I am not a violent person; I never have been. I love animals. I feel sorry for everything. I don’t collect firearms or gun paraphernalia; I don’t play violent games or get a rush from aggression. I am a film nerd, that’s all. I am a social justice warrior, simple. I support March for Our Lives. I believe in gun reform and gun control and protecting kids. I mean, shootings are not an epidemic here, they hardly ever happen, but I pay attention, I know what’s going on, and I’m not the type. It’s not me.

And yet. Maybe I’ve changed. I’ve been changed. All the confidence and self-worth and anger and sense of justice that Dee gave me—that I found deep inside her and me—it came at a heavy price. They took so much from me and left me scrabbling, scratching, and clawing, backed into a corner, trying to stay alive. All those passive parts of me that lay docile as lambs are now jumping around screaming with a bloodthirsty growl and a desire to show them what it felt like, what it feels like to be constantly under threat—in class, in stairwells, at hockey games, online.

But mine is a revenge of my own design, of my own making. I will build my vengeance from found objects that don’t look like trouble, don’t look dangerous, until they are together. Like me and Dee.

I put on loud and furious music and start doing research. Google provides me with everything I need to know. All the freaks out there who like to experiment, who love spectacle, who have their own peacemakers: they have laid out for me step-by-step directions for my big show, my poetic finale, my final assignment.

Something really creative, isn’t that what you said, Pete? That’s my plan.

I have such a clear-eyed focus that the morning slips by without me even noticing. I am propped up on pillows in bed, my laptop on my knees. Eventually I hear my mom come upstairs for her break and lunch. She comes down the hall and knocks while opening my door.

“Hey, kid. How you feeling?” she asks. I close my laptop and pull up the covers. She looks at me thoughtfully.

“Okay, I guess.”

“Yeah? You hungry? I can make grilled cheese.”

“Sure. Thanks.”

She smiles at me and closes the door, and I miss her so much it hurts.