

Everything pretty much stopped. “What?”

He told me a story then. About a guy he used to date, a real fucking scumbag that Corey had thought had the whole bad boy thing going on. Turned out that underneath the leather and swagger and cheap cologne was an asshole who made bank selling Klonopin and Adderall and Xanax to stressed-out frat boys and sorority chicks, people looking for a way to de-stress in ways that alcohol couldn’t provide. It’d taken Corey longer than he cared to admit to dump the asshole, but he’d done it and was better off because of it.

But Corey stressed he wasn’t a snitch, okay? He didn’t like getting involved in shit that didn’t concern him. It was just… Tyson. There was something about him. Corey had seen him around campus, at first a little unimpressed with this kid who was supposed to be some big shit.

He was smart, sure. Of course he was. He was Tyson Thompson, after all. His IQ was high, he’d skipped grades, he’d graduated early, he’d gone to college at sixteen, and yeah, his grades had sloughed off a little, but then he’d turned seventeen, and asked us to trust him. I got this, Papa Bear, he’d said to me. I can handle this on my own. Let me do this on my own. And sure as shit, I’d said okay, okay, okay, because I had trusted him. He’d never given any indication otherwise, he’d never lied to me, never held anything back, or so I’d thought.

And yeah, maybe we weren’t in each other’s back pocket like we’d once been. There were years when he’d been my sole focus, when all I could think about was making sure he was fed and bathed and happy and whole, and even though it felt wrong at first, I’d slowly backed off, because he was his own person. He didn’t always need me hovering over his shoulder forever, no matter how much I wanted to be. And it was hard at first, hard to let him go out into the big and scary world on his own, knowing there were people out there that could hurt him, that would hurt him. Otter had held me close, had whispered in my ear that mistakes were going to be made—it was inevitable, after all—but we’d be here to help him, we’d never leave him behind. Things are changing, Otter had said. But it’ll be okay, Bear. I promise.

So I’d let him go.