To my left, Rose-Brady reappears, flanked by two school resource officers. They’re coming toward me, fast. My stomach drops at the sight.

I grab the microphone and pull it closer to my mouth. It makes a loud SCREECH. People sitting in the front rows cover their ears. “Do you all hear me? I killed him! I killed my brother. I killed all these people. I did this.” I’m trying to get it all out—I’m talking so fast that I’m stumbling over my words. Some small part of my brain recognizes that I’m losing it. I don’t think I’m getting across what I want to get across, and my mouth can’t seem to find the words I practiced over and over again in the bathroom mirror.

One of the resource officers is next to me, pulling on the microphone cord, trying to take it away, but I hold it tight in my hand. My throat is raw. Everything hurts and nothing will ever be okay again.

Rose-Brady drops to the floor below the stage, and she must find the outlet where the microphone is plugged in, because it cuts off, plunging the room into silence.

Then the school resource officers are on me and one of them takes the microphone out of my hand and the other puts his hand on my arm, gently trying to pull me away, more gently than it seems like he wants to be, and I’m sure Rose-Brady told them to do that—to be gentle with me—but I don’t want them to be. I deserve to have them throw me down on the floor, to handcuff me and take me away, so I struggle against his grasp, and as I struggle, his hand squeezes my arm tighter and tighter and tighter.

All of a sudden, Zach and Lucy are in front of me. Lucy is trying to get the guard to let me go, screaming You can’t do this; get your hands off her! but he ignores her and tightens his grip on my arms. I go limp. I’m sobbing. I can’t hold myself upright for much longer.

The room is in chaos—kids in their seats, holding up their phones, probably recording this shit—but I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. I hope they are. In front of me, Zach reaches out to me—May, it’s going to be okay—his voice reassuring and kind, and he’s stupid for wanting to help me—stupid for caring about me. I’m broken. It’s no use. I can barely get my voice out of my mouth, but I manage to say the one thing I never thought I’d let myself say out loud. The thing he deserves to know.

It was me.

He doesn’t hear me at first. Or he ignores it. It doesn’t matter, because I say it again.

It was me.