She paused, looking back at the courthouse where her son was beginning the most challenging year of his
young life. “I spent months trying to save him from consequences, and all I accomplished was teaching him that consequences don’t apply to him. Today, I finally started trying to save him from himself.”
The First Night of Reckoning
Later that evening, alone in his sparse cell at the Franklin County Juvenile Rehabilitation Center, Ryan found himself replaying the day’s events with unprecedented clarity. The laughter that had once come so easily when contemplating his ability to outsmart the system refused to surface. The jokes he might have made about his situation felt hollow and inappropriate.
