Episode Eleven: In Park

A summer night. A helicopter lifting a 14-year-old girl into the sky. And a state trooper who walks back to his cruiser to find it still in Drive, perched on the edge of a 100-foot drop.   In this episode of Into the Gray, I reconstruct a tragedy that began not with a cigarette, but with fear. Fear of a stepfather’s wrath. Fear of a suspension that felt like the end of the world. A girl came home from school, reached into an unlocked kitchen cabinet, and made a choice she could never take back.