“It’s English, right?” Chad takes up space, too much of it, really—always sits with his legs so wide everybody around him just has to adjust. One elbow is resting on Kristen—the girl to his left, who he’s been dating since he broke up with Laura a week ago. “We’re supposed to be able to make our own interpretations, right, because that’s what English is for?” Chad says. “My impression is it was Tituba’s fault. Think about it. Who would have known if it was Tituba?”

I take out one of the drawing pencils in the side of my book bag. I bring them because in my distraction I like to doodle. I put the pencil through my tiny sharpener and touch the tip. It’s sharp as a needle. The page in front of me darkens as I outline a sketch of a spider.

“Very funny, Chad,” Ms. Kingston says. “But that’s not what Miller was trying to—”

“I had a taxi driver tell me all about the witches in Africa once. They look like regular Black ladies, but they’re bad spirits. And it runs in their bloodline. They pass all that spirit-seeing stuff down through generations. Like, even African Americans have it.”

Chad chose to sit pretty close to me today. He’s very lucky Fiona is separating us. This can’t keep going on. All this sitting back and letting him get away with it. How good it must feel to be like Sawyer. To just give people what they deserve. All I want to do is snap Chad Roberts’s neck.

I’m so dizzy, Ms. Kingston shrinks and grows like she’s in a funhouse mirror. Her voice sounds like it’s coming from somewhere else. She’s not going to defend me. She never would.

“Does anyone else have anything to say?”

Still, Chad answers. “I think Jake should speak,” he says. “Since we’re talking about slaves.”

I’m done.

I pick up my pencil, lunge over Fiona, and stab Chad through the hand, like sticking a spear into the soil, but it’s a pyramid of graphite digging between his index and middle knuckles.

Dark blood oozes like lava from his skin. I drive the pencil deeper and drag it, like I’m carving a pumpkin, so now his perfect, privileged body can taste what it’s like to have something sharp and angry stuck inside it.

“Oh my God.” Fiona scoots back from her chair and claps her hand over her mouth.

For a second, the classroom inhales a perfect silence. And then everyone else lurches back from their tables too, as if they could be my next victims. Which they could be. Because they’re guilty too, for laughing. Assholes. All of them can die.

I push back from my chair and stand up, feeling the whole room flinch in unison.