My heart sank to the bottom of my chest. My momma looked back at me like I was a violent stranger, someone she’d never even seen. Believing every word of his lie.

I dragged the barrel down to point at Rod’s kneecaps.

How many legs would you need to survive?

Momma’s finger played at her trigger. “Sawyer . . . ,” she warned.

I fired into Rod’s kneecap, and blood splattered from his knee, like it was eager to leave him. Shells from my weapon jumped over my shoulder.

A little laugh came out. Die, I thought as his face twisted and he tipped to one side, a circus freak with a broken stilt.

A scream. A BANG! And my shoulder burst open in bloody strips of fabric. An ache screamed through my tendons, veins, and fingers.

A wispy trail of smoke curled out of Momma’s weapon. Her arms rattled like maracas. She shot me, and her mouth dropped open like she couldn’t believe what she’d done.

But I could.

I stormed past Momma, out of the room, as she pressed herself into the wall.

“Sawyer!” she cried, pained and pleading.

“Shoot me!” I screamed. “SHOOT ME ALREADY!”

It’s what she always wanted, to get rid of her crazy son, and that was her chance to end me.

But she didn’t. She let me run away. So I swiped the keys to Rod’s truck off the den table. One arm was bleeding, the whole sleeve soaking up the blood. In my free hand, I held the gun.

And this is my final account. It’s over.

Rod, how far would you have gone? Momma, are you ready to tell every parent in Heritage who loses someone how you failed as a mother and shot your own son because he was trying to stop your brother from raping him?

Police: I’m about to take my AR-15 into my school and kill as many people as possible. I’m bleeding, can’t even feel one arm, and I will bleed out and die alone in Rod’s smelly truck. Mother doesn’t want to take me to the hospital, so nobody will take me to the hospital. I’m going to die, and I’m not going quietly. No political statement or whatever. I don’t give a fuck, but after everything, I am not gonna die alone. That’s a rip-off. Life is not fair. Everyone will know it. Goodbye.

Jake

Jake?” Ms. Kingston calls, snapping me to awareness.

You’re at school, I remind myself. “Here.”

Not in Sawyer’s world. Not living the last journal entry before his death. Even though it’s been wedged like a wonky nail in my brain pattern ever since I started reading it a few days ago.

Everything is tipping back and forth like a slow, depressing earthquake.