I shake my head, as though I could somehow unknow this. “Maybe I didn’t kill him on purpose, but he’s still dead,” I say. “And it’s my fault.”

“There is a world of difference between defending yourself and cold-blooded murder,” Ash says, and as much as I want to agree with him, I can’t. “Believe me, Harry was doing everything in his power at the time to kill you.”

I not only have Conner’s death on my conscience, but now Harry’s, and what makes it even more terrible is that they were both my relatives.

I sit on my back porch and toss a pebble toward a can that’s about twenty feet away from me. It catches the rim and bounces off onto the floorboards. It’s raining so hard outside that the forest in my backyard is blurred by sheets of water and the dampness is making my T-shirt stick to me.

“You’ve been at that for an hour now,” my dad says, opening the screen door and joining me on the porch. “What are you doing?”

“Figured I might as well do something useful until this rain stops and I can go to Emily’s,” I say, tossing another pebble. This one lands cleanly in the can.

“And this is useful?” my dad asks.

“It is if you plan on landing a gumball in someone’s soup at lunch,” I say.

The look Dad gives me tells me he doesn’t approve.

“What?” I say with my most innocent expression.

“You’re practicing a skill so that you can splash soup on someone?” he asks.

“Matt Dorsey put his chewed-up gum on my math book cover yesterday! It was gross,” I say.

“Your actions matter, Nova,” Dad says, and I sigh because he’s clearly missing the part about Matt defiling my book. “What other people do is on them, but you’re responsible for every single one of your choices.”

“Daaad,” I say. “It’s just a joke.”

“Okay,” he says. “Well, what if I told you that if you land your next toss, I’ll give you twenty bucks?”

My face lights up. “Will you?”

“But if you don’t make it,” he continues, “you can’t hang out with your friends this weekend.”

I stare at him, unsure what to say.

“So, are you going to take the shot?” he asks, pressing me.

I hesitate, trying to assess what my chances are. So far, I’ve made about six in ten. It’s not bad odds, but it’s not great, either. “No,” I huff.

“Why?” my dad asks.

“Because it’s not worth it,” I say.

“Exactly,” my dad says, and I look at him, trying to figure out how this is related to Matt and his stupid gum. “Think about it this way: How would you feel if you splashed soup on him and everyone laughed?”