I sit on my bed with the soggy sketchbook in my lap.

I can’t stop staring down at the picture. The details are so real. So lifelike. Almost like these kids are locked within the pages of the sketchbook.

“How do I save you?” I whisper. “How do I save anyone? How can I make it right?”

The sketch doesn’t move. Nothing changes. For a moment, I feel stupid.

Then an idea strikes me.

I grab a pen from my desk and press the tip to the page.

What do I do? I write.

I don’t expect anything to happen. I almost want to laugh at myself for thinking this could work. Then the ink bleeds against the page, spreading out in a smear and washing the image of the lake away.

Replacing it with a new sketch. This one of me and Rachel outside of school.

In the sketch, she stands on the steps looking forlorn, and I stand below her with tears in my eyes. My gut wrenches. I know precisely what this is, even before the voice bubbles appear on the page, saying the words we couldn’t take back.

How could you? mine reads.

Samantha, I’m sorry! reads hers.

Just seeing the picture brings the memory back in a wave of sadness. I’ve tried to forget about this moment, have tried to turn it into something useful, like anger or hate. But seeing it again …

A tear falls onto the page, soaking into the paper. I rub it away with my thumb, but the moment my finger touches the page, the image changes again.

This time to Rachel in the hallway.

She’s fighting with a group of girls, including Christina. They hold something above her head.

A book.

A journal.

Read it! one girl calls.

Don’t! Rachel responds.

The image changes, becomes a close-up of Christina holding Rachel’s journal victoriously before her. She’s reading the journal entry aloud. Her words ricochet across the page. Even though it’s only text, I can hear them ringing in my head like she’s in the room with me.

I feel bad for Samantha. Her parents are going to get a divorce soon and I think her dad is going to lose his job. She doesn’t have any friends because she’s so scared of being hurt. Even her little sister doesn’t like her. I’m her only friend. And sometimes I wonder if I’m just her friend because I feel bad for her. Because I know everyone feels bad for her.

She’s just so sad.

I can barely see the page anymore from the tears in my eyes. Distantly, I hear a door slam. Then the image shifts one more time.

It’s a scene of the hallway. Christina tosses the journal back to Rachel. And they see me, standing farther off.

Christina is smiling.

Even your friend thinks you’re pathetic, she says to me.

Rachel is crying. But the image of me is standing there with her hands balled into fists. And even though there aren’t speech or thought bubbles, I know what the drawing of me is. I know it better than anything else.

I will not let anyone feel sorry for me!

I’ll make them be sorry!

I’ll make all of you sorry!

That was the moment Rachel and I stopped being friends. When she revealed the truth—that she felt sorry for me, that she thought I was pathetic. And that was the moment I made the decision to never be sad or weak again.

After that, I made the life of anyone who so much as looked at me as miserable as possible. I bullied them, and I made fun of them, until everyone in the school knew that I wasn’t someone to feel sorry for.

I was someone to fear.

The image fades, and with it so, too, does my sadness, replaced with an anger that has bubbled ever since that terrible day. I sniff and wipe the last of my tears on my sleeve.

“What does that have to do with making things right?” I ask the blank page. “She’s the one who made everything wrong.”

The page doesn’t answer.

Downstairs, the phone begins to ring.