“Mira, what happened?”

“Mom said it was a joke, to get him to calm down.

But he’s not moving anymore.” And then, smaller still: “Mom told me not to call you.”

Mom told me not to call you. Six words, and I have turned them over a thousand times since, because of everything they contained.

An eight-year-old, standing over a boy who wouldn’t wake, had been given a direct instruction by her mother — the person whose word was law, whose approval was the sun she orbited — not to call for help.

And she had disobeyed.