It wasn’t quite how I’d imagined it going down. I didn’t think that I’d end up losing most of my right hand and getting burns all over my arms, one leg, and part of my face, as though Dee was quite literally blasted away.

The homemade gun had only a couple of shots in it, if that, not that anyone really knows that. Who would I choose? Aidan was crying like a baby. Breanne was under her desk in a puddle of pee. Paige was praying. I see this all, over and over in my head, like a movie, my own, awful movie. And what was the plan? To choose one person, or to scare them all? I thought I’d decide in the moment, but the moment was too much for me. Too terrible and painful. I couldn’t make any choices.

In those last seconds, before Pete grabbed me, I won out over Dee. I tipped the gun upward, toward my chin; I decided not to hurt anyone but myself and her. It wasn’t the plan either, but in the end, when I heard Lottie’s voice through the door, I saw no way out. The wick had already been lit; it was too late. I needed to end it, and Dee, end it all.

But then Pete had me, and the gun exploded in a way it hadn’t the night before. The whole thing blew up. Pieces of shrapnel flew everywhere. There was blood on everything, mine and Pete’s, and more. There was a dull noise. There was a lot of movement. My eardrums were temporarily blown by the noise. My senses were foggy and blurred. People rushed around. There were sirens. It went black.

I thought I would ride out of the school on a rocket fueled by my own outrage and pain, that justice would prevail and I would feel something different, something more, something less than pain and sadness. That it would go away. I thought that none of our acts of justice, none of the vengeance was big enough, and so I needed to go bigger, to blast it all away. To cleanse myself. Start fresh. But the pain didn’t go anywhere. I know now that it will always be a part of me. Part of who I am. Scar tissue.

And now I have daily meetings with a psychologist and a physiotherapist, both of whom work in tiny increments on improving my worldview. I have nightmares. In them, there are a whole bunch of tiny kittens, and they are close to a busy road, and I keep running into it to save them, but they keep getting hit by cars, and so I have an armload of maimed kittens, I’m covered in blood, and there are people screaming all around me. I don’t mention this to the doctors but avoid looking at the motivational poster of a kitten in my room.