It’s like I’m back there that day, sitting in that stupid group they basically forced me to go to, determined to mind my own business for once, to keep my head down. The second letter from the jail had arrived in my mailbox the night before, and all I wanted to do was shut my brain off and pretend none of this was happening. Then someone came into the room late and the door slammed behind them. My heart raced….I almost dropped to the ground and wrapped my arms around my head. Instead I turned toward the noise, because that was what I’d started forcing myself to do—confront situations instead of hiding. Instead of hiding like a fucking baby.

I saw this guy, Jake, enter the room. He was kind of an idiot, and big. Mean. A bully. He was friends with David. No joke. Friends. And he thought he could just come into the room and grieve with everyone else? He thought he would be welcomed here? I waited for a second—waited for someone to tell him to get out. Someone to fucking say something.

They all just stayed silent, as usual. That’s what everyone always does. They stay silent and pretend everyone’s the same—that we all went through the same thing—that everyone in the building was affected in the exact same way that day.

And then Jake sat down, and I lost it.

It wasn’t the first time I’d exploded in those months after, not by any means, but it was the most vicious. The most violent. I blacked out. I don’t remember much after I jumped on Jake’s back, ripping at his face with my nails, other than hands on me, dragging me back, wrapping around me tight, holding down my arms.

And then I was in Rose-Brady’s office and my mom was there, somehow, and then I was at home. I never saw Jake again, and I never went back there, to that school filled with ghosts and demons, and god, I am so glad.

Later, I found out it was Chim who pulled me off him, who held me down and forced me to stop before I did something I couldn’t come back from.

I never thanked her.

Chapter Twenty-six

May’s gotten quiet, and I’m not sure what to do to lighten the mood. I pull the car into a parking lot and turn the engine off. She doesn’t react. She’s a million miles away—her hands are balled into tight fists and she’s staring straight ahead out the windshield, into the dark of the night.

I have no idea what to do, so I say in a voice that sounds way too loud and fake, “We’re here!”