It feels like the car is going off the edge of a cliff, but every time I look out the window the road is solid beneath us.

“We’ll be at the school soon, honey,” says Mom. Reform school, she means. I’m going to a new school, full of bullies. I stare out the window, trying to match up my old life with this new one. The last few days have been such a weird, fuzzy forever. I haven’t heard from Devon or Mark, or even Ash. I haven’t wanted to talk to them, really, but still it’d be nice to be reminded I’m not alone.

All I’ve wanted this week is sleep—but sleep is impossible for me now, so I’ve played a lot of video games. When I play video games I can almost forget what happened to Max. But after a while I’ll be sitting there and there’ll be this explosion. Except it’s not the stuff on the screen, it’s the guilt in my chest.

Your friend Max could’ve died, I hear in my head.

And there I am, video game music playing and an impossible world whooshing past on the TV—it’s all turned into dumb little dots. My eyes go unfocused and objects scroll past, and I push the controls to the right so my character gets knocked off a cliff and tumbles off the edge of the world.

It feels good to destroy your hard work sometimes.

But only for a minute. Because then you have to beat the whole level again—setting the table, pushing food around your plate, taking out the trash. Only, halfway through you stop and realize it’s not a video game.

It’s your stupid life.

And then you find yourself sitting in your room with your huge duffel bag packed for this crazy summer school thing, and that little freak in your head reminds you about the thousand-page list of banned items that came in your admission packet. So you dump everything out again and repack a toothbrush and some underwear and sit there with that sad little bundle, and start to laugh.

The Freak in my head likes to laugh when there’s nothing funny about what’s going on. It likes to speak up when I should probably stay quiet. It wants to consume me and take control for good—and it’s always there, lurking and waiting for its moment …

And right now, driving to reform school, I feel the Freak’s laughter roll around inside me like a silent scream, drowning out all of Mom’s “we love yous” and “we’ll miss yous” and “don’t panics”—which is probably not a bad thing, because saying “don’t panic” only makes me panic more.

Is this stupid thing ever going to plummet off a cliff or what?

But the car just rumbles onto the highway exit ramp, like a turtle slides into a river. We turn onto a gravel road, bumper to bumper with other cars ferrying doomed children to the Juvenile Academy for Noncompliant and Underachieving Students. JANUS.

“There it is!” says Dad, pointing at a building that must be the school. “Looks okay, right?”

“It’s so pretty!” says Mom.

It does look pretty from a distance, I guess. It’s this sprawling, green campus, and the buildings have these huge, bright banners hung all around. There’s hardly any hint of the grimness that lurks in the hearts of the bullies who will come to call this place home.

That’s the way it usually is with evil, though. First it lurks—then it leaps up and clobbers you, like a big cat in the jungle.

And that’s what this place is, right? A jungle. With fields full of poisonous flowers and endless stretches of quicksand bog. And this one crazy valley where the angry monkeys live. You know, the angry monkeys in those gnarled, ancient trees with fruit shaped like dodgeballs? Oh! You don’t know about the dodgeball monkeys? If you’re gonna die, dodgeball monkeys are a decent choice. Top five maybe. Solid top ten for sure. I can almost hear the sounds of their bruising artillery across the open fields when Dad shuts the engine off.

“You ready, kid?” he says.

Okay, Hart, I tell myself. One thing at a time. Breathe, then once you’ve got the breathing thing down you can try opening the car door. Now. Pick up your bag and don’t look around.

My heart is beating a little too hard and I take a second to control my breathing.

Just put one foot in front of the other. Good man. Now keep walking, but listen to me: hugging Mom and Dad good-bye’s gonna be hard, so let’s not get caught by surprise, okay? Start working up to that now while you’re walking to that check-in table. Go.

I take one last step, and there I am. The pink bunting around the table does a rumba in the breeze.

“Hart,” I say. “Ian Ontario.”

Something just tells me to do it last name, first name like that. The clerk gives me a bored smile, and I sign this really long document right on the dotted line.

“Yersinia Pestis.” I hear a girl behind me announce herself. It’s almost like she’s challenging the clerk to disagree with her.

“Pestis, Pestis—don’t see that last name here,” says the clerk.

“That’s because it’s the scientific name for bubonic plague,” says someone else. I look and see it’s a teacher with a shaved head and leather jacket, a lopsided smile on his face. “What’s your real name, young lady?”

“Alva,” she says begrudgingly.

“Last name?” he presses.

The girl puffs up with pride. She covers her mouth and whispers, so no one but the teacher can hear—but by the way he reacts, it’s pretty clear the girl has a reason for giving a fake name. Probably because her real one is the sort of thing that would make life much harder in bully school.

“Well, you can’t be Yersinia,” the teacher says after a minute. He turns to the clerk. “Write down Alva Anonymous, Matty.”

The girl considers this, and gives an approving nod.

Past the table I start toward the innocent-looking building that is to be my new home for the next six weeks. But I’ve hardly taken ten steps when I a big hand lifts my bag off my shoulder—

“Students over there, kid,” says that teacher with the shaved head. On a scale from one to Evil Mastermind, he’s somewhere around Henchman from the look of him. The sort of guy who does the villain’s dirty work. And he’s staring at me like I’m a human pile of underwear.

“The bus,” says the henchman, heaving my bag onto a heap of luggage. “You know what a bus is?”

I’m just standing and staring like a moron. My whole “one thing at a time” strategy is crumbling around me.

A smile creeps across my face and I nod. “The bus?” I say, pointing at it like a baby does.

Crap. What am I doing right now? This is all a horrible mistake. I need to turn around.

“Okay, Ian!” says Dad. “We’ve gotta say bye now.”

I make a sound that fails to turn into words. It’s the groan of a dinosaur being crushed into oil over millions and millions of years.

“You gonna be all right, buddy?” says Mom.

I manage to smile so she doesn’t worry. “Sure. I’m good.”

“Okay, Ian.” Mom tells me everything she said in the car all over again, and as much as I try to hold on to her words, they go right through me. Everything except the last thing: “… and don’t let Devon boss you around, all right?”

I nod at her, but I know that’s a promise I’m gonna break.

They’re both looking at me with such big, nervous smiles that I’m tearing up before I know it.

This is not the way to survive bully school, Hart! says that voice in the back of my head.

And I turn to the bus, which looks new and shiny—the biggest lie in the universe. There might be a coat of paint on that machine, but underneath it’s rotted through. The rusted engine that pulls it is full of screaming, tortured gears. And I have no idea where it’s heading, or what I’m supposed to do once I’m there.

So I just climb on and press Restart, and the next level of this crazy game comes to life all around me.