They look at me like I’m a hero, like I deserve their praise and admiration. Like I want it. The noise of the restaurant fills my head. It’s loud, chaotic. The walls start to close in and panic rises in my chest. The sounds blur together into one constant buzz.

“Jack?” Nora’s voice cuts through the static and everything falls back into place. She slides her hand across the table and touches my fingers.

“Yes,” I say. “I am.”

“It’s an honor to meet you,” the manager says in a heavy accent. He shakes my hand and tells me the meal is on them, that they’d never make a hero pay.

There’s that word again.

It couldn’t be further from the truth.

I’m no different than Jason.

I’m also a murderer.

My mind goes into autopilot. I nod and say thank you. Give them what they want to feed their notion of what a good person—what a hero—should be. When they leave, Nora stands. She doesn’t say anything, just holds out her hand for me to take. The moment her small, delicate fingers wrap around my paw of a hand, I relax.

Then, I recoil.

I shouldn’t touch her. She puts up a tough front, but I can see Nora for what she really is: innocent and pure. I was wrong before. The world shit on her, but she didn’t shit on the world. Bad things happened, and she wasn’t the cause.

“Jack,” she repeats, this time sternly, and holds out her hand again. She shuffles her feet and pushes her shoulders back. It’s a small gesture, one most people wouldn’t even notice. But I get it. She’s not going to take no for an answer.

She takes my hand and I give her my heart.

“Let’s go,” she whispers, curling her fingers around mine. We go through the parking lot, across the street, and down one block. I don’t ask Nora where we’re going. I don’t care. I’m with her, and she’s with me, and right now, that’s all that matters.

A thick treeline gives way to a cast iron fence surrounding a graveyard. It’s eerily beautiful, filled will large trees and wildflowers. We go through a maze of graves dated a hundred years ago and sit on a stone bench that looks just as old.

“I’ve always thought it was pretty here.” Nora looks around us. “It’s peaceful and pretty, even though we’re on top of dead bodies.”

Air fills my lungs. I swallow. Exhale. Nora squeezes my hand. “Is it haunted?”

A small smile creeps across her face. “No. That’s a common misconception, though. Graveyards are often holy or sacred. Spirits can’t linger. Zombies or vampires though…”

“You believe in them?”

“Oh yeah. Unicorns and fairies too.” She gently nudges me, then reaches into her purse, pulling out her iPod. She hands me one earbud and puts the other in, scooting closer. She loops her arm around mine and rests her head on my shoulder.

“Landslide” by Fleetwood Mac plays and we sit there together, not talking, not moving. Not thinking. Just listening to the music. I close my eyes, and when the song ends, I turn to Nora.

“I’m not a hero.”

She straightens up and pulls the earbud from her ear.

“My sophomore year, my best friend was responsible for a school shooting.” The words spill from my mouth, hurting on the way out and bringing relief once they’re finally gone.

“Is that how you got this?” Her fingers sweep over the scar on my side.

“Yes.”

Nora shivers. She holds onto me, waiting, not sure if she wants to hear the rest. My eyes close again and I tip my head up, watching a puffy white cloud move across the sun.

“There was an assembly. It was the second to last day of school, and it was all bullshit, you know? Just awards and nobody giving a shit about actual school anymore. Jason wasn’t there. We’d talked about skipping, so I thought that’s what he was doing. I was pissed he didn’t tell me. I’d skip with him. We don’t get service in the gym, so I left so I could send him a text, giving him hell for ditching without me. Something just felt…off. When I heard the first shot, I thought he was in danger. Not that he was the one…the one doing the shooting.”

Nora tightens her hold on me, and if only she knew how much she’s holding me together right now. Images from that day flash before me.

“I’ll never forget that feeling.” I take in a shaky breath. “When I saw Jason holding the gun. Two bodies were on the ground yards from him. I never knew just how much people can bleed. Then he looked at me and it was like nothing was there. His eyes were empty.” I blink, and the metallic smell of blood fills my nostrils. I turn my head, breathing in the scent of Nora’s hair, calmed by the sweet smell of her shampoo. I don’t smell blood anymore. I don’t hear the screams.

“Jack,” she breathes. “I don’t know what to say other than I hate you went through it. I wish I could take it away.”

“Me too.” I breathe deep and wrap my arm around Nora, crushing her breasts into me. “He had three guns. Two pistols and a rifle. He’d already blocked off the exits on the opposite side of the gym. He was going to open fire on the people at the assembly. It’d be like shooting fish in a barrel. He wanted to kill them all.” I run my fingers through Nora’s hair, needing to have something tangible in my hands. “I tackled him. Knocked one pistol from his hands. And he shot me with the other.”

Nora flattens her hand over the bullet wound. Her fingers are cold, and the coolness against my flesh is welcome. It’s reminding me that I’m alive. That I’m not bleeding.

“To this day I can’t decide what hurt more. Actually getting shot or the look on Jason’s face when he pulled the trigger. There was no remorse. No hesitation. We’d been friends since preschool. I picked up the gun he dropped, and it was loaded.”

I stop, throat thickening. I’ve never told this to anyone. Not the police. It didn’t matter. The dead can’t come back to life.

“I could have stopped him then, but I didn’t. I didn’t want to shoot him.”

“Of course not.”

“I should have.” The shame I’ve carried over the last year presses down on me. It’s been suffocating, making every day feel like I’m running underwater against an invisible current that’s pushing back against me. “I should have because he shot and killed someone else in front of me.”

Nora’s body tenses. She swallows hard but doesn’t move away. “You can’t blame yourself for that.”

“I do,” I admit for the first time. “It was a teacher. She was new and young, and I watched her die. I had a loaded gun in my hand and just stood there.” My hands are trembling. I press them against Nora’s back to stop the shaking. “Then he went toward the gym. My sister was in there. My friends. Hundreds of other innocent people sitting on the bleachers. They wouldn’t have been able to get away fast enough.”

The scene plays out before me, no matter how hard I try to stay in the present. I’m transported back, and the burning pain in my side radiates through me.

I clasp my hand to my side, trying to stop the bleeding. My heart races, and somewhere in the back of my mind, I yell at myself to calm the fuck down. Freaking out will only make my heart beat faster, spewing more blood onto the gray and white tile floor.

“Jason!” I yell, voice fading. Down the hall, people are screaming. Teachers shouting for students to take cover and call 911.

Jason whirls around, M9 in hand. The rifle is strapped over his chest, and I see the extra ammo on his belt. He came here to murder us all.

“Why are you doing this? This isn’t you. Stop!”

Jason looks into my eyes. He shakes his head and raises the gun. He shoots and misses. Narrowly. I stagger forward, raising the gun in my hand. “Stop,” I beg him. He shakes his head and steps back, another foot closer to the gym. Veronica is in there. I’ll die before I let anyone hurt my little sister.

“Don’t make me do this!” Everything fades then. I pull the hammer back on the gun. My fingers are slick with my own blood that’s dripping down my hip and cascading to the floor. Panic fuels my every move, making me act. I have to keep my sister safe. I can’t let Jason go in there and kill another person. I move closer, terror closing in on my heart. With one shot, Jason could end me. He already shot me once. Tried to do it again. There’s nothing stopping him.

He turns and reaches for the gym door. His hand is on the metal pull. I aim, barrel pointed to the middle of Jason’s back. I’m a good shot, having grown up with a police officer for a father. He taught me how to shoot and how to properly handle a gun. I have a steady hand. I rarely miss.

At the last second, I move my aim and shoot Jason in the shoulder. The pistol falls from his hand, and he drops to his knees, but it isn’t over yet.

“Jack?” Nora’s sweet voice breaks through the nightmare.

“I shot him,” I tell her. “But he didn’t die then. He turned his gun on himself. Put it in his mouth and pulled the trigger, but the shot wasn’t fatal.”

Nora gasps. “Oh my God.”

I’m shaking all over now, and Nora slides her arms around my waist. “He died of blood loss before he could get to the hospital.”

“You didn’t kill him,” she says slowly, and I don’t know how she’s so perceptive.

“If I hadn’t shot him, he wouldn’t have bled out.”

“You don’t know that. I’ve never seen someone with that…with that sort of injury, but I think it’s safe to say a head wound like that is lethal from the blood loss alone.”

“Maybe.”

“You stopped him, didn’t you?”

“I did.”

“Then you are a hero, even though you don’t think you deserve to be called one.”

The clouds move away from the sun, and Nora and I sit there in silence for a moment. My arms are around her, holding her against me. But she’s the one holding me, keeping me from going back there and getting stuck in the bloody hallway.

Usually, the scene repeats. Sometimes, it plays out differently and I wrestle Jason to the ground and hold him there until the police come. No one would be dead then, and we’d know why Jason snapped. Other times, it progresses, and he gets in and kills everyone but me.

Right now, I’m sitting in a hundred-year-old graveyard with a girl who’s been through hell too. A girl who’s seen blood and loss and felt the pain of her still-beating heart being ripped from her chest.

A girl I think I’m falling for.

“Why didn’t you tell me before?” she asks softly.

“I liked the way you looked at me,” I confess.

“What do you mean?”

“You didn’t know who I was or what I did. You looked at me like I was a normal person.”

She cups my face in her hands. “What about now? Am I looking at you any differently?”

I search her eyes, fighting with myself to keep from kissing her. “No.”

“I’m not going to, and I’m glad you told me.”

“Me too.” I turn my head, knowing if I keep looking at her, if I keep my mouth that close to hers, I will kiss her. “No one else knows that I hesitated.”

“Hesitation is a negative term. I don’t think not rushing to shoot your best friend is a bad thing.”

“I guess.” I look out at the graves. “Is this where your mom is?”

Nora nods. I stand and take her hand, and we slowly walk through the grass, going to the back of the cemetery. Nora slows when her parents’ graves come into sight. We stop a few feet from them, and I feel like an ass for unloading all my issues onto Nora. We came here to visit her parents' grave on her mom’s birthday, for fuck’s sake

Nora pulls her hand from mine and goes to the stone. I hang back, not sure what I should do. Give her space? Comfort her? I’ve never been good in these situations. But I know one thing for sure: how I feel about Nora.

I spent the last year feeling trapped inside a living nightmare. When I’m with her, I feel like I’m falling, but I also feel free.