Maybe it came from the hatred of me I saw in my classmates’ eyes and minds. When I returned from my three-day suspension for my Facebook prank, as it was dubbed by the administration, I’d become the object of loathing for every student at Tillinghast Upper High School. My locker was vandalized, my homework destroyed before it reached the teachers’ hands, my face spit upon. God forbid that I accidentally touched someone; the abhorrence seared my fingertips. But I could speak not a word in my own defense: I conceded that right on the gym stage. Maybe the darkness came from the evil that I’d witnessed in Missy’s heart, or the blood I’d sampled from her via Piper. In the flash from her blood, I saw the desire for such unspeakable acts that I couldn’t allow myself to revisit the images. It was like becoming a character in one of Hieronymus Bosch’s paintings of hell. I didn’t know the source of the darkness. I knew only that the Good Samaritan compulsion all but disappeared the night of the dance.
