By the time the last bell rang, the American flag over our front entrance was barely moving in the late‑September heat. The air in the hallway felt thick with end‑of‑day noise—lockers slamming, sneakers squeaking on waxed tile, somebody’s Bluetooth speaker leaking old Sinatra from a backpack. I was digging in my locker for my history book when a freshman in an oversized hoodie tripped right in front of me and his entire life exploded across the floor.

Books, worksheets, a pencil case, even a flattened PB&J sandwich slid under the row of lockers. A couple of juniors laughed and kept walking. Then I saw a pair of white Nikes stop short, and the hallway went quiet enough that you could hear the flag rope clinking against the metal pole outside.

Jackson Price—yes, that Jackson—knelt down on the dirty floor and started gathering the freshman’s papers.

For a second I honestly thought it was a prank. This was the same Jackson who’d smashed my best friend’s phone against a locker last year “as a joke.” The same Jackson who’d made a girl in our chemistry class switch schools after months of group‑chat harassment. He’d spent sophomore year treating the hallway like his personal hunting ground.

And now he was on his knees, carefully smoothing crumpled worksheets like they were something fragile.

“Hey, man, I’m sorry about last semester,” he said, stacking the papers into a neat pile and pressing them into the freshman’s shaking hands. “I was an idiot. It won’t happen again.”

The kid just stared at him like someone had swapped Jackson out with a body double.

We all did.

I told myself it was a weird one‑off, something people would meme about for a week and then forget. But that same day at lunch, I saw Jackson again.

Only this time he was sitting at the table with the special education kids.

He wasn’t looming over them for laughs or filming them for TikTok. He was just…sitting there. Listening to their stories. Laughing at their jokes like they were actually funny. When one of the kids knocked his milk over and it splashed all over Jackson’s pristine sneakers, half the cafeteria froze.

We all knew how this usually went.

Jackson looked down at his shoes, then at the kid, whose face had gone sheet‑white like he was bracing for impact.

“Hey,” Jackson said softly. “Accidents happen.”

He grabbed a stack of brown napkins, wiped off his shoes, then crouched to mop up the spilled milk himself, talking about how his little sister once dumped an entire orange soda on his Xbox. The kid’s shoulders dropped an inch in relief.

That should’ve been the moment I relaxed.

Instead, it was the moment I made myself a quiet promise: if this turned out to be another one of Jackson’s games, I wouldn’t look away this time. I would not pretend I hadn’t seen it.

Over the next week, it stopped being a rumor and turned into a pattern.

Jackson started tutoring freshmen in algebra after school, using the same sharp brain he’d used to map out peoples’ weaknesses to explain slope and intercepts. I watched him stay in the library three hours past the final bell with a kid he’d shoved into lockers all last year. Every time Jackson shifted in his chair, the kid flinched.

But Jackson just kept his voice low and patient.

“Try this one,” he’d say, sliding another problem across the table. “I’ll sit right here until it clicks. I’m not going anywhere.”

He donated $500 in cash—actual, crumpled twenties—to the fundraiser for a classmate whose dad had been rushed to the ER with late‑stage cancer. When the office aide asked if he was sure, he said he’d been saving it for a used car, but this was more important.

The guy who’d made my sophomore year a slow‑motion nightmare was suddenly handing out kindness like Halloween candy, and people started calling him “Mother Teresa with biceps” behind his back.

I still didn’t trust it.

Because underneath the good deeds, something was off.

His hands shook when he helped people. Not always, but often enough that I noticed. His eyes flicked to the exits in every room like he was tracking escape routes. He started lingering in the building until the sky outside turned indigo and the custodians began rolling trash cans down the hallway.

He slipped folded notebook paper into people’s lockers—long, cramped apologies that went into humiliating detail.

I’m sorry I called you that name in eighth grade.

I’m sorry I posted that video.

I’m sorry I made you eat lunch in the bathroom for a month.

The notes were specific. Dated. Like he’d been keeping score of his own cruelty.

Then he began giving things away.

First it was his championship ring from last year’s regional basketball tournament. He pressed it into our center’s hand after practice and said, “You were the one who actually carried us. This belongs with you.” A week later, he showed up without his letterman jacket. When someone asked, he shrugged and said he’d given it to a freshman who didn’t have a winter coat.

He even signed over the title to his beat‑up Honda Civic to a senior whose car had died. “My mom can drive me,” he said. “I don’t really need it.”

People laughed nervously, then took whatever he handed them, because that’s what you do when the weather changes and you don’t understand why.

One morning I saw him at his locker, pinching the bridge of his nose. When he closed the door, I saw the bruise—dark purple blooming out from under makeup on his left cheekbone.

“Dude, what happened?” his teammate asked.

“Walked into a door,” Jackson said without missing a beat.

Everybody pretended to believe him, but I watched his reflection in the trophy case glass. His eyes didn’t look like someone who’d bumped into a door. They looked like someone who’d learned not to tell.

That afternoon at lunch, he walked up to Kira Hayes and put something small and heavy in her palm.

“You keep this,” he told her when she tried to give it back. “I want you to remember the good version of me, not the idiot I used to be.”

Kira stared down at the old silver watch, its face scratched but still ticking steadily. We’d all seen Jackson show it off last year after his grandfather passed away, bragging that it was the one thing he owned that actually mattered.

Now he was giving it away like everything about him had an expiration date.

I didn’t have words for it then, but looking back, that watch was the first real crack in the story he was trying to sell.

Because you don’t just hand over your grandfather’s watch unless you’re preparing to go somewhere you don’t expect to take it.

A few days later, I caught him in the boys’ bathroom after last period.

The fluorescent lights hummed overhead. The smell of cheap lemon cleaner stung my nose. Jackson was hunched over the sink, shoulders shaking, his hands braced on the counter like he needed the porcelain to keep from falling.

He didn’t hear me come in.

“Hey,” I said softly. “You good?”

He looked up so fast the light caught the smear of concealer over another bruise on his jaw. His eyes were red‑rimmed, the skin under them bruised with exhaustion. For the first time since I’d known him, he looked small.

“I’m sorry,” he blurted, stepping away from the sink like he was giving me space. “For everything. For sophomore year. For all of it. I was a monster.”

I opened my mouth, but he kept talking, words tumbling out like he’d been holding them in too long.

“I’m trying to fix it before it’s too late,” he said. “I swear I’m trying.”

“Too late for what?” I asked.

His gaze snapped to the bathroom door and then back to me. For a second, I thought he was going to answer. Instead, he dropped to his knees on the grimy tile.

“Please,” he whispered. “Just…say you forgive me.”

Every part of me wanted to tell him no. That he didn’t get to skip the line like that. That some apologies came years too late.

“I can’t do that for you,” I said finally. “That’s not how this works.”

His face crumpled, but he nodded like he already knew what I was going to say.

“That’s fair,” he said hoarsely. “I just had to ask.”

He wiped his face on the sleeve of his hoodie, then walked past me and out the door. The moment he left, I realized my hands were shaking.

That was my first real hinge moment—where I realized Jackson wasn’t trying to be a saint.

He was trying to beat a countdown I couldn’t see.

From there, things escalated.

The bruises got worse. Yellow fading into fresh purple at his collarbone, a shadow across his ribs when his T‑shirt lifted during P.E. He had new stories every time—slipped on the stairs, rough scrimmage, tripped over his dog.

He spent as much time as possible on campus, wandering into classrooms after school to “help” teachers organize bookshelves or grade multiple‑choice quizzes. He walked kids to the bus who didn’t need help and lingered in the parking lot until the last car pulled out.

He hugged everyone.

Not in a creepy way, just these quick, desperate squeezes, like he was memorizing the weight of other people.

“Love you, man,” he told guys on the basketball team he’d barely talked to before.

He told the kid he’d tormented in freshman year English, “You didn’t deserve any of it,” and then walked away before the kid could respond.

He kept asking questions about forgiveness in random conversations.

“Do you think people can really change?” he asked me one afternoon when we were both pretending to study in the library.

“Sometimes,” I said cautiously.

“What if they don’t have enough time to prove it?” he pressed.

“Then they keep trying anyway,” I answered, even though the question made my stomach twist.

He looked down at his hands, which were trembling on the tabletop.

“Some people don’t get second chances,” he said quietly. “They just get deadlines.”

I should’ve asked more questions right then.

Instead, I let the words hang between us like smoke.

The next morning he pulled me aside outside homeroom.

“Everything I’ve been doing,” he said, eyes locked on mine. “The good stuff. It hasn’t exactly been voluntary. I was given thirty days to make amends for every bad thing I’ve ever done. Today is day thirty.”

“Given by who?” I asked.

He swallowed hard.

“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “What matters is the list.”

Before I could press him, the bell rang. He walked away stiff‑backed, shoulders squared like he was walking into a courtroom instead of first period.

I didn’t see him again until the final bell.

By then, the heat had broken. Wind tugged at the flag over the main entrance and rattled the windows as kids poured into the parking lot. I spotted Jackson on the roof when I cut through the stairwell to avoid the crush of bodies by the front doors.

He was standing near the edge, looking down at the cars, his phone in his hand. The screen kept lighting up with notifications he ignored.

“Jackson,” I called, pushing the heavy metal door open.

He turned. Tears streaked his face.

“It’s three o’clock,” he said, voice shaking. “I tried to fix everything, but some things don’t get fixed. They just get—” He broke off, jaw clenching.

“They who?” I asked, walking toward him slowly. “Who gave you thirty days?”

His phone buzzed again. He looked at the screen and went pale.

“They’re here,” he whispered. “They said if I finish the list, I get to choose how it happens.”

“Choose how what happens?” My heart pounded so hard I could hear it in my ears.

He didn’t answer. His gaze shifted past my shoulder, toward the open doorway behind me.

“I’m out of time,” he said.

I spun around. The roof was empty.

When I turned back, Jackson was gone.

For three long seconds, my brain refused to process it. Then my body kicked in.

I sprinted to the edge, hands flat on the rough concrete barrier, and scanned the parking lot below.

No broken body. No crowd. Just kids weaving between cars, a couple of parents leaning against their SUVs, the flag snapping in the wind above the entrance.

I backed away from the ledge, lungs burning, and bolted for the stairwell.

I tore down the steps two at a time, checking each landing for any sign of him. Second floor—empty. First floor—just a scattering of loose papers like someone had dropped a folder in a hurry. Ground level—a janitor’s cart parked by the door.

I pushed through into the main hallway and almost collided with a group of freshmen.

“Sorry, sorry,” I muttered, shoving past them.

Through the glass doors by the gym, I caught a glimpse of a gray hoodie moving toward the side exit. Jackson.

His hood was up. His phone was pressed tight to his ear. He wasn’t running, but there was a focused urgency in the way he moved, like someone on the other end of the call was giving him turn‑by‑turn directions.

Every instinct I’d grown up with screamed not to be a snitch. Handle it yourself. Don’t drag adults into it.

But this wasn’t about detention or skipping class.

Jackson looked like someone who’d already picked an ending.

I pivoted away from the side doors and headed straight for the main office.

Principal Chandler’s light was still on even though it was after three. I could see her through the narrow window, American flag magnet stuck crooked on her filing cabinet, glasses low on her nose as she signed forms.

She looked up when I burst in.

“If this is about a schedule change, it can wait until tomorrow,” she said, irritation already in her voice.

“It’s about Jackson Price,” I blurted. “Something’s really wrong.”

The annoyance vanished.

“Sit,” she said, pointing to the chair in front of her desk. “Tell me exactly what you saw.”

The words tangled as they came out. Rooftop. Edge. The thirty days. The phone call. The way he’d said, They’re here.

By the time I finished, her face had gone tight with concern.

She picked up her phone and pressed a button. “Officer Wyatt, I need you in my office. Now.”

Two minutes later, Officer Rod Wyatt—the school resource officer who looked like he missed being a regular patrol cop—stepped in, his uniform crisp, radio on his shoulder, flag patch bright on his sleeve.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

Principal Chandler recapped my story in clipped sentences. Wyatt pulled a small notebook from his pocket and jotted down the time.

“You said three p.m. on the roof?” he asked me.

“Around that,” I said. “He said his thirty days were up. He kept saying they were here and that he’d finished his list.”

“Did he mention any names?” Wyatt asked.

I shook my head.

“Did you see anyone else on the roof or the stairs?”

“No. Just him.”

Wyatt moved behind the principal’s desk and woke up the computer.

“I’m pulling up the camera feeds,” he said. “Let’s see if we can track him.”

He clicked through menus until the security software opened. The roof camera had a terrible angle; you could see the door but not the ledge where Jackson had been standing. Wyatt switched to the hallway feed outside the stairwell.

We watched the timestamp crawl until my own blurred shape appeared, bursting out of the stairwell and heading toward the office. A minute earlier, Jackson slid through the side exit by the gym, hoodie up, phone at his ear.

Wyatt rewound and watched the clip three times.

“He’s not wandering,” Wyatt said finally. “He’s following instructions.”

Principal Chandler picked up her desk phone and dialed a number from a laminated sheet.

“Counseling,” she said when the line clicked. “Hallie, I need you in my office for a student safety concern.”

A moment later, the door opened and our school counselor, Hallie Reed, walked in. Dark hair in a low ponytail, cardigan sleeves pushed to her elbows, she took one look at our faces and shut the door behind her.

“Talk to me,” she said.

Chandler and Wyatt brought her up to speed. Hallie listened without interrupting, her gaze flicking to me only when I mentioned the apologies, the gifts, the weird questions about forgiveness.

“The giving away of possessions, especially sentimental ones,” she said quietly, “is a major red flag. So is this thirty‑day language and the sense of a deadline.”

She didn’t say the word we were all thinking, the one that rhymes with “decide,” but we heard it anyway.

My hands started shaking again.

Wyatt reached for the emergency contact sheet.

“I’m calling his parents,” he said. “We need them looped in.”

He dialed the number listed under JACKSON PRICE—MOTHER and put it on speaker. Four rings. Voicemail.

He hung up and tried the father’s number. Same thing.

Principal Chandler left a voicemail on each line, her voice measured but urgent.

As she hung up, something clicked in my brain.

“The journal,” I blurted. “He gave you a journal weeks ago, right? Said you couldn’t read it until he gave you permission?”

Principal Chandler froze.

“How do you know about that?” she asked.

“He told me he gave you something and made you promise to wait,” I said. “If he’s in trouble, maybe there’s something in there.”

She hesitated, then reached down and unlocked the bottom drawer of her desk. When she pulled it open, she took out a thick black spiral notebook, the kind you buy at the start of the year and never actually finish.

The edges of the pages were worn and slightly curled, like someone had flipped them a hundred times.

She set it on the desk but kept her hand resting on the cover.

“He trusted me,” she said quietly. “He made me promise not to read this without his say‑so.”

Hallie moved closer.

“If he’s in immediate danger,” she said, “this may be the only way to find out where he went or who he’s with.”

Wyatt nodded.

“We’re talking about safety now, not curiosity,” he said. “If there’s information in there that can help us keep him alive, we need it.”

Before Principal Chandler could answer, my phone buzzed in my pocket.

I pulled it out and saw a text from an unknown number.

He’s making things right. Don’t ruin it.

The room went silent.

“Let me see that,” Wyatt said.

I handed him my phone. He read the text twice, then took his own phone out and snapped a photo of the screen.

“Don’t respond,” he said. “Don’t delete anything.”

He noted the exact time in his notebook.

Hallie looked at me.

“Does anyone else know you’re here talking to us?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “I came straight from the roof.”

“So whoever sent that knows you reported this within twenty minutes,” she said.

A knock sounded on the office door and all four of us jumped.

“Come in,” Principal Chandler called, voice sharper than usual.

The door opened and Kira stepped inside, her face pale, hands shaking.

“I need to talk to someone about Jackson,” she blurted.

“You’re in the right place,” Hallie said gently. “Close the door.”

Kira did as she was told, then pulled something from her jacket pocket.

“He gave me this this morning,” she said. “Said I should have it and that I shouldn’t come looking for him today.”

She held out the old silver pocket watch.

Up close, I could see every scratch on the case, the delicate crack across the glass that hadn’t stopped the hands from ticking.

“This was his grandfather’s,” Kira said. “He showed it off all last year after his grandpa passed. He wouldn’t even let people touch it. Today he wouldn’t take it back. He kept saying, ‘Remember the good version of me.’”

Her voice wobbled.

“It freaked me out,” she admitted. “So when I heard rumors he was acting weird on the roof, I came here.”

Hallie and Wyatt exchanged a look.

“Did he say anything else about today?” Hallie asked.

Kira thought for a second.

“He said after three o’clock he’d finally be free,” she said. “I thought he meant from basketball practice or something. Now I don’t think that’s what he meant.”

Wyatt jotted down the time and details.

“Anyone else get something from him?” he asked.

“He spent all of lunch going from table to table,” Kira said. “He had his phone out, checking something, then going to a specific person, talking, then moving on. It was like he had a list.”

Another knock came, less frantic this time.

“Come in,” Chandler said.

This time it was Caden Harrell, student reporter, phone always in hand.

“Sorry,” he said. “But I heard you were asking about Jackson and Project Thirty. Is that…a real thing?”

Wyatt straightened.

“Project what?” he asked.

Caden stepped closer, thumb flying over his screen.

“There’s this anonymous app people use,” he said. “About a month ago, a thread popped up about something called Project Thirty. Most of us thought it was some weird art piece or ARG—one of those online mystery games. But with everything people are saying about Jackson, the dates line up.”

He pulled up a thread and turned his phone so we could all see.

The first post was dated exactly thirty days ago.

Thirty harms, thirty amends.

Make things right in thirty days or the ledger decides.

A chill crept up my spine.

Caden scrolled.

Posts counted down the days. Twenty‑seven left. Twenty left. Ten. The language got more intense as the numbers shrank.

The ledger is always watching.

Skipping tasks has consequences.

Pain is the price of pretending.

“Who’s the ledger?” I asked.

“User name of whoever started the thread,” Caden said. “Just ‘Ledger.’ No profile pic. No real name. They’ve been commenting under almost every post.”

Wyatt took more photos of the screen.

“I need to know everyone who interacted with this,” he said. “Screenshots, usernames, all of it.”

Caden nodded, face sober for once.

“He DM’d me, actually,” he admitted. “Asked if I wanted to be one of the ‘jurors’ to vote on whether the amends were good enough. I said no because it sounded sketchy. But other people said yes.”

He pulled up his messages. Sure enough, there were DMs from “Ledger” explaining a “redemption game” and inviting Caden to be “part of justice.”

Wyatt took more photos.

The room felt smaller by the second.

“Okay,” Principal Chandler said, exhaling slowly. “That’s enough context. We need the journal.”

She opened the notebook.

On the first page, in carefully printed letters, were the words:

30 HARMS, 30 AMENDS

Underneath, a numbered list ran from 1 to 30.

Each harm described something specific.

I started a rumor that made Ava eat lunch in the girls’ bathroom for 23 days.

I smashed Eli’s phone against the locker and laughed when he cried.

I sent videos of Noah’s meltdown to the whole team and told them to use it as a meme.

Beside each harm was a matching amend.

I apologized to Ava and offered to sit with her whenever she wanted. I will never repeat the rumor.

I paid to replace Eli’s phone in full—$799 from my savings.

I volunteered with Ms. Lopez’s class three days a week to support kids with sensory overload.

Some entries had small check marks next to the amends. Others were blank.

As Chandler turned the pages, the handwriting changed.

At first, it was neat and controlled. Then, halfway through, the letters started to wobble. Some lines were smudged where tears had fallen and dried.

“Here,” Hallie said, pointing.

Midway down one page, a date from two weeks ago was followed by a longer entry.

Ledger sent photos of my house from different angles. Photos of my sister walking to school. My mom’s car in the driveway. He said if I didn’t keep up with the list, he’d post our address and make sure ‘the internet finished what I started.’

Further on, Jackson had written about “motivation sessions.”

Tried to skip Task 14. Ledger said consequences. Met him behind the old gym. He made sure I understood not to miss again. Bruises not visible under T‑shirt.

My stomach turned.

“So the bruises weren’t from basketball,” I muttered.

Wyatt’s jaw clenched.

“He’s being coerced,” Hallie said. “This isn’t redemption. It’s blackmail.”

In later entries, Jackson wrote about feeling watched, about his phone being tracked.

Ledger sees everywhere I go. He knows when I’m late. He says I’m lucky I get a deadline. He says most bullies never get to pay their debts.

On the last page, the handwriting was almost illegible.

Day 29. He said mercy at 3. Justice at midnight. If I finish, I get to choose. If I fail, he chooses. He sent another photo of my sister. She was at the park. She didn’t see the camera.

A cold weight settled in my chest.

Wyatt snapped photos of the most important pages and forwarded them to himself.

Then he logged into a law‑enforcement portal on the principal’s computer and typed in a name Hallie had spotted in a footnote of one entry.

Nicodemus Blair.

Jackson had written: Ledger is older. He says he knows what it’s like to be ruined by bullies. Says kids like me need to learn what real consequences feel like. He mentioned an old scandal with a name: Blair.

Wyatt ran the name.

A police report from six years ago popped up. Assault charges. Hazing.

“Blair was a senior here,” Wyatt said, scrolling. “Accused of organizing brutal initiation rituals. Several underclassmen ended up in the hospital. The district settled with the families, charges got dropped.”

He read aloud from the notes.

“Blair reportedly stated that ‘bullies never pay’ and that he’d make sure they learned what real consequences felt like.”

“So he reinvented himself as some kind of vigilante,” Hallie said. “Online. With kids as his targets.”

Before anyone could respond, my phone buzzed again.

A new text from the unknown number.

Link. Underneath, three words:

Final task. Mercy at 3.

I tapped the link.

A streaming page opened. A countdown timer in the corner showed 2 hours and 17 minutes remaining.

The title bar read: FINAL TASK: MERCY AT 3.

The video feed showed an empty level of a concrete parking garage. No sound. No comments. Just a viewer count ticking in the corner.

47 watching.

I turned the phone so everyone could see.

“Someone’s turned this into a live show,” Hallie whispered.

Wyatt took my phone and plugged it into a cable one of the tech‑support officers had left behind earlier that week. He called the district police dispatch, voice suddenly all business.

“This is Officer Wyatt at Lincoln High,” he said. “We have an active online coercion situation involving a minor, a countdown stream, and threats against a younger sibling. I need the cyber unit and patrol units briefed ASAP.”

While he talked, Caden kept scrolling through the Project Thirty thread.

“There are people commenting like they’re rooting for him,” Caden said, disgust in his voice. “Like it’s a reality show. ‘Will he finish all thirty?’ ‘Do we think the ledger goes easy on him?’”

He swallowed hard.

“Some of those usernames are from our school,” he added quietly.

Wyatt ended the call and turned to us.

“Okay,” he said. “Here’s what’s happening. The cyber team is tracing the stream. Patrol units are on standby. But if Jackson is at that parking garage, we need eyes on him before the timer hits zero.”

“You can’t just show up with sirens and lights,” Hallie said. “If Blair sees cops, he could escalate, and Jackson’s already on the edge.”

They went back and forth, talking about protocols and liability and words like “intervention” and “incident command.”

I just stared at the watch in Kira’s hand.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Thirty harms. Thirty amends. Thirty days.

This was never a redemption story.

It was a deadline.

Time started moving differently.

The cyber unit arrived—two officers in plain clothes carrying laptop bags. They commandeered a corner of the office, plugging into the network, fingers flying across keys.

“Stream’s going through a public Wi‑Fi network,” one of them said. “Coffee shop three blocks from the downtown garage. Source is bouncing through proxies, but the endpoint looks close.”

Wyatt coordinated with patrol units over the radio, arranging a quiet perimeter around the garage.

Hallie pulled me into the hallway.

“If you end up talking to Jackson,” she said, “remember this: don’t argue with his guilt. Don’t tell him he’s being dramatic. Just keep him connected. Tell him you want him alive.”

“What if he says he deserves what’s happening?” I asked.

“You can say, ‘Maybe you do think that. But I still want you here. I care what happens to you.’” Her voice stayed steady. “We’re buying time. The rest we handle with support and treatment later.”

I practiced saying it until it didn’t sound like a line from a poster.

Twenty minutes later, my phone buzzed again.

A location pin. Coordinates. Underneath, two words.

Level 3.

Another text followed before I could show anyone.

Don’t bring cops.

Wyatt saw the messages over my shoulder.

“We’re not doing this alone,” he said immediately. “But we can make it look that way.”

The plan was simple in theory and terrifying in reality.

Kira and I would go into the parking garage visible and unarmed. Hallie would stay on the line in my ear, coaching us. Plain‑clothes officers would position themselves out of sight on the upper level and stairwells. The cyber team would keep the stream open to confirm we were in the right place.

If it worked, we’d get Jackson away from the edge—whatever that edge looked like—before Blair could push him toward anything worse.

If it didn’t…

We didn’t say the rest out loud.

We pulled into the downtown garage at 1:30 a.m.

The city felt hollow at that hour. Streetlights glowed against empty sidewalks. The only sounds were our footsteps and the echo of some distant car door slamming three levels down.

Kira parked near the entrance. My phone buzzed once with a check‑in text from Wyatt: We see you. No uniforms visible. You’re not alone.

We followed the blue Level 3 sign up the ramp.

The concrete was stained with oil and striped with fluorescent light. In the far corner, near the half‑wall that overlooked Main Street, someone sat on the ledge with their back against the pillar, knees pulled up.

Jackson.

His hoodie was zipped despite the warm air. His face looked even worse than it had in the bathroom—eyes swollen and red, lips cracked, bruise blooming along his jaw. His phone glowed in his hand.

He looked up when he heard our footsteps.

“You weren’t supposed to come,” he said immediately. His voice was raw, like he’d been crying or yelling for hours. “I told you not to.”

“Too bad,” Kira said, holding up the watch. “You don’t get to hand me this and then tell me to stay home.”

He flinched when he saw it.

“I wanted you to remember the good parts,” he said. “Not this.”

I sat down on the concrete a few feet away from him, leaving space so he didn’t feel trapped.

“Then give us something worth remembering,” I said. “Starting with the truth.”

He laughed, a short, broken sound.

“The truth is I was a jerk for years,” he said. “I hurt people for fun. Ledger found proof and decided to turn my life into a math problem. Thirty harms, thirty amends, thirty days. Finish the list, and he lets my sister live her normal little life. Screw up, and he ruins her.”

He flipped his phone around.

Message threads filled the screen.

Photos of his house from across the street. His twelve‑year‑old sister walking to school, backpack bouncing. His mom’s car in the driveway. His sister at the park, mid‑kick on a soccer field, unaware of the camera.

She looked so small.

“He sent these any time I got behind,” Jackson whispered. “Said he had people watching. Said the internet never forgets addresses.”

My phone buzzed in my pocket. Hallie’s text.

Ask what he thinks happens to her if he’s not around to push back.

I swallowed.

“What do you think happens to your sister if you’re not here anymore?” I asked. “If Ledger gets what he wants and you’re not around to call this stuff out?”

Jackson blinked, thrown by the question.

“He said…” Jackson started, then stopped.

He’d been repeating Ledger’s story for so long he hadn’t considered any other version.

“He said if I finished the list, he’d let her go,” Jackson said weakly.

“Right,” I said. “The guy who stalks kids and sends threat photos is suddenly a man of his word. And if you’re gone, who’s left to tell anyone what he did? Who protects her then?”

Kira shifted closer, still on the concrete, the watch warm in her fist.

“If Ledger actually cared about making things right,” she said, “he wouldn’t drag a twelve‑year‑old into it. That’s not justice, Jackson. That’s just more bullying.”

Jackson’s breathing hitched.

“He said this was accountability,” he whispered.

“Accountability doesn’t come with bruises and countdowns,” I said. “It comes with support and consequences that don’t end with you disappearing.”

His phone buzzed again.

All caps, this time.

Prove you’re alone. One photo. Ten minutes. Or the address goes public.

Jackson’s whole body went rigid.

He stood up too fast, swaying for a second on the edge of the level.

“I have to,” he said. “If he thinks I’m using anyone, he’ll—”

“He’ll do what he’s already threatening to do,” I said, standing up too, hands held where he could see them. “Post things. Send more messages. Hurt people. That’s why we brought help, Jackson. So it’s not just you versus him in a parking garage at two in the morning.”

Kira rose too, putting herself between him and the open edge.

“Look at me,” she said firmly. “You started fixing things when you apologized, when you helped kids in Ms. Lopez’s class, when you gave that fundraiser money. That was you. Ledger doesn’t get to claim your work.”

His eyes flicked to the watch in her hand.

“I thought if I gave away everything that mattered, there wouldn’t be anything left to lose,” he said.

“You were wrong,” I said quietly. “There’s still you.”

For a heartbeat, nobody spoke.

Then my phone vibrated against my leg.

A text from Wyatt.

Upper level. Visual on suspect with laptop. Stand by.

I ignored the urge to look up.

“If you really want this to be the last item on your list,” I said, hearing my own voice steady in a way I didn’t feel, “let it be this: ask for help. Hand me the phone. Let other people carry some of this.”

Jackson stared at his screen, thumb hovering over the camera icon.

He looked at the edge of the level, at Kira, at me.

His hand shook so hard the phone rattled.

“He’ll know,” he whispered.

“He already knows we’re not backing off,” Kira said. “The only thing you get to choose now is whether you face this alone or with backup.”

Another text popped up on his screen.

Three minutes.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

The watch in Kira’s hand ticked along with it.

Finally, Jackson exhaled like something inside his chest collapsed.

He stepped forward and held out the phone.

“I can’t do this anymore,” he said. “I don’t want him in my head. I don’t want him anywhere near my sister.”

I reached out slowly and took the phone.

The second it left his hand, shouting erupted from the level above us.

“Police! Don’t move! Hands where we can see them!”

All three of us flinched.

I looked up.

At the far corner of Level 4, just visible through the cut‑out in the concrete, officers in plain clothes had a man pinned to the ground next to an open laptop and a portable router.

A patrol car idled at the ramp, red and blue lights flashing silently, painting the garage in color.

Wyatt leaned over the half‑wall two levels up.

“We’ve got him!” he called down. “Nicodemus Blair is in custody. The stream is frozen.”

Jackson’s knees gave out.

He sank to the concrete, hands over his face, sobs ripping out of him in jagged bursts.

Kira dropped to her knees beside him, the watch still clutched in one hand as she rested her other palm between his shoulder blades.

I sat down too, my back against the same pillar he’d been leaning on when we walked in.

My phone, still connected to Hallie on speaker, lay face‑up on the concrete.

“You’re okay,” Hallie’s voice said through the tiny speaker, steady and low. “He’s in custody. Jackson, can you hear me?”

“Y‑yeah,” Jackson choked.

“I want you to do something for me,” she said. “Press your hand to the ground. Tell me what it feels like.”

Jackson obeyed, palm flat against the concrete.

“Cold,” he whispered.

“Good,” she said. “Look around. Name five things you can see.”

“The…the railing,” he said. “Kira’s shoes. The crack in the floor. His—” He nodded toward me. “His jacket. The Level 3 sign.”

“You’re here,” Hallie said. “Right here. Not in a countdown. Not in a message thread. Stay with us.”

I matched my breathing to his, counting under my breath.

In for four. Out for four.

By the time the paramedics arrived—summoned by someone’s 911 call on the level below—his sobs had softened into shuddering breaths.

They checked his vitals, wrapped a cuff around his arm, shone a light briefly in his eyes.

“No obvious injuries aside from old bruising,” one of them said. “He’s exhausted. We recommend he comes in for evaluation.”

“You’re not under arrest,” Wyatt told him as they helped him to his feet and onto the stretcher. “But you are going to the hospital so doctors can help you stabilize. Your parents will meet you there.”

Jackson didn’t argue.

He just clutched the edge of the blanket with white knuckles as they loaded him into the ambulance.

Blair walked past us in handcuffs and a dark jacket, flanked by officers.

He looked…ordinary. Mid‑twenties, forgettable face, no dramatic villain smirk.

He didn’t glance at Jackson. Didn’t look at us. Just stared straight ahead as they guided him toward the patrol car.

I thought about the kids in his files—the ones we hadn’t even heard about yet—and felt something hot and bitter rise in my throat.

Later, I learned that when they searched his laptop, they found folders on four teenagers. Four “projects” just like Jackson.

One boy at a different school who’d ended up in the ER on Day 28 after trying to “make amends” in a way that nearly cost him his life.

A girl forced to tutor kids she’d once mocked while Blair held vandalism photos over her head.

Another student who now couldn’t walk into a cafeteria without shaking.

Blair had called it justice.

The district attorney called it coercion, stalking, cyber harassment, and endangering the welfare of minors.

They added more charges when they saw the stream archives. Every countdown. Every “motivation” message. Every time he’d dangled somebody’s little sister as leverage.

He pled not guilty, of course.

His public defender tried to spin it like Blair had done the community a twisted favor.

“My client was simply encouraging young people to take responsibility for their actions,” the attorney argued.

The judge’s expression didn’t change.

“Encouraging responsibility doesn’t require threats, surveillance, or live streams,” she said coolly. “What your client did wasn’t guidance. It was abuse.”

Blair didn’t get bail he could afford.

While the legal part ground forward, the rest of us still had to go to school.

Three days after the parking garage, Principal Chandler stood on the auditorium stage in front of the entire student body. The American flag hung on one side of the stage, the district banner on the other.

She didn’t name Jackson. She didn’t mention the garage or the countdown.

But she talked about pressure.

She talked about how change doesn’t come from being terrorized into big gestures. It comes from thousands of boring choices, and the right support.

She talked about how if we saw someone giving away everything that mattered to them, or suddenly acting like they were racing an invisible clock, that wasn’t drama.

That was our cue to say something.

To someone.

To anyone.

Hallie sat on the edge of the stage when it was over, a stack of crisis hotline cards in her lap. A line of students formed almost immediately.

Some needed to talk about Jackson.

Some needed to talk about themselves.

Caden wrote an article for the school paper—not a gossip piece, but a detailed explainer about online coercion and the red flags we’d all missed. Hallie fact‑checked every line. He included quotes about manipulation: threats against loved ones, artificial deadlines, isolation.

The article never mentioned Project Thirty by name.

But every kid who’d seen the thread knew exactly what he was talking about.

The school board held an emergency meeting. They approved funding for two more counselors, mandatory digital‑safety lessons, and staff training on recognizing when a kid’s “dramatic” behavior might actually be a warning flare.

“We were lucky,” one board member said, voice rough. “We almost attended a funeral instead of a meeting.”

At the hospital, Jackson was admitted to a mental health unit on the fourth floor.

I went to see him two weeks later.

The building didn’t look like the places you see in movies. No barred windows. No sterile white halls. Just a waiting room with worn chairs and a wall‑mounted TV playing some home improvement show on low volume.

A nurse buzzed me into the unit and pointed me toward the common room.

Jackson sat by a window, working on a jigsaw puzzle of a lighthouse.

He looked different.

Still tired, still softer around the edges, but not like someone held together with duct tape.

“Hey,” I said.

He looked up, surprised, then gave me a small, real smile.

“Hey,” he echoed. “You didn’t have to come.”

“I know,” I said. “I wanted to.”

We sat at a corner table.

He told me about group sessions where they talked about guilt versus shame, about how wanting to make amends was different from believing you deserved nothing good forever.

“Blair twisted that,” he said. “He convinced me that the only way to prove I was sorry was to bleed for it.”

“He picked you because you were already drowning in guilt,” I said.

He nodded.

“They’re teaching me how to do this without killing myself on the way,” he said quietly, then winced. “Sorry. I know we’re not supposed to say stuff like that.”

“They’re teaching you how to stay,” I corrected. “That’s the point.”

He didn’t ask me to forgive him.

He apologized again, not in a dramatic monologue, just a steady acknowledgment of what he’d done sophomore year and before.

“I’m not asking you to forget any of it,” he said. “I just…didn’t want the last thing you remembered about me to be that roof. Or the garage.”

“That’s not the last thing,” I said. “It’s just…in the middle somewhere now.”

We talked until visiting hours were over.

As I left, I glanced back.

He’d gone back to his puzzle, his hands still shaking a little as he picked up each piece.

Three months later, he came back to school.

It happened on a Tuesday, the kind of crisp fall morning where the flag out front snapped in the wind and the sky looked freshly scrubbed.

He walked in through the main doors with a backpack slung over one shoulder and a folder tucked under his arm—the safety plan he had to carry and check in about with Hallie every day.

Some kids stepped aside.

Some turned away.

Both reactions made sense.

A freshman he’d tutored last year gave him a tentative wave. Jackson lifted his hand and waved back, then kept walking. No grand speeches. No hallway hugs.

Hallie met him by her office.

They talked quietly for a couple of minutes. Then he headed to first period.

At lunch, he sat alone by the windows, eating a sandwich and doing homework. No apology tour. No frantic list‑checking.

I passed him between third and fourth period.

For half a second, our eyes met.

He gave me a small nod.

I nodded back.

We didn’t stop.

We didn’t need to.

Because whatever story people had told themselves about Jackson Price—monster, saint, cautionary tale—none of those fit exactly anymore.

He was just a seventeen‑year‑old kid carrying a watch‑shaped scar in his pocket and a folder full of follow‑up appointments.

And for the first time since the freshman dropped his books in the hallway under the clinking flag rope, there was no visible countdown hanging over his head.

No list.

No timer.

Just the slow, boring kind of change you don’t livestream because nobody would watch.

The kind that might actually last.

I used to think endings were loud. Sirens, slammed gavels, doors clanging shut somewhere you never have to see again. But what came after the garage and the hospital and the assembly wasn’t loud at all. It was quiet and repetitive and, honestly, kind of awkward.

It looked like walking past Jackson in the hallway and not knowing where to put my eyes.

It looked like hearing the words “Project Thirty” whispered in the back of the bus and feeling my stomach flip.

And it looked like realizing that just because Blair was gone, the mess he made was still sitting in all of us.

A month after Jackson came back to school, Kira found me again.

This time it wasn’t in the library or the office. It was in the bleachers on a Thursday afternoon while the JV soccer team ran drills on the field, a row of little American flags stuck in the grass behind the goal from some fundraiser months earlier. The sun was in that late‑day position where everything looked like a picture instead of real life, and the scoreboard clock flashed 3:47 in red.

“You ever think about that night?” she asked, dropping her backpack beside me.

“All the time,” I said.

She nodded like she already knew the answer.

“Hallie thinks I’m ready,” she said. “For the circle.”

I didn’t have to ask which circle she meant.

Restorative justice sounded noble when Hallie first explained it—people sitting in a circle, telling the truth, trying to repair what could be repaired. In reality, the idea of sitting in a room with Jackson and talking about the ways he’d hurt her made Kira look like she might throw up.

“Are you ready?” I asked.

“No,” she said. Then she shrugged. “But I don’t think I’m going to wake up one day and suddenly feel brave. I think I just have to be scared and go anyway.”

She opened her hand.

The watch lay in her palm.

The old silver case caught the late‑afternoon light, the crack in the glass a thin white vein.

“I keep thinking about giving it back,” she admitted. “Then I remember what he said when he handed it to me. ‘Remember the good version of me.’ And I get mad all over again. Like I’m supposed to skip over everything else.”

“You don’t owe him that,” I said.

“Yeah,” she said softly. “I’m starting to get that.”

She turned the watch over with her thumb.

“Hallie says if we do this, it’s not about forgiving him on a schedule,” she went on. “It’s about telling the truth in front of witnesses and letting him sit in it without trying to fix my feelings. She said you might want to come.”

“Me?” I blinked. “Why?”

“Because you saw both versions,” she said. “The one who made your life miserable and the one Ledger tried to sculpt into some kind of project. And because you were there on Level 3 when everything snapped.”

The way she said it made the parking garage feel like a chapter heading.

I looked down at the field. A girl in a blue penny stole the ball and sprinted down the sideline, her ponytail streaming behind her. A coach blew a whistle. Somewhere by the concession stand, a little kid started crying because his slushie hit the ground.

Normal life went on, even with the watch ticking in Kira’s hand.

“Okay,” I said. “If Hallie thinks I won’t make it worse, I’ll be there.”

Kira exhaled like she’d been holding her breath for the whole conversation.

“She booked the conference room by the counseling office,” Kira said. “Next Wednesday. Seventh period. She says there’ll be ground rules and a facilitator from some nonprofit so it’s not just us and Jackson and awkward folding chairs.” She hesitated. “She also said we can walk out any time.”

“That part matters,” I said.

For the rest of practice, we just sat there, watching the girls run drills under the fluttering row of little flags.

The next week, I found myself staring at a circle of chairs and wondering when my life had started to look like the kind of after‑school special people tweet jokes about.

The conference room felt smaller than usual. Hallie had pushed the tables aside and arranged eight chairs in a circle. A box of tissues sat on the floor in the middle, next to a small battery‑operated candle and a bowl of Jolly Ranchers.

There was also a clipboard with a printed list of guidelines:

Speak from your own experience.

Listen to understand, not to argue.

No interrupting.

No recording.

You can step out if you need to.

A woman I didn’t know sat next to Hallie—a Black woman in her thirties with a braided bun and a denim jacket over a T‑shirt that said something about community healing. She introduced herself as Mariah from a local restorative practices center the district had asked to help.

“We’re not here to erase what happened,” Mariah said, her voice calm but firm. “We’re here to give what happened less power over your future.”

Kira sat to my left, one hand clenched around the watch in her pocket so hard her knuckles were white.

Jackson sat across from us.

He looked different than he had in the hospital common room and different from that first day he came back to school. Less dazed, more present. His safety‑plan folder wasn’t in his hands this time; it was on the chair beside him. He wore a plain gray sweatshirt, no team branding, no logos.

His hands still shook.

Hallie opened with a breathing exercise that felt ridiculous until my shoulders dropped half an inch and I realized I’d been braced for impact since I walked in.

Then Mariah took a smooth river stone from her bag and set it in the middle.

“This is our talking piece,” she said. “Whoever holds it gets to speak. Everyone else listens. No side conversations, no whispering. We’ll start with introductions and why you said yes to being here.”

She picked up the stone and went first, talking about her work with teens, about how she’d watched people come into circles ready to explode and leave with something a little heavier than forgiveness—responsibility.

Then she passed the stone to Hallie, who kept her contribution short.

“I’m here because I’m responsible for student safety,” she said. “And safety isn’t just about doors and cameras. It’s about giving you all tools to handle harm when it happens.”

The stone came to me sooner than I would’ve liked.

“I’m here because I watched this whole thing from the side for too long,” I said. “I watched when Jackson was the one doing the hurting, and I watched when someone decided to hurt him back in a different way. I don’t want to keep doing nothing.”

My voice wobbled a little on that last word.

The stone felt heavier when I handed it to Kira.

“I’m here because I’m tired of thinking about that day in the cafeteria and that night in the garage and feeling like I’m stuck between two versions of the same person,” she said. “I want my brain back.”

She passed the stone across the circle.

Jackson turned it over in his hand for a long moment before he spoke.

“I’m here because the court stuff is about what Blair did,” he said. “And this…this feels like the only place I can actually face what I did.”

He looked at Kira, then at me.

“And because Hallie said not showing up would be its own kind of answer,” he added.

A faint, crooked almost‑smile tugged at his mouth, like he knew he’d borrowed one of Hallie’s lines.

We went around the circle again, this time with Mariah asking specific questions.

What happened, from your perspective?

What were you thinking and feeling at the time?

Who was affected, and how?

Kira talked about the day Jackson made a joke about her brother’s stutter loud enough for the whole hallway to hear. How she tried to play it off with a laugh that tasted like metal in her mouth. How she’d started avoiding that section of lockers entirely after that.

She talked about getting the watch. About how it felt like he was trying to skip ahead in the story.

“You wanted me to remember the good version of you,” she said, looking right at him. “But you didn’t even ask what version of me you left behind.”

The room went so quiet we could hear the HVAC system clicking on.

Jackson didn’t interrupt. Didn’t argue. Didn’t say he “didn’t mean it that way.” When the stone came to him, he held it like it might cut him.

“I thought if I did enough good things fast enough, it would erase how bad the old list was,” he said. “I was wrong. Ledger exploited that. But I wrote the first list myself. He just picked it up and weaponized it.”

Mariah’s eyebrows lifted a fraction.

“Say more about that,” she said.

“I started keeping track of the bad stuff before he ever DM’d me,” Jackson admitted. “I didn’t put it on paper, but it was in my head. I knew exactly who I’d hurt and how. I just…didn’t know what to do with it. So I made jokes and doubled down.”

He swallowed.

“Ledger didn’t make me a bully,” he said. “He just found one already there and gave him a deadline.”

That sentence hung in the air like a chord.

My chest hurt a little hearing it out loud.

We broke for five minutes halfway through so people could drink water, use the bathroom, stare at the bulletin board in the hallway and pretend they weren’t about to say more hard things.

On the way back in, Kira paused next to the window that looked out at the flagpole.

“You okay?” I asked.

“No,” she said honestly. “But also…yeah? I don’t know. It feels gross and good at the same time.”

Back in the circle, Mariah asked the last set of questions.

What do you need to move forward?

What needs to happen so the harm isn’t repeated?

Kira said she needed Jackson to stop trying to prove he was a “good person” in front of people and focus on not hurting anyone privately.

“I don’t care if people think you’re changed,” she said. “I care if the freshmen next year never have a story about you like the ones we do.”

Jackson nodded.

“I can do that,” he said. “Or…I can try.”

He looked at the watch in her hand.

“I don’t want you to feel like you have to keep carrying my mess,” he added. “If giving that back helps, you can. If throwing it in a lake helps, do that.”

Kira was quiet for a long time.

“I’m not ready to decide,” she said finally. “But it helps to hear you say it’s mine to choose.”

Mariah wrote notes on her clipboard.

By the end of the circle, there was no big cinematic moment. No swelling music. No handshake across the gap.

Just a series of small agreements.

Jackson would continue in therapy and check in with Hallie weekly about how he interacted with underclassmen.

Kira would meet with Hallie individually to process whatever new stuff the circle stirred up.

I would help Caden and a few others with a peer‑led workshop on bystander choices—how to do something between laughing along and staging a dramatic intervention.

On the way out, Kira slipped the watch into her backpack.

“You keeping it?” I asked.

“For now,” she said. “Maybe one day it’ll just be a watch again.”

I thought about that later that night, lying in bed with the glow of my phone lighting up the ceiling.

Project Thirty had turned a watch into a countdown.

Maybe this was how we turned it back into a clock.

Spring slid toward summer.

Blair’s court dates crept onto the calendar, first as rumors, then as actual notices on the local news website with a photo of the courthouse and a brief summary of charges. Coercion. Stalking. Online harassment. Endangering minors.

None of the articles mentioned our school by name, but everyone knew.

I got a subpoena in the mail, my name spelled wrong by one letter. My parents stared at the envelope like it might explode.

“You don’t have to do this,” my mom said.

“I kind of do,” I said. “They need people who saw what he set up. It’s not just about Jackson.”

My dad squeezed his coffee mug.

“We’ll be there,” he said. “We’re not letting you deal with this alone.”

The courthouse was colder than I expected.

High ceilings, flags at the front of the room, seal of the state on the wall behind the judge. Rows of wooden benches that creaked when people shifted.

Blair sat at the defense table in a button‑down shirt that didn’t fit quite right, hair trimmed short. Without the laptop and the menacing DMs, he looked painfully ordinary.

That made it worse.

Jackson didn’t sit in the gallery. His therapist had pushed for him to testify via video from a separate room to limit how much Blair could rattle him. Kira sat two rows behind me, twisting a hair tie around her fingers.

When it was my turn, I walked to the witness stand, raised my right hand, swore to tell the truth.

The prosecutor asked straight questions.

What did I see on the roof?

What was on the stream?

What messages did I receive from the unknown number tied to Blair’s accounts?

I answered in complete sentences, trying to keep my voice steady.

“He sent a link with a countdown,” I said. “There were forty‑seven people watching an empty parking level, waiting to see what would happen to Jackson like it was a show.”

The prosecutor let that hang in the air for a second before moving on.

The defense attorney tried to poke holes.

“Isn’t it true that my client never laid a hand on your friend?” he asked.

“Not that I saw,” I said.

“So all he did was encourage him to…help people?” the attorney pressed. “To donate, to apologize, to volunteer?”

The words tasted wrong.

“He threatened his twelve‑year‑old sister,” I said, heat rising in my face. “He sent photos of her walking to school. He set up a deadline and made a bunch of kids watch. That’s not encouragement.”

The judge glanced over her glasses.

“Just answer the questions,” she reminded me gently.

I swallowed my extra words and did what she asked.

Later, Jackson’s recorded testimony played on screens in the courtroom.

He wore a collared shirt and sat very straight, his hands folded in his lap so they wouldn’t show how much they shook.

He talked about the DMs, the threats, the “motivation sessions” near the old gym.

“He told me pain was how people like me learned,” Jackson said, voice flat. “He said the bruises were nothing compared to what my victims went through.”

Kira’s shoulders tightened at that word—victims.

The prosecutor let Jackson explain how Blair had twisted every attempt at making amends into another task on a list.

“He turned my guilt into his hobby,” Jackson said quietly.

The defense attorney tried the same angle he’d used with me.

“Did Mr. Blair ever tell you to hurt yourself?” he asked.

Jackson hesitated.

“He said there were some debts you could only pay one way,” he answered. “He never used the exact words you’re asking about. But he drew the map and waited for me to follow it.”

I watched the jurors’ faces as he spoke.

Some looked angry.

Some just looked tired.

When the verdict came weeks later—guilty on most of the major counts—it didn’t feel like a movie win. There was no cheering in the courtroom, no hugging strangers. Just a quiet exhale from the row where the families of the kids in Blair’s folders sat.

Afterward, in the hallway, Kira and I ended up near one of the tall windows overlooking the courthouse lawn.

An American flag flapped lazily on the pole outside.

“Does it feel better?” I asked her.

She thought about it.

“It feels…contained,” she said. “Like at least one piece of this is in a box with a label on it instead of scattered all over my head.”

I knew what she meant.

Justice hadn’t fixed everything.

But it had drawn a line between what Blair called accountability and what it actually was.

Back at school, life didn’t snap back to normal. It stretched into a new shape.

Hallie’s support groups kept meeting.

The first one I went to was for kids who’d been directly targeted by Blair—the four from his folders, plus a couple who had gotten close. The second group was for people like me, whose harm came from what we didn’t do.

We sat in a circle again, no talking piece this time, just fidget toys and stress balls and the buzzing fluorescent lights.

“I laughed at some of the jokes,” one guy admitted, staring at his hands. “Not because I thought they were funny. Just because I was scared of being next.”

“That’s still not nothing,” Hallie said gently. “You’re allowed to feel bad about it. You’re also allowed to do better now without turning your guilt into a new performance.”

That was another hinge sentence for me.

Guilt wasn’t a personality trait. It was supposed to be a signal—a dashboard light, not the entire car.

I started noticing small changes in the hallway.

A junior telling a freshman, “Hey, man, not cool,” when he made a joke about someone’s clothes.

A teacher pausing a lesson to check in with a kid who’d gone quiet after someone muttered something under their breath.

A poster outside Hallie’s office with a list of ways to intervene that didn’t require being a hero: stand with the person being targeted, change the subject, get an adult, send a text later.

None of it made the school a utopia.

But it made it harder for another Project Thirty to grow in the dark.

Months blurred.

Soccer season ended. Basketball season started and ended without Jackson on the team; he’d stepped back, saying he needed the extra time for work and therapy.

One Saturday, I ended up at his sister’s game.

My own little cousin played on the same rec league team, and my aunt had begged me to come help wrangle juice boxes and lawn chairs.

The field was at the park a few blocks from Jackson’s house, the same park from the photos Blair had sent.

It looked different in daylight crowded with families.

Kids in mismatched jerseys chased the ball. Parents sat in collapsible chairs, sipping coffee from travel mugs. A grill smoked in the distance for some fundraiser.

I spotted Jackson standing near the sideline, hands in his pockets, watching a girl in a number 12 jersey sprint down the field.

When he saw me, he gave a cautious little nod.

I walked over, heart thumping.

“She’s good,” I said, nodding toward his sister.

His face softened.

“Yeah,” he said. “She reads the field better than half the pros I watch.”

We stood there in silence for a minute, watching her steal the ball and send a perfect pass across the grass.

“Does she know?” I asked quietly.

He knew what I meant.

“Some of it,” he said. “Not the details. She knows someone tried to use her to scare me and that the police stopped him. She knows I did things I’m not proud of and that I’m trying to be better. She doesn’t know about lists and countdowns.”

He swallowed.

“She asked why you cried,” he added.

“On the stretcher?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “At home. After. She said it was the first time she saw me cry and not break something afterward.”

He kicked at a divot in the grass.

“I told her sometimes crying is what keeps you from breaking things,” he said.

Number 12 scored.

Parents cheered. His sister threw her arms in the air, grinning.

Jackson clapped, a real smile breaking across his face for a moment.

“Do you still think about the list?” I asked.

“Every day,” he said. “But not like before.”

He nodded toward the field.

“Blair made thirty harms and thirty amends feel like the whole story,” he said. “Like once I checked all the boxes, I either disappeared or got a clean slate. Turns out, it’s more like…”

He gestured vaguely at the chaos in front of us.

“More like ninety minutes of missed shots and weird bounces and trying again,” I offered.

He huffed a laugh.

“Yeah,” he said. “Something like that.”

Senior year snuck up on us.

College brochures piled up on guidance counselors’ desks. People started counting down to graduation in group chats, posting “only 180 days left” like it was another kind of timer.

Jackson applied to community college across town.

“I’m not ready to bolt yet,” he told me one day when we ran into each other by the vending machines. “I need to stay close to my therapist and my sister’s games.”

“Makes sense,” I said.

He nodded at the flyer in my hand.

“You going out of state?”

“Maybe,” I said. “Depends on financial aid.”

He grinned.

“Look at us, talking about FAFSA instead of fists,” he said. “Growth.”

By the time graduation rolled around, the whole school smelled like dust and cardboard from the boxes teachers were packing.

We lined up in blue gowns in the hallway outside the gym while the band warmed up “Pomp and Circumstance.” Parents filled the bleachers, waving little flags and holding bouquets.

Through the open side door, I could see the big American flag hanging on the wall across from the scoreboard, the same one that had been there in every pep rally and assembly since freshman year.

It looked exactly the same.

We didn’t.

Kira stood a few rows ahead of me, tassel already flipped impatiently between her fingers. When she caught my eye, she smiled and tapped her wrist.

For a second, I thought she meant “time,” like “it’s almost our turn.”

Then I saw it.

The watch.

The same cracked face, the same old silver case. But it sat on a simple leather band now instead of its original chain, snug around her wrist like it belonged there.

After the ceremony, after the speeches and the diplomas and the part where the principal tried not to cry, we spilled out onto the football field for photos.

The sun was setting behind the bleachers, turning the sky orange and pink.

Jackson found us by the fifty‑yard line, his blue gown hanging crooked over his jeans.

“Nice accessory,” he said to Kira, nodding at the watch.

She looked down at it, then back up at him.

“I decided,” she said. “It’s not a trophy and it’s not a reminder you owe me something. It’s just…a story I survived wearing something that used to belong to your family.”

He blinked hard.

“Is that okay?” she asked.

He swallowed.

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, it is.”

They stood there for a second, the three of us under the same flag that had watched over so many less complicated days.

“So what now?” I asked.

Jackson shrugged.

“Now I go to class at a place where nobody knows who I was at fifteen,” he said. “And I try not to make any new lists.”

Kira rolled her eyes.

“You can make one list,” she said. “Like, a grocery list. Maybe a to‑do list for homework. Just no more ‘thirty harms’ stuff.”

He laughed.

“Deal,” he said.

We stood there until parents started calling us over for photos.

As we walked toward the bleachers, I glanced up at the flag one more time.

It moved lazily in the warm air, rope clinking softly against the pole outside the gym.

No countdown.

No secret project.

Just fabric and wind and a school year ending like every other one had on paper, even though we knew better.

There are still days when my brain replays the roof, the stairwell, the garage, the stream with forty‑seven anonymous watchers.

But there are more days now when it replays other things.

A circle of chairs in a conference room that smelled like Expo markers and lemon cleaner.

A twelve‑year‑old in a number 12 jersey stealing the ball and not looking over her shoulder.

A wristwatch ticking on Kira’s arm as she snaps a graduation selfie, the caption just a string of exclamation points and the year.

We didn’t erase the list.

We wrote past it.

And somehow, in a school with a flag over the entrance and iced tea in the cafeteria coolers and a thousand other kids just trying to get through their days, that felt like the only kind of ending that made sense.