Amanda’s mouth opens with offense. She rips her purse off the back of the chair and stands up. “I’ll see you after school.” She stomps across the floor to the stairs, arms hugging a stack of books.

The air ripples in Amanda’s wake, conjuring a ghost who’s coming toward us.

I buck back in my chair but not enough for anyone to notice.

It’s the shooter from the picture on the news. Sawyer. Blond hair sweeping like greasy hay in front of his arctic eyes. A dark gray hoodie with a damp hole in one shoulder. Poorly fitted faded jeans.

It can’t be . . .

Grady and Fiona are speaking, but their voices sound underwater. “What’s her problem?” “She has a lot of them.”

The Heritage killer is in my library in full daylight . . . walking. Free. Moving outside of his loop.

Is this real?

My hands are shaking and opaque against the book in front of me. I am real.

Sawyer’s looking right at me, eyes focused and lifeless.

Algebra equations swim across the light, blending with each other.

You know where I live? You know where I go to school?

Sawyer’s standing right behind Amanda’s empty chair.

I jump back from the table and fall over, my book bag falling with me.

“Jake?” Grady says.

Sawyer lifts his arm to reveal an AR-15 jutting from his hoodie like a robotic extension. But he doesn’t raise it further. He starts to sink. Into the floor. It sucks him down like quicksand.

I rise over the table to watch him go. He’s calm, indifferent, like he means for it to happen, or doesn’t care that the floor is digesting him. His eyes look up at me, smiling before they submerge.

Then he’s gone.

A hand lands on me, and I flinch.

Fiona pulls back, arched brows pressing down with concern. “Are you okay?”

No. Never.

The bell rings—the glockenspiel shakes up activity on the study floor, reverberating through the stems and nerves of my spine.

“Fine. Gotta go. Test today.” There is no test, but I have to feign normalcy.

I grab my book bag and run off in a hurry, no idea where I’m going, until finally I’m in a bathroom stall, closed inside, sitting with my feet on the toilet.

I have to breathe. To be alone and process this. I’m being followed by a menace. He knows where I live and where I go to school.

He is a school shooter.

And I may, for whatever reason, be his next victim.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Grady finds me at the end of the day when I’m on my way outside.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Think I ate something bad at lunch.”