Jonathan Goldstein

Why had they done it?

What were they angry about?

Skye had no idea.

Did you ever see those girls again?

And when Skye tells Clark this story, here's where she delivers the moral.

Awful things do happen, but in the end, everything turns out fine.

Skye grew up, got married, has a job she likes and a family she loves.

Her story, she tells him, has a happy ending.

In the past, when he's heard this story, Clark's taken his mom's lesson at face value.

But Clark is now the same age Skye was when her friends turned on her.

He's starting to see his own classmates leave old friends behind for the more popular crowd.

For the first time, he's able to imagine what it would be like if his own small group of friends suddenly cast him out, stopped coming over to his house to play video games, stopped speaking to him altogether.

So Skye's moral, that everyone lives happily ever after, is starting to feel untrue.

And so, Clark has a question for his mother.

Why didn't she ever confront her friends about what they did?

Why not then?

But also, he asks Skye.

Why not now?

Clark brings up Skye's story during their bedtime ritual, asking for details, weighing the injustice, fantasizing about Skye looking up her old friends and confronting them with some questions.

At school functions, Clark watches his mom try to accommodate the other parents and get steamrolled in the process.