She spent six months at Walter Reed learning how to walk again — so she could come home and let you people treat her like an ATM and a punchline.”

The silence that followed was absolute. The silence of a paradigm shifting violently on its axis.

I opened my eyes. Leo was looking at me — not with fear, but with an awe that broke my heart. Mia ran to me and wrapped her arms around my waist, burying her face in my side.

Greg was staring at the ground, his jaw working silently. The bully had been stripped naked, his bravado exposed as the paper-thin delusion it was, confronted with actual, blood-soaked valor.

“Why?” Eleanor whimpered. Tears carved paths through her makeup. “Why didn’t you tell us, Sarah? Why did you let us… let him…”

She couldn’t finish it.