After years of learning at home, my 10-year-old son, who has Down syndrome, was finally given the chance to go to a regular school. He was happier than I’d seen him in years. But just five days after he started, I got a phone call from the principal that left me shaken.

Briar Glen’s library volunteer log showed one adult signed in on Friday morning from 9:30 to 11:05. C. Rowan.

The school phone system kept a record of every internal call. At 10:52 a.m., the front office received a call from extension 214.

Extension 214 was the library desk phone.

The library aide had been on her break. The only adult in the library at 10:52 was the volunteer.

“She called it in from inside the building,” Officer Lim said. “She didn’t even think about the phone log.”

“But why?” Jonah said. “Why would she put money in a ten-year-old’s backpack?”

Officer Lim flipped her notepad.

“Thursday night, after Principal Whitfield’s email went out about backpack checks, Brayden got scared. He told his mother everything. He’d been taking phones from the fifth-grade lockers for a month and selling them to a kid at the middle school. The Raptor Club was his way of hiding them. He’d find a younger kid who wanted to belong, give them a sock, tell them it was a secret.” She looked at Milo. “Milo wasn’t the first. He was just the newest.”