I couldn’t stay still. I jumped out of bed and started cleaning my room but couldn’t concentrate enough to do much more than pace back and forth across the cluttered carpet.

Hence the call to Lucy. Hence not going home when she did. I need this—it’s the only thing that will smooth the sharp memory of those letters.

I finally reach the garage door, but as soon as I get to it an image pops into my head, distracting me, of my twin brother Jordan’s body sprawled on the jazz band room floor, thick, bright crimson pouring out of him, soaking into the ratty gray carpet. I’m thrown for a moment, before I take that image and shove it down out of my head, down into the depth of my belly, and I step too close to the side of the house. I know not to; over the past months, I’ve gotten to be an expert on the layout of the Tellers’ driveway and the system of lights they hooked up, but as usual I screw things up.

A spotlight blasts on, and for a split second I’m like an animal caught in headlights, one of the idiotic ones that always get mowed down. I freeze.

After a few long seconds, I finally get it through my dumb head that standing here in the middle of a bright circle of light is not a great idea, and I force myself to move. I dart around the corner into the blackness of the backyard and press my body up against the stucco of the house. I’m gripping the can of spray paint so hard that my fingers turn white, standing out against the black of the night. I suck in breaths like Dr. McMillen, PsyD, taught me, one long inhale for four counts and one long exhale for four, and my heart begins to slow.

I try to think of what Lucy would say if she was here, other than the obvious—Be more careful, May, you dumbass. Would she tell me to go home? Yell at me for being a pussy? Normally she’d be out here with me, the two of us charging through the night together, but over the past few weeks she’s been doing this more and more—ducking out and leaving me to come here on my own.

My breath calms me enough that I can think about moving again. I need to pay more attention, stop letting memories distract me, remember what I read in The Art of War, which I found buried in Jordan’s room in a pile of his clothes a month after he died.

In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity.