Back in January, Michael had showed up at my house after school to give me a present for my sixteenth birthday. I was surprised to see him at my house, never mind with a gift, but couldn’t help smiling when I saw that it had been wrapped with newspaper. An oddly gentle touch for those huge, angry hands.

“Happy birthday, too bad you still look twelve,” he said, with an uncharacteristic smile.

His gift was a paperback copy of The Hollow Hills, one of Mary Stewart’s classic novels about Merlin and King Arthur. We’d read them together in junior high, back before David came. As kids we’d both been obsessed with Arthurian lore and had spent many hours running around the woods having sword fights with sticks and searching for Avalon in frozen puddles. Our foodstamp town became Camelot, the cows dragons, the bullies at school filthy Saxons. Instead of dirty little white trash kids who were too poor for cable and Nintendo, we were kings and wizards. One night he helped me sneak out of my house and led me deep into the woods to a clearing where he crowned me king of England and we swore to be blood brothers forever. The first time Michael got suspended, in fourth grade, it was because some kid made fun of my wooden Excalibur and Michael knighted him across the face with it.

His gift was tremendously thoughtful, almost sentimental, which was not something I had thought him capable of. Still, the simple book was heavy with meaning. He ambled around my kitchen looking for a snack while I admired the book, leaving the unspoken words hanging over the table. Remember when we used to hang out and play King Arthur? Remember when we were best friends? You promised me once that we’d be like brothers, but it’s been so long since I’ve been in this kitchen.

He spotted a pile of postcards and brochures on the counter and dug through them. “These are from colleges,” he said, as if they were from transmissions from Mars. “You’re getting mail from colleges?”

“Well, yeah,” I said, fiddling with the torn newspaper. The king and his faithful wizard had grown apart. “My grades are pretty good.”

He flipped through some of the brochures, staring in bewilderment at all the pictures of green quads and stately brick buildings. “Are you gonna go?”

“I hope so,” I said. “No idea how we’ll pay for it, but I just have to get the fuck out of this place.”

His broad shoulders slumped. With his grades, behavior record, and financial situation, college was about as attainable for him as the presidency. These days, it would be a miracle if he managed to graduate. The only reason he’d ever gone to school was to get away from his house and to be with me. Now that he had his license and I was spending more time with David, he went elsewhere.

“So you’re leaving,” he said.

I shrugged a silent apology. “Wouldn’t you?”

He tucked a lock of his long tangled hair behind his ear, and I saw that there was an angry scratch across his temple. Now that I was looking, there were also several gashes on the inside of his arm and a yellow bruise on his bicep. My stomach twisted, that same old ache. I’d been seeing those cuts and bruises for as long as I’d known him, although it had taken me several years to put the pieces together. Our teachers had noticed the bruises, the filthy clothes, and the empty lunchboxes long before I had, but they’d never been able to do anything about it. From first grade through high school, teachers and guidance counselors would periodically pull him aside to offer their ears and suggest hotlines. Sometimes my mom gave him cans of SpaghettiOs to take home or let him sleep over, even on a school night. Our elementary school principal drove him home once and had a shouting match with his father, tried to call social services. It didn’t change anything. None of the interventions or social services ever worked. I don’t think he wanted them to. “Where would I go?” he whispered, the rare times we talked about it honestly.

In ninth grade I tried to call the police. He showed up at my house when my mom was at work, drunk off his ass and ranting about killing himself and his father. He scared me witless. I thought he’d finally lost his mind, that his father had finally broken him, and I wanted someone to do something. I had the receiver in my hands, the dial tone in my ear, and tears in my eyes, and he yanked the phone out of my hands and threw it across the room. He tore the cord right out of the wall. He grabbed me by my collar and hit me again and again, screaming, “Don’t try to fix me! I’m a lost cause! I’m a lost fucking cause!”

Back in the kitchen, he picked up the pile of brochures and chucked them across the kitchen. “Fine!” he snapped. “Go off to some gay fucking college. You and your goddamn ginger boyfriend. I don’t give a shit!”

“What’s your problem?” I said. “It’s not like I’ll never come back!”

“Bullshit!” He shook his head. “You’ll ditch me. After everything I’ve done for you!”

“I won’t!” I said, but he ignored me.

“Fucking traitor! You’ve always thought you were so much better than me. Well, you’re nothing but trash, Bryce! You’re just like me, you’re fucking trash!”

He stomped out of the house and slammed the door.

* * *

It was a long day. We ate lunch with David’s girlfriend. She was warm and friendly and tried to cheer us up, but I still couldn’t make myself eat much. David and I skipped the one class that we didn’t have together and smoked some more in the bathroom. Neither of us was eager to leave the other’s side. With all this talk of dead teenagers, it seemed like a good idea to keep one’s best friend close.

I was grateful when last period rolled around. Just one more period to get through, and then David and I could escape somewhere. Mara said she might be able to get some weed from her cousin. That would be good. We could sit around my living room and giggle about stupid shit, acting like idiotic teenagers instead of these heavy-hearted combat veterans. We were too young for this.

Last class was Trig, with Mr. Lewinsky. Lewinsky was an old warhorse, so he tried to give a normal lecture. I gratefully copied down all the equations he wrote on the board, trying to immerse myself in the esoteric symbols and the pure formulas. In the corner, Ricky’s usual seat was empty.

We were a half an hour from the end of the day, half an hour from safety, when a car backfired in the parking lot. Everyone jumped, someone shrieked—in our ears, it was another gunshot. A half second later, we realized together that it was just a car, and two girls in the second row burst into tears. Mr. Lewinsky sighed and surrendered. He sat down at his desk, abandoning an equation half-written on the board, and let the class dissolve into a flurry of mewling.

“That sounded like the gunshots, oh God, it sounded just like the gunshots!”

“Ricky would have been sitting right over there. I can’t believe he’s gone.”

“I can’t sleep, I keep having nightmares about it…”

I crossed my arms over my textbook and leaned my head on them, trying to calm my own jackhammer heartbeat. I jerked upright again at a second bang—someone had chucked their textbook at the wall.

Charlie Cormier, one of the dead boys’ friends, was standing, his hands shaking and his eyes glistening. “Why didn’t anyone do anything?” he cried. “Everyone knew Michael was a psychopath! Everyone knew he was dangerous! Why didn’t anyone do anything?!” He turned towards me, his glassy glare cutting across the classroom. “For fuck’s sake, Bryce, why didn’t you stop him?”

I jolted, and David leapt to his feet. “How were we supposed to know he was going to start shooting people?” he shouted.

“You were his best friend!” Charlie said, ignoring David. “You’ve known him since first grade! You really want us to believe you’re completely shocked that he killed Rick and Tim? I know they picked on you sometimes—fuck, I bet you helped him plan it!”

David lurched and shrieked, “Shut your mouth!” and Mr. Lewinsky shouted, “Boys, enough!”

I dragged David back to his seat, but Charlie remained standing. Tears were streaming down the tall athlete’s face. The rest of the class stared at us, white-faced and red-eyed.

“I was there!” he screamed. “I saw you with Michael that night! You were talking to him right before he shot them! I fucking saw you! You were right there with him. Did you know he wanted to murder us? Why didn’t you stop him?”

Mr. Lewinsky had appeared behind Charlie and put his hands on his shoulders. “Charles, that’s enough, sit down.”

“Fuck you, Bryce,” Charlie sobbed. “It’s your fucking fault.”

I leaped out of my seat, tripped over my backpack, and ran out the door. I ran down the hallway, slipping and stumbling over slush and trash, and threw myself into the bathroom. I went to the window and fished desperately through my pockets for a cigarette. I leaned against the wall for balance, the world shifting under my feet. My stomach felt like I’d swallowed a cactus. Michael’s face, hellish from the bonfire, came back into my mind’s eye, and I shook my head, trying to make it go away—where the fuck were the rest of my cigarettes?

David appeared in the bathroom, his hands outstretched, cooing, “Bryce, Bryce, it’s okay, man.”

We’d smoked all my cigarettes, I was all out. My stomach lurched into my throat, and I turned and vomited onto the tile floor. David’s hands found my back and my arm, and he pushed me towards the toilet. I retched again and again—nothing was coming up, I had barely eaten anything for days, but my stomach wanted to turn itself inside out. My body convulsed and the world swayed.

David was saying, “It’s okay, man. Forget Charlie, he doesn’t mean it, he’s just upset,” but his voice sounded like it was coming down a tunnel. I was already mentally back at the parking lot.

We’d just wanted to check it out. We knew we weren’t welcome, but we were bored. We didn’t have any more money for fries at the diner and thought maybe we could steal some of the jocks’ beer. Ha ha, those fucking jocks! They think their basketball actually means anything. Ten years from now, they’ll still be in this town, in some fucking trailer with a pot belly and a meth addiction!

The party was bigger than we had expected. Half the grade must have been there. We parked, walked around. Ricky saw us first. He was drunk, standing on the hood of his truck with his basketball jersey tied around his head. Hey, faggots! he shouted at us. Come over here and suck my dick! Words were exchanged, we were outnumbered by far. They threw their cans and bottles at us. One can hit me in the forehead and rancid beer exploded all over me. We ran.

Michael was the last person I expected to see. With his dark jeans and black jacket, I didn’t see him standing alone in the dark, and I ran right into his chest.

“What are you doing here?”

“What are you doing here?”

“You’re with him,” Michael huffed, seeing David waiting for me a few yards away.

He was drunk and belligerent. He waved his arms, cursed out David, kicked a rock at me. We argued.

“I don’t have to put up with your shit anymore!” I snapped at him. “Just leave me alone!”

He grabbed my arm. “You think you can just leave me behind? You think you can go off to college and start over and just leave me and this whole town behind? You can’t! There’s nothing out there for you! You’re a fuck-up, you’re trash, just like me, and that’s all you’ll ever be!”

I yanked my arm away and shoved him. “I am not like you!” I screamed. “I never have been. My whole life, you’ve been trying to drag me down with you, and I’m sick of it! You can stay here and rot, but I won’t. I’m getting out of here, so fuck you! You’re on your own, Michael. You’re the fucking trash, not me!”

His face contorted as if I’d punched him. “Traitor!” he screeched. His black eyes flared, and in the orange and black light he looked demonic. “You said you were my friend!”

Angry tears were crowding my eyes. “I tried to be, Michael, I really did. But I can’t do it anymore. I can’t fucking deal with you anymore! You’re hopeless, you’re a lost cause! Don’t you get it? I’m trying to get away from you! I hate you!”

David grabbed my shoulders and pulled me away. We left Michael standing there in the firelight, his eyes wide and his shoulders raised, standing still and tense like some monstrous statue. David dragged me towards the woods, out of his sight, and we walked for a few minutes while I cooled off. We decided to leave, and we had just reached his truck when we heard the shots.

Back in the bathroom, David had coaxed water out of the faucet and was telling me to take a drink, but I was crying too hard. I was crying in torrents, my legs shaking, snot dripping down my face. David wiped my face with a paper towel and pulled me over to the window ledge. We sat down, and he gripped my shoulder.

“It is my fault,” I gasped.

“It’s not, Bryce.”

“It’s my fault. I pushed him over the edge.”

“He was already there. He was the one who pulled the trigger.”

I shook my head. “He should have shot me instead.”

David’s grip tightened. “Don’t say that, man.”

“He just wanted someone to keep him company. He needed me. But I was so tired of him, so tired of him tormenting me and trying to drag me down with him. I’ve lived with him since we were little, and I just couldn’t do it anymore. God, he was so fucked up, he was so fucked up. He was crazy, but I didn’t think he could kill anyone, I swear, it never even crossed my mind! His dad always had guns around, and he’d never shot anyone before! Yet as soon as I heard the gunshots, I knew it was him. I thought he was coming for me, I thought it was me he wanted—and I didn’t blame him at all, not after what I’d said.”

I was babbling, my words garbled with sobs. Everything hurt. I hated Michael, I hated him so much for doing this. I hated Ricky and Tim and Mitch, I hated them for bullying me and pushing me down the stairs and stealing my hat. I hated them for getting shot and the whole town for wailing over them. But I hurt for them, too. I hurt that they were dead or in the hospital, that their moms had cried on Channel 7, that my classmates had watched their friends’ bodies be lowered six feet into the ground. My God, Michael, how could you do that to them?

I hurt for him, too. He’d finally given up. He had finally shattered. Now he would go away to jail forever, maybe they’d even execute him. He’d never get out of this town, never make something of himself, never find some semblance of happiness. Would they let him read his books in prison? He would live and die a fuck-up, just like he’d always said. There was no more hope for him.

There would be no more drinking in the woods, no more Lord of the Rings in history class. No more King Arthur and Merlin. No more of my mom sticking into my backpack an extra sandwich that we couldn’t afford because she knew Michael wouldn’t have one. He was gone forever. I’d probably never see him again. Wasn’t this what I’d hoped for? Hadn’t he given me exactly what I wanted?

“I wish he’d killed me instead!” I sobbed.

Maybe he’d wanted to. Maybe he just got to Ricky, Tim, and Mitch first, and never made it to me. Or maybe when it came down to it, no matter how hurt and furious he was, he still couldn’t bring himself to kill me. He didn’t want me dead. He didn’t want me to leave him. He just wanted me to be his friend. That’s all he had ever really wanted from me, and I’d failed him.

I’d pushed him away, and now that face in the firelight and the echo of those gunshots would haunt me forever. It was all on my hands. He heard me tell him I was leaving, heard me tell him I hated him, and he finally understood that we had ruptured for good, that he was on his own—and he broke. His ferocious glare shattered, and he looked like road kill, frozen in the red light, his face contorted like gaping intestines and his eyes glazed and lifeless. I broke him, I killed him, and I killed Ricky and Tim. I was the only person he had ever trusted or cared about, and I’d kicked him away. Oh God, I’d fucked it up! I’d fucked it all up, and now my classmates were dead and Merlin was gone. I fucked up, I was a fuck-up, just like he said, just like him.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

David hugged me, no longer able to speak.

“I’m so sorry,” I wailed, to Michael, to David, to the boys, to the town, to the trees. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”