The journaling thing. I understand it better now, and why Dr. Scott tells me to do it. It’s to keep me from hurting people, which I forget I can’t do. I think I tried to off myself because deep down I know I may hurt someone badly one day, and that seems unfair by normal standards.

I don’t belong here.

Ceiling fan, why did you break?

I shouldn’t have moved the bed out from under me. Annie only came running because there was a loud noise. I miss when they forgot about me.

I will never live this down—I will always be the boy with the breaking point.

I will miss the spiders the most.

Spiders even kill other spiders. Sometimes female spiders eat their mates while they’re mating. Sometimes they eat their babies. Sometimes the babies eat the mom. They’re my favorite. They mind their own space.

Momma’s voice carried past the door. “What’s he got to do with you?”

I hate how they say “he”—like what they mean is “it.”

I used tweezers to pick legs off a daddy longlegs to determine how many it would need to survive. The answer is five, at least. With four legs taken off, it cannot survive, because half of it is missing. They cluster together and release a stinky secretion as a group when they see a predator. Clustered together, the spiders look like a big patch of hair. A single unit, unbreakable.

I am so sad.

I wish Annie were scared of the woods like Momma. I want them all to myself.

I’m not worth very much to my family, and they’re not worth much to me either.

Jake

Someone could be in our house. I’m dizzy and falling into the side table.

Benji grabs my arm and puts one finger over his lips. He leads me slowly, silently, through the passage to the kitchen.

The cabinets and drawers and oven are closed, the countertops just as we left them, with the mail cascading in a chaos ramp by the fruit bowl.

Thunder rumbles the floor. Benji pulls open the silverware drawer and takes out a butcher’s knife. He hands me one too—a bread knife with a serrated edge.

We move through the kitchen like rogues, his knife held high and mine held low like a staff, because this knife goes in best from underneath.

In the living room, lightning blinks over the house. Another roll of thunder, low and dangerous as I follow my brother up the stairs. The rain starts and then grows into an angry monster, beating at the roof so hard our footsteps turn silent.