At 2 a.m., I woke to a text from my daughter: “Dad, help! Come fast!!” But when I got there, she hadn’t sent it. Then came another message—from an unknown number: “I remember what you did.” Night after night, more texts followed: “You looked the other way.” “Do your hands still smell like gasoline?” They were about Sarika—the girl from high school I failed to protect when my friend tried to hurt her. Decades later, her cousin reached out. She’d forgiven me long ago. The messages weren’t revenge—they were a reminder. So I went back, started The Sarika Project to protect kids like her. Some ghosts don’t want to haunt you—they want you to wake up.
