I look him up and down. I’ve seen it a thousand times. He is all bravado and boot jingles. Dressed like he stepped straight out of a Western Warehouse. I could tell those shiny boots had never stepped foot on a ranch. Just puffed-up pride wrapped in a cowboy hat, trying to mask the desperation of someone who’s never been anywhere else. And doesn’t realize he is the one getting fucked by the system.

“You’ll be seeing me soon, huh?” I say, watching his eyes flicker. “Let me tell you something, partner. If you don’t straighten out that attitude of yours—if you don’t drop this little act and do your job like a professional—I’ll find someone else to sell this house.” I let the words sink in before delivering the knife twist. “Maybe a dame.”

His mouth opens, then shuts.

“Oh yeah,” I continue, my voice smooth as the whiskey he probably pretends to drink neat. “I’ll bring in one of those ‘progressive libs’ you despise so much. Maybe someone fresh out of California, with a Prius and pronouns in her email signature. Someone who’ll take your commission, your sale, and leave you standing in the dust.”

His face twitches. The bravado cracks. He swallows hard. His grip loosens on my hand.

“Good talk,” I say, finally letting go of his hand. “Now get to work.”

My wife and I sat across from each other, eyes heavy with the kind of exhaustion you don’t shake with a good night’s sleep. The school had made its choice—they put our boy in harm’s way, ignored the words on paper that were supposed to protect him. An IEP, they called it. Just another stack of bureaucracy to them. To us, it was supposed to be a shield. But shields don’t work when the people holding them don’t give a damn.

So we made our choice too. He wasn’t going back. Not to that school. Not to a system that saw him as a problem instead of a person. We are taking matters into our own hands—homeschooling.

And Texas? We were done. Finished. Washing our hands of it. This place chews people up and spits them out, and we aren’t waiting around to be next. Somewhere out there, there had to be a place where education means more than lip service, where kids aren’t just numbers on a budget sheet.

Tomorrow, we meet the realtor. Sell the house. Cut the ties. A clean break. A new start. Maybe, just maybe, we’ll find a place where they gave a damn.

Karma - there are way too many shitty people who just continue to be shitty because nothing ever comes back to bite them. Meanwhile, people who actually try to help are kicked around the most.