I wouldn’t mind if it struck me next.

At home, I swipe the diary from my room, take it outside under the awning of the roof, and burn it with the long lighter. It heals me to watch the leather and pages curl and blacken.

I go back into the house, dark except for the living room lamplight. Mom’s waiting there on the couch, with her hands clasped between her legs.

I can tell she knows. I try to go for the stairs to avoid the whole conversation, but she stops me.

“Jake. Come here.”

I meet her in the living room, looking at the carpet because I can’t bear to look at her.

“The school called me today to tell me you were suspended . . .”

I don’t recognize what I did, but I feel like I was set up to do it.

“ . . . because you stabbed your classmate?” Mom is horrified and confused.

I have nothing to say. I can’t believe who I am, but I also can’t believe who other people are.

“I spent the better part of tonight begging the boy’s parents not to press charges. What is going on with you?”

“I had to,” I tell her. “It was the only way.”

“The only way to what?”

“To defend myself.”

“Against what? What’s going on?”

“He was calling me a slave, and the teacher wasn’t doing anything.”

Mom raises her eyebrows. She doesn’t say anything at first, and then: “Has this been going on for a while?”

“Yes, it’s been going on forever.”

“And you let this get to the point of physical violence. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I couldn’t. I—I—I—” I’m a stuttering mess, and feeling hysterical, and the storm outside is cutting off my voice, so I can barely even hear myself. “I just wanted to handle it on my own.”

“You what?” She tilts her ear to me. “You’re mumbling, Jake—I can’t hear you.”

Nobody can. The balloon in my chest—it’s being pumped with more helium than it can handle. I’ve never been able to talk to Mom about anything because she’s never been there. Only halfway there. And it doesn’t matter why I didn’t do what I didn’t do now that I look like a maniac who attacked somebody.

When I don’t say anything, she keeps going. “You couldn’t talk to anyone at the school about it before assaulting your classmate?”

As if I could talk to anyone at school. As if I wasn’t already the villain there to begin with. “You just expect me to be perfect all the time. And nobody listens to me.”

“What do you mean no one listens to you, Jake?”

“They don’t . . .”