Damien Salazar had learned, over the years, how to make himself smaller.

 

It was strange, considering the body he had grown into. He was broad-shouldered and well-built, with thick, unruly curls that refused to lie flat and a complexion his mother always insisted was beautiful. But he walked with his shoulders curved inward, his head slightly lowered, his eyes rarely meeting anyone else's for more than a second.

 

To the students who met him during his senior year, Damien was simply weird.

 

He didn't mind.

 

Weird was better than memorable.

 

His family had come to America from Mexico when he was young. In elementary school, Damien had been the Mexican kid with the strange name, the accent he eventually lost, the clothes his mother bought because they were cheap, and the habit of staying quiet when other boys pushed him around. There were other Mexican students. Some became his friends. But friendship had never taught Damien how to defend himself.

 

Middle school changed that.

 

He discovered humor. He discovered that if he made the joke first, people laughed with him instead of at him. He became charming without realizing it, and for a while, he almost believed he had escaped the boy he used to be.

 

Then there was Daniel.

 

Daniel was white, quiet, and strange in a way that made Damien's own strangeness feel ordinary. He had also been bullied. Damien recognized something in him and decided that perhaps the easiest way to understand someone was to become their friend.

 

Daniel said terrible things casually.

 

Human life didn't matter, he would say. People were temporary. Death was nothing. Sometimes he made jokes so inappropriate that Damien laughed simply because he didn't know what else to do.

 

Daniel never seemed to feel guilty.

 

Damien knew this.

 

He simply didn't think it mattered.

 

Until the day Daniel found the gun.

 

The shooting happened so quickly that Damien would spend years remembering it incorrectly. Sometimes he remembered the first sound as a door slamming. Sometimes as a firecracker. Sometimes he remembered silence first.

 

Daniel shot their classmates.

 

One after another.

 

Damien remembered faces more than bodies. He remembered someone's backpack falling from a desk. He remembered the fluorescent lights. He remembered screaming.

 

And then Daniel looked at him.

 

He didn't raise the gun.

 

He smiled.

 

"It's all your fault."

 

Damien never discovered what the words meant.

 

Years passed.

 

By senior year, Damien had become almost functional.

 

Katie had something to do with that.

 

She was the class president, the girl everyone seemed to know, and the kind of person who could walk into a room and somehow make the room belong to her. She had been homeschooled for years in a deeply religious family, but at school she was confident, funny, and impossibly social.

 

Damien initially thought she was too much.

 

Katie thought he was hiding.

 

She kept inviting him places until refusing became more exhausting than going. Eventually, he made friends. He stayed after school. He laughed without forcing it. Sometimes he even looked people in the eyes.

 

For the first time since the shooting, Damien began imagining that his life could become ordinary.

 

Katie's life, meanwhile, was becoming anything but ordinary.

 

Her family had begun fighting constantly. Her parents' religion, once simply part of her life, had become something used against her. Arguments became screaming. Screaming became physical.

 

Damien recognized the fear in her immediately.

 

He wanted to help her.

 

Maybe helping someone else was the closest he had ever come to helping himself.

 

Then, one afternoon, Damien went looking for something in his parents' bedroom.

 

He opened the drawer.

 

Under a stack of old documents were envelopes.

 

His name wasn't written on them.

 

Daniel's was.

 

Damien stopped breathing.

 

There were several.

 

Some were old. Some were recent.

 

He opened one.

 

How have you been?

 

Another.

 

I hope you're doing well.

 

Another.

 

Do you still remember me?

 

The letters were gentle.

 

That was the worst part.

There was no apology. No explanation. No expression of regret. Daniel wrote as though they were still two boys sitting together at lunch.

 

Damien read another line.

 

His hands began shaking.

 

The bedroom disappeared.

 

He was back in the classroom.

 

The smell returned first.

 

Then the screaming.

 

Then the gun.

 

Then Daniel's face.

 

That smile.

 

Damien dropped the letter and stumbled out of the bedroom.

 

His mother saw him first.

 

"Damien?"

 

His father looked up.

 

His siblings stopped talking.

 

"Are you okay?"

 

Damien stared at them.

 

His face had gone completely pale.

 

He tried to answer, but his mouth wouldn't form the words.

 

"Damien?"

 

He backed away.

 

His hands were trembling violently now. He walked down the hallway, almost stumbling, and locked himself inside the bathroom.

 

He dropped to his knees in front of the toilet and vomited.

 

When he lifted his head, his reflection was staring back at him.

 

For a moment, he didn't recognize the person in the mirror.

 

He looked young.

 

Much younger.

 

A frightened boy with curly hair and wide eyes.

 

A boy standing in a classroom.

 

A boy watching his best friend smile.

 

Damien grabbed the edge of the sink.

 

His breathing became faster.

 

He looked at the mirror again.

 

Then he punched it.

 

The glass cracked beneath his fist.

 

He punched it again.

 

The mirror shattered.

 

Outside, his family was calling his name.

 

Damien stood over the broken pieces, breathing heavily, blood beginning to run down his hand.

 

His mother knocked.

 

"Damien, please open the door."

 

He stared at himself through the fractured glass.

 

Then he opened it.

 

His parents stood there, frightened. His siblings were behind them.

 

Damien looked from one face to another.

 

His voice was barely audible.

 

"How long did you know about these mails?"

 

Nobody answered.

 

Damien swallowed.

 

His pale face remained fixed on his parents.

 

"For how long has he been sending these?"