Chapter 5: The Name at the Top
The account name was *CoachDave\_Mentor.*
I stared at it for a long time.
Then I scrolled up through the chat history, looking for context, looking for the moment this account had first appeared.
It had created the group.
It had written the pinned message.
And for the past four months, it had been posting regularly — links, advice, long paragraphs about confidence and persistence and how girls respond to boys who don't give up.
The writing was not a teenager's writing.
I took screenshots of everything.
Every post.
Every pinned message.
Every link.
My hands were steady in a way that surprised me.
I think I had moved past the part of the evening where I was allowed to fall apart.
I searched the username.
Nothing public.
I searched *CoachDave Mentor* with the school's name.
Nothing.
I searched it with the town's name.
One result.
A deleted Reddit post, cached.
A parent asking if anyone else's son had mentioned a Discord server run by someone called Coach Dave, and whether anyone knew who he was in real life.
The post had three replies.
Two said they'd never heard of it.
The third said: *Yes.
My son mentioned him.
Said he was someone's older brother.
Didn't get a name.*
Someone's older brother.
I went back to Leo's phone.
Scrolled through the member list again, reading every username.
Most were obvious — handles made of first names and numbers, the kind teenagers use.
But one caught my eye.
*DReid17.* I recognized the last name.
Reid.
There was a Reid family at the school.
Their son was a senior.
Daniel Reid.
Seventeen years old.
Daniel Reid had an older brother.
I knew this because Sandra had mentioned it once, years ago, at the beach house.
The older brother had gone to college out of state.
She'd said his name once and I hadn't retained it.
I called Sandra.
It was past ten.
She picked up anyway.
"I need to ask you something," I said.
"Daniel Reid.
His older brother.
Do you know his name?"
A pause.
"Why?"
"Please, Sandra."
"David," she said.
"His name is David.
He's twenty-three.
He dropped out of college last year.
Why are you asking me this at ten o'clock at night?"
"Because I think David Reid created the Discord group that taught my son how to send those messages."
Silence.
"Sandra.
Are you still there?"
"David Reid," she said slowly, "used to coach the junior soccer league.
Two years ago.
He was removed.
I never found out why."
The junior soccer league.
Leo had played junior soccer at thirteen.
I closed my laptop.
Opened it again.
I needed to think clearly and I needed to do it fast because Monday was thirty-six hours away and if I walked into that school without understanding the full shape of what had happened, I was going to walk in blind.
"I have screenshots of everything," I said.
"The whole chat history.
I'm going to call the school first thing in the morning.
But Sandra — this is bigger than Leo and Chloe and Priya.
If David Reid built this group and he's been running it for months, there are thirty other boys in it."
"Thirty other boys," she repeated.
Quietly.
Like she was counting something.
"And their families don't know yet."
Another silence.
Then Sandra said something I wasn't expecting.
"Karen.
I owe you an apology."
"You don't owe me anything—"
"I do.
When I called you tonight, I was angry.
I wanted you to feel what Chloe felt.
I wanted you to hurt the way I've been hurting since she showed me those messages two weeks ago." A breath.
"But you're not the one who built that group.
And Leo isn't the only one who got pulled into it.
And I've been sitting here for two weeks thinking this was about your son and my daughter, and it's not.
It's bigger than that."
"It is," I said.
"What do you need from me?"
"I need you to call Priya's parents tonight.
They need to know before Monday.
And I need you to tell them that we're going to the school together — all of us."
"All right," she said.
"I'll call them now."
After we hung up, I sat at the kitchen table with my laptop and Leo's phone and a yellow legal pad, and I wrote down everything I knew in the order I knew it.
Names.
Dates.
Screenshots.
The pinned message.
The deleted Reddit post.
David Reid.
The junior soccer league.
At midnight, I heard Leo's door open.
His footsteps on the stairs.
He appeared in the kitchen doorway in his socks and his jacket, still wearing it, like he'd never taken it off.
He looked at the legal pad.
At the screenshots open on my laptop.
"How far back does it go?" he said.
"August," I said.
"He created the group in August."
Leo sat down across from me.
He looked at the table.
"He used to coach us," he said.
"When we were thirteen.
He was — he was the one who paid attention to us.
He remembered your name.
He'd ask how school was going." He stopped.
"When he added me to the group, I thought it was just — I thought it was him still being like that.
Like a mentor."
"I know," I said.
"I didn't know it was going to turn into—"
"Leo." I waited until he looked at me.
"You still made choices.
Inside that group, with those messages — those were your choices.
Do you understand that?"
"Yes."
"David Reid is responsible for what he built.
You are responsible for what you did with it.
Both things are true at the same time."
He nodded.
His eyes were wet again.
This time one tear made it through.
"What's going to happen to me?" he said.
I looked at my son.
Fifteen years old.
Sitting across from me in his red jacket at midnight, asking the only question that mattered to him right now.
"I don't know yet," I said honestly.
"But I'm not going to let you face it alone."
He wiped his face with his sleeve.
Nodded once.
"Go to bed," I said.
"I'll be up for a while longer."
He stood.
Hesitated.
Then he walked around the table and put his hand briefly on my shoulder — not a hug, something smaller and more careful than a hug — and went back upstairs.
May you like
I turned back to my legal pad.
I had thirty-one names to go through before morning.
