Text bubbles danced for long moments on my screen before her next message popped up:ĩ11 Kayla: i don’t know how to tell u this but im gay Me: Can we talk tomorrow? You have school in the morning.ĩ11 Kayla: stop using punctuation in texts its weird It was after midnight, but I dutifully responded. She’d prefixed her contact name in my cellphone to read “911,” a way of asserting her significance in my life. Late one night a few years ago, my 14-year-old daughter, Kayla, texted me.
