I read the heartbreaking story of Ava’s death just before I entered my daughter’s room to turn her ambient sound machine from lullabies to white noise. From the side of her crib, I looked down at my daughter’s sprawled-out sleeping form, all 23 pounds of her brimming with limitless potential. I reached my hand down to touch her chest, to feel it rise and fall, thinking of the thousands of hours I have devoted to keeping her safe and happy.
As I often do, I worried about her future.
Before I read about Ava, I mostly worried about what might happen when my daughter began to attend the local high school, just over an hour west of Clinton Twp., which has earned its nickname, "Heroin High," from the drug problems that plague our town. At the playgroup where I bring my daughter twice a week, mothers who graduated from the high school sometimes share stories about how heroin sales take place at the school, despite the constant surveillance of security guards. When they sense my abject horror, they say things like, "It’s not a big deal, you just learn to stay away from it," as though heroin is a series of unmarked physical pits in the hallways that an unwary student might accidentally fall inside.