Diane had gotten some concerned calls from the school about Josh skipping classes and doing dangerous things like expressing public curiosity about the mysterious lights that pass over Night Vale at night, and trying to enter the City Council chambers without protective gear. He had also been coming home late each day.

She had tried to talk to him about Ty, but Josh looked annoyed when she brought it up. He would just roll his thin, yellow eyes, his long ears flat across the top of his skull, and say, “It’s fine,” or “Nothing new,” or “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Is Josh all right?” said the second news anchor.

“He’s fine.”

“How do you know?”

Diane did not answer.

“He’s going through a lot, Diane,” said the first coanchor, and the two coanchors shared a smile. (Was that a smile?)

“He had a crush on someone, I think, I guess, and it didn’t work out,” Diane said. She wasn’t eating cereal anymore.

“Is that all that’s bothering him? Just a failed crush?” the second coanchor pushed on, showing at least some background in journalism.

“I don’t know. I wish I knew. I don’t know. He seems different or like something has gotten off the rails inside him, and I don’t know how to nudge him back. He’s been texting in class. When he even shows up for class.”

“Is he texting a particular person?”

“Not that I was told.”

“Definitely check your phone records, Diane,” the first anchor said, leaning farther over the desk than seemed possible.

“It’s a little invasive.”

“You’re his mother. You are allowed to be invasive as long as he is living under your roof with you paying the bills,” the second coanchor said.

“And it’s not like you’re averse to checking other people’s phone records,” the other added.

And here the two coanchors laughed tinnily, with trained rigor, and there was a low rumble felt by many people across Night Vale for the next few seconds.

“I don’t think it’s just about a crush,” said one of the anchors.

“I agree with Tim,” said the other.

“Thank you, Trinh.”

“Last night, when I saw him,” said Diane, “he was small, about the size of a basketball. And like a basketball, he was round. Unlike a basketball, he was smooth and dark and heavy. I don’t know how to talk to him when he’s like that.”

“You do not know how many parents say that, Diane,” Tim purred, smiling, eyebrow tilted. There was a rapid clicking sound from the back of Tim’s throat, or “thorax” as news anchors call it.

“You must be there for him,” Trinh said.