Chapter 1: Caleb It is your new nightly ritual, as automatic as showering or brushing your teeth or thinking about her. You feed innocent paper into the teeth of the shredder. Then you put the scraps on the floor. You shape them into a circle or a square or--you did this once, whimsically--a hand holding a cane. The pattern can be anything, as long as you position it in front of your dorm room door. That way, if you leave the room that night, in the morning you will know you did it. Whatever it is. The paper shreds have never been disturbed yet, not once, which is surprising and interesting.

You're uncertain what to make of this. One thing is true. You are not a little boy anymore. You are seventeen, and you don't believe in Mommy keeping you safe or in friends having your back or in anybody, including you, understanding the difference between good and evil. You do, however, believe in the indifference of humanity and the absolute inevitability of your own destruction. You never asked to be what you are. Why you? At this point, you rarely bother to ask that question. Why is a child's question, and there's never a good answer, not from him, not for you.

Because. That's the answer. His answer, and now also yours. Because you are a monster. Because you are too damn fucking tired. One day soon, maybe tomorrow, you will stop fighting. You will go down. You will be done.

For tonight, though, you shape the hand and cane again, working the confetti to represent her small, determined fingers. You haven't bothered to learn her name, and you don't plan to. She's nothing to do with you. But her world is a good place, you felt sure of that from the first time you saw her. You're glad for her, that she lives there and not where you do. She's alive in the world. It is enough for you.