I had just stepped outside of the heavy doors of Oasis Academy when I was assaulted. It had been a quiet month of no more than a few dirty glances thrown my way and rumors spread like a California wildfire. But somehow the literal kick to the face was a wakeup call. I had started to settle in, even if it was only speaking a few words a day, it was a step froward in the right direction. That ended the minute a pointed red heel made contact with the bridge of my nose and jaw.

First there were gasps and the same hushed whispers that followed me everywhere I went. Then the cheering for whatever girl was taking her bitterness and aggression out on me. I didn't try and fight back, I couldn't. Not because I was physically incapable of it, because I deserved this. I deserved to feel even half the pain that every family felt having to step foot in that cold, dimly lit room to identify their child, their wife or husband's, dead body in front of them. To live the rest of their lives knowing the kid sister of the two eighteen-year-old boys who had killed their loved ones walked out of the school alive.

"Stop!" I recognized the low growl and wished for once the idiot jock would see me for who I was. "What the fuck is wrong with you, Holly!"

The red filling my vision now wasn't that of the cherry-colored shoe, but the dark crimson of blood. I felt hands grasp my upper arms, just below my shoulder blades, and jerked away, crying out as I kicked at the air in front of me. "Let go! Let me go, Clark!"

I could tell by the dozens of sympathetic eyes on me that not only was I a sight for sore eyes, but I would undoubtably be referred to as a freak from here on out as well. My eyes traveled up the long legs of the person inhabiting the red heels to find a beautifully painted face. I'd passed her in the hallway on a few occasions, one of them being with her in a cheer uniform, but now she was wearing a thin navy sweater and over her school shirt and a pair of black pants. Her lips, exact shade of her heels, curled back a little seeing how I'd lost it under Garrett's touch. "Fucking freak. I hope you rot in hell with your piece of shit brothers."

As much as my head urged me to stand and defend myself, my heart wanted nothing more than to curl up on the asphalt beneath me and sink into the ground. Everyone's eyes were on the two of us. Me, the girl currently in the midst of a mental breakdown. And Garrett, their starboy with a soft spot for traumatized chicks with dark pasts.

"You all have five fucking seconds to get out of here!" Garrett spat behind me. Within three of those seconds, the crowd had dispersed into the parking lot and to their cars. Fearing I'd start screaming under his touch, he moved so he was in my line of sight. He was a giant, blurry mess, but what I saw as clear as day was the blood that dampened his hand when he pulled it from touching my nose. "Come on. I think Mr. Andrews is still here."

I wanted to refuse his help and did not want to be under the attentive eye of our eccentric art teacher, but I found myself rising to my feet shakily, avoiding Garrett's outstretched hand as if my life depended on it.

One, you're okay. Two, it was just a fight. Three, it's a bit chilly today. Four, I hear the Autumn leaves crinkling beneath my shoes. Five—

"My goodness, what the hell happened?"

I don't know if I was more startled by hearing a teacher curse or that he didn't immediately pick up the landline on his desk and call my parents, but it did a number on bringing me back to reality, and I fell back into a panic. I started to open and close my hands, hoping it'd prevent them from going numb.

A classroom was the last place I needed to be right now.

"Holly Park attacked her." Garrett buried a hand in his dark hair, eyes on our art teacher. "Like, blindsided the hell out of her. I was on the football field, Javi saw it and asked if it was the new girl."

Mr. Andrews pushed away from his desk and edged closer to me. This sent me back and I would have tripped over my own feet and fallen if I hadn't grasped the tables on either side of me. Understanding my anxiety, he held his hands up in surrender. "I'm not going to hurt you, Everly. I am required to contact your parents."

"No!" I shouted, my hand slipping from the table so I hit the ground hard. "No, don't do that."

He opened his mouth to respond, then decided against whatever it was he had to say and instead walked around the two tables dividing us until he was in the isle across from me and lowered himself to the ground. It was the same thing my psychiatrist had done a few days ago during my episode.

"Breathe in." he made a gesture with his long, slender fingers. "Then breathe out. Focus on what you feel and see."

No doubt my teacher had his fair share of panic attacks in his day.

"The color of the leaves changing is remarkable, isn't it?" Mr. Andrews continued. "How they go from a lively green to crisp yellows and burnt oranges. I used to take so much inspiration from the colors of fall. They're especially nice to mess around with when using pastels. The colors are so vibrant."

I focused on my teacher's words, the way his eyes would glaze over in a sense of longing, the setting of his thin lips as he tried to relish the memory of his old works of art.

"I fancy the colors of spring too!" he said with a grin. "All the rebirth of new life and the darkness of the winter finally seeing the light of life again. I prefer to paint the Spring, watercolors and acrylics have always been my best friend."

He extended his hand and within seconds an 8x10 canvas was set in his expectant palm. I recognized the art; it was one of the paintings that was hung on the wall. It was a sketch of a rose, mid-bloom. There was no color, but was shaded so perfectly it didn't feel as though it was necessary.

"Garrett drew this two years ago. I was at a loss for words, so I said nothing, gave him the grade and decided to put it up so his peers could catch a glimpse and build their own perspective of such a stunning work of art."

Garrett was oblivious to the immense amount of praise he was receiving from Mr. Andrews, or possibly he'd grown used to it as the sketch was two years old. Crouching in the negative space between our art teacher and me, his eyes roamed my face, watching my fists open and close against my thigh.

"Can I?" he raised his left hand, revealing a wad of wet paper towels, then his right, holding dry tissues. "It looks to have clotted, but your face is covered in blood."

The words sent a wave of nausea through me. The memory of Miles whispering the same words as he held me tightly against his chest for the last time clawed at the surface, threatening to escape and send me into another panic attack, or possibly an ill mental state I wouldn't be able to escape.

"She's gone." Garett continued, clearing his throat. "I'll make sure the situation is handled when I see her tomorrow."

I wanted desperately to explain to him that in no way did I blame the beautiful girl who'd went out of her way to inflict pain. She had a reason for what she'd done, and in a way, it'd been the wake up call I needed. Making the progress I had in befriending Garrett and speaking for the first time in months, I had allowed myself to believe that it was possible that there could be a light somewhere in the dark hole I'd been wallowing in since the shooting. Today had shown me how illogical it was and how selfish I was being thinking there was. My boyfriend was dead, as were dozens of my classmates, kids I'd went to grade school with. Teachers I'd passed in grocery stores and had promised to appease for three years. I didn't deserve to be alive, let alone live as though my life meant more than theirs.

**

Garrett drove me home, but decided he would rather not dip as planned when he saw neither of my parents were home. That was a shock. My father hadn't stepped foot outside the house since we'd moved here three weeks ago. Everywhere he showed his face he was verbally attacked with the cruelest of words; neglectful, the news had said. Having the guns accessible to my mentally unstable brother knowing very well his psyche was in no place to have a gun in his hands. It'd sparked up the same gun debate that had faded since the last mass shooting, this time, however, they were making progress. My brothers had taken the mistakes made by those before them and ensured they weren't made, thus becoming the worst school shooting to date due to the number of casualties and injured.

"This was him?" Garrett's quiet voice questioned from the refrigerator, eyes darting to me across the room. "I recognize his face from the news."

I didn't want to join him to confirm it was, in fact, Clark Rodgers mass murderer, staring back at him. My mother had refused to take down any of the family pictures, had even made sure to rehang pictures of the twins in the hall once we'd settled in. She was a hysterical mess; she still hadn't quite broken out of her shock. It was as if she were the same woman who'd rushed past the yellow caution tape outside the school and clutching me against her chest, begging for an explanation and continuously asking where my brothers were. They were her babies, even after what they'd done, she acted as though they were the same happy boys that'd trailed behind her when they were seven.

"I want to ask you a question, but I don't want it to trigger anything." Garrett mumbled, reminding me of his presence in the silent house. He trudged into the living room; hands buried in the pockets of his black basketball shorts as he inched closer to me. Seeing how genuinely curious he looked, I nodded for him to go on. "Did you. . . did you know what they were going to do? I know there was a lot of speculation about it on the news."

My heart sunk into my stomach as I leaned into the wall beside the front door, dropping my gaze to the hardwood floor.

"I didn't." I whispered. "But I knew something was going on with my brother. I thought. . . I thought he was going to try and kill himself, maybe hurt my boyfriend, but I couldn't have imagined he he was so inhumane, so monstrous, that he'd go to the extent of trying to take out the entire school."

Garrett nodded slowly. "I can't even imagine how you must have felt."

"I felt helpless." The words caught in my dry throat, but I pushed through. "He tried to warn me the night before indirectly. Said I looked sick and should have stayed home. When he saw me in the classroom, it took him by surprise and he. . . he just started shooting everyone around me because he was pissed I was there when he'd told me to stay home."

He slowed to a stop beside me and touched a gentle hand to my shoulder. "You know it wasn't your fault, right?"

"I know. I just. . . I tried to tell the Dean, and my boyfriend, the day before. I knew something wasn't right, but they just kind of blew it off, acted as if it were in my head. But I. . . if I'd tried to do more, maybe went to the police or something, all those lives would have been saved and—"

"And if your father hadn't left his guns where they could get them it wouldn't have changed anything either, Everly. Your brother still would have found a way to get a hold of a gun." He squeezed my shoulder comfortingly. "Nothing you could have done would have stopped what happened. Once he made the decision, there would be no coming back from it. No matter how hard you tried to get through to him."

I thought back to the incident in the hallway the day before the shooting, how Clark had snapped and freaked out when I offered him my attention and help. He hadn't wanted it because his mind had already been made up, he knew what his intentions were for the next morning, and he had very much wished I'd stop trying to get through to him because it made him question what he was doing.

"Nobody knows what happened in that school except those of us who were in there." I said quietly, finally meeting the jock's pitiful gaze. "And most of them are dead or were lucky enough to have been barricaded and hidden. You don't know what happened, Garrett. You don't know what I did."

"I'm sure whatever you did was to protect yourself." he whispered, but there was an uncertainty, as if he was starting to question how well he truly knew me. "You're not capable of hurting people the way they did. Hell, you probably wouldn't ever stoop to the level of what Holly did today and that's child's play compared to what your brothers did."

I lifted my hands and wrapped them around my upper arms, biting my trembling bottom lip. "You don't know me, Garrett. You don't know what I'm capable of."

I thought for a moment he may try to deny the fact or possibly make a break for it out my front door given the chance to, but he did neither and closed the distance between us and did what absolutely nobody, including my parents, had thought to do in over four months.

Garrett hugged me.

It wasn't a loose, awkward stance with his hands in the wrong places. But a comforting, warm embrace that when I slowly pressed my forehead against his chest, I felt as though he were physically holding every broken piece of me together with all his strength. I was in fear that the second he dropped his hands that I'd fall apart completely.