It’s a short walk to school, but I enjoy the freedom in it. For a moment I consider going full rebel and skipping the full day anyway--after all, we did get the full day excused with the school. But I’ve worked hard for my good grades, and honestly I don’t know what I’d even do if I played hooky. It’s still lunch when I arrive, so I sneak past the cafeteria where the hoards feast and make my way to the most abandoned vending machine I can think of. I’m kind of not regretting eating any bit of my lunch, but I’m not sure how long I would’ve lasted with that sham of a sister near me.

The hall is as empty as ever, and the coat of dust on the vending machine is just what I need to see to know I’ve succeeded. I pick my poison, Twix and a Coke, only it give me a Diet Coke instead. Look, I’m not proud of this. It’s childish. But shitty on shitty can barely scratch the surface of how bad this day is. I sit with my back to my machine and try to eat my Twix. I hardly notice when the tears start slipping out, but by the time I finish the left half it’s dissolved into full on sobbing.

“That bad?” someone asks, and I know the voice belongs to the only person in the world with less friends than me. I stand, tuck my remaining Twix into my pocket, and hand him the drink.

“I fucking hate Diet Coke,” I say. I turn around and leave Creepy Richard Connor in the hallway behind me.

By all means, you might think Richard Connor, the creep, and I were good friends. People always did. A few things played into it.

We were both brown. Simple as that. This, of course, ignores the fact that my dad is white and my mom is Latina. Richard’s parents are, as far as I know, both black. It also ignores the fact that, spoiler, not all minorities know each other. Simple enough.

I clearly suffered from depression-- mind you, I’d just call this the grieving process, but sure, let’s simplify again-- and he wore all black. So, you know, of course he was depressed too. Like he didn’t chat a million miles a minute and make stupid jokes and have that doofy smile on his face all the time. Okay, honestly, maybe I do have depression (after all, I am seeing a therapist). Maybe he’s depressed too. I don’t know his life story. You know why? Because we’re not friends, and losing your sister and your father doesn’t mean you hang out with a kid in all black.

He was new and had no friends. I lived here all my life and have no friends. Funny thing happens when it turns out your dad murders for fun: people aren’t rushing to befriend you. I went from average, to popular by means of sympathy over a missing/ dead sister, to pariah whose dad killed everyone’s friends and families in less than 2 years. I guess they assumed I’d be first in line to seduce the new boy with my sexy, platonic friendship. Not so much. The thing about friends is that they come and go. I didn’t need them, especially if I was planning to go soon too.

Finally, after a few months of him being around, everyone just knew we had to be besties for life because of one simple correlation: my father tortured and chopped up kidnapped girls for kicks, and Creepy Richard Connor was obsessed, absolutely obsessed, with serial killers. I probably should have made this number 1.

You can see why this wasn’t exactly my idea of a friendly bond.

Before I start getting a million side-eyed pity stares, let me clarify: I have friends. I have a whole bunch of them. A whole group. It just so happens that they’re not in this school.

Unfortunately, I do call us a group for a reason. We are very specifically a group of kids taking the suggestions of their therapists and speaking to similar individuals. In this case, children of killers.

I’m the newest of this group--it was established over a year and a half before my dad was arrested, when I still had all four pieces in the puzzle of my family. Laney, I think, started it up. Her dad set off that massive bomb in Tampa, and managed to blow himself up in the process. She says she’s lucky that she didn’t have the same issues some of us, like me, did. There was no pre-discovery and post-discovery dad. No one asking you to visit him in prison. No stories still coming out. She had Dad and Dead Dad, and Dead Dad was a lunatic.

She found Patrick and Mara online first, when Patrick commented on a blog post. His dad had shot a cop, and the aftermath was so bad they had to pull Patrick out of school. Mara was homeschooled too, and they met at a homeschool event in Pittsburgh. When he admitted to her the reason he had switched over, she told him her mom had shot her step-dad and mother-in-law point blank during Thanksgiving dinner when she was little. Not old enough to understand, but not young enough to have forgotten. She lived with her aunt and uncle in the country and only drove in every now and then to check in with her therapist in person and, occasionally, go to little homeschool parties and talk to other kids. She didn’t miss any of them, and wasn’t in contact with her mom anymore. Patrick did miss his dad, though.

In any case, they started chatting and then came up with the idea after Mara’s shrink called for their phone session and heard her typing away to these other messed up kids. Their therapists, because of course we each have a bonafide, brain-fixing therapist, all okayed it. Since then, Sunny’s brother shot up a school and Jonah’s dad drowned some innocent call girls. My dad, you know, did his murder stuff. Patrick, eye ever on the news, picked up that these killers had kids and tracked us all down.

We were a group of mismatched kids, but it was nice. Patrick is mixed, like me, and we can definitely talk about that. His dad is black and his mom is Mexican, and he speaks Spanish way better than I can. Mara and I aren’t close, but whenever someone needs support or anything she’s always the first person to reply with nice things. Laney is, of course, a natural leader. She helped Patrick and Mara go from acquaintances to friends to couple, and started the hidden facebook group and the first group chat. Sunny is just about the sweetest girl you’ll ever meet, but far from a push over. Her full name is Hee Sun, and even though she goes by Sunny she still had us practice saying her real name until we got it right.

In a lot of ways, Jonah’s the most like me. He had a dad, and his dad had a secret. He knows what it’s like to realize someone that close to you had killed--not with a bomb or with a gun, but with his bare goddamn hands. And then he probably came home, kissed you on the forehead, tucked you into bed, and told you the nightlight would keep you safe from monsters. Yeah, Jonah gets that. He’s not close to the rest of his family either, so he talks a lot about how he feels like his mom’s family is a real family and he’s just existing near them in their house. He’s some pitiful roommate who sits at the dinner table pushing potatoes around on his plate while his step siblings prattle on about school.

He feels like an intruder into a family he doesn’t know, just like Kaylie should. Only that’s his real mom. And that girl is in no way related to me.