The whole drive home, I kept glancing at him in the rearview mirror. He looked totally normal. Chattering again, back to full volume, telling me the gumball machine had given him two gumballs for one quarter, which he considered a major victory.
Ten minutes later we were standing in the kitchen. I set my keys down and crouched in front of him.“Hold still for a second. I want to look at your haircut.”
“Is it bad? Did he mess it up?”
“No, it’s great. Just hold still.”
I reached up and gently pushed his freshly cut hair away from his left ear.
At first I saw nothing. Just his ear, a little redness from the clippers. Then, tucked into the crease where his ear met his head, I saw a small patch. Flesh-colored, about the size of a nickel, the same shade as his skin so that it nearly disappeared against it. Like a bandage, but not quite.
I rubbed it gently with my thumb.
There was something hard underneath.
My stomach pulled tight, the way it does right before bad news.
I peeled back the edge of the patch, careful, and underneath, stuck to the skin behind my son’s ear, was a tiny black disc. Barely bigger than a grain of rice. Smooth, and hard, with the faintest gleam to it, like a little bead of black glass.
