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A cheer went through the crowd.
 

I waved a hand over the sky and turned the fire back to rain.
 
I checked my watch and saw that it was midnight.
 
Were we in time?
 
Were we too late?
 
“We need to hurry,” I said.
 
“We need to get to Jim.”

But Paisley kept staring at the ash as it settled to the ground.
 
She seemed far away in thought, her mind in another world.
 
Then, she took my hand in her own, looked at me with unmistakable grief and her eyes started to well.
 

“He’s dead,” she said.

PROLOGUE

In the days that followed, there were two critical tasks I needed to complete before I felt could move on with my life.
 
Mike Hastings and Alan Stewart.
 
I hadn’t dealt with either of them yet.
 
When Rob Maxwell died, everything went to hell and I wasn’t able to address them the way I wanted to.

Now it was time that I did.

It took me a week to decide how I was going to handle them.
 
All sorts of ugly thoughts went through my head, particularly when it came to Hastings.
 
While Stewart absolutely had a hand in my parents’ deaths and deserved what was coming to him, no one consumed my thoughts more than the way Mike Hastings did.
 
He had an iron grip on them.

Ever since I could remember, he had shamed me and humiliated me.
 
Some of my earliest memories were composed of darkness and confusion due to his hatred of me.

But why was I his focus?
 
I came from nothing.
 
I wasn’t worth envy or jealousy.
 
So, why had he targeted me all these years?
 
Was it just out of habit?
 
Was it because of the way I once looked?
 
Was being unattractive all it took to repeatedly take someone’s fist in your face?
 

Maybe I was beaten up by him and others simply because I came from a broken home and they felt superior reminding everyone about it.
 
Or maybe it was it because I was weak in the face of the army they built against me.

The older I got, the more it became obvious that it was a combination of all these things.
 
But it went deeper than that.
 
A large part of their behavior was due to their own insecurities, which they forgot whenever they focused on me.

Because I never fought back, I made things easy for them.
 
Year after year, I was their go-to person to spit on, spread rumors about, bully from the start of the school day straight through to the end of it.
 
I’d actually hidden in lockers to keep away from them.
 
My own teachers had stood by and let people pummel me without once interfering.
 
Why did they let that happen?
 
Why did they always look the other way when I was in need of their help?
 
Was I also unacceptable to them?
 
Apparently, I was.

When it came to how I had been treated in life, there was no group with more blood on their hands than my teachers, who had the power to stop all of it but never did.

Over the past several weeks, what was just as bad is what I had become since receiving the first amulet.
 
I was a bully.
 
When my parents were murdered, it was the law I should have sought out, not my own personal revenge because I had the power to do so.
 

So, why had I done it?
 
It didn’t take a genius to figure it out.
 
I wanted those involved to pay for what they did to my parents and I wanted to make certain that they spent time in jail for it.
 
The courts couldn’t be trusted.
 
Any one of those bastards could have walked free.
 
So I did it my way, for better or worse.
 
But if I was honest with myself, I also wanted them to know that they were being targeted by
me
.
 
Their own personal pariah wasn’t taking it anymore.
 
It was payback time and I was happy to dole it out.

I was so angry by how they’d treated me since I was a kid, I wanted them to know that they couldn’t fuck with me anymore.
 
I wanted them to feel what it was like to be powerless.
 
And yes, I wanted to scare the hell out of them just as they had scared the hell out of me for years.
 
The revenge in my gut had turned me into a person that, in retrospect, I was ashamed of.
 
I had become no better than them.
 
I was, in fact, one of them.

But that didn’t mean I couldn’t right the ship now.
 

I had been given a power that Jim once told me I could use for good.
 
So had others.
 
I’d used the amulets for good a few times, but not often enough.
 

Now was that time and the best place to start was with Hastings and Stewart.
 
After school, I teleported them back to my apartment, which was enough to paralyze them with fear because neither understood what had just happened.

I didn’t want to waste my time on them, so I made it short and sweet.
 
I knew they’d deny having any involvement in killing my parents, so I made them sit down and watch exactly what happened that night on my living room wall.
 
And there they were, two murderers caught in the act.

They looked at me, each unnerved and shaken, each wondering what I planned to do to them.
 
But what I had planned was a quantum shift from what I’d done to the others.
 
I had the power within me to do good.
 
I could honor my parents’ deaths by finding a way to lock these two away for the rest of their lives, as I’d done to others.
 
Or I could honor them by completely changing how Hastings and Stewart went forward with their lives.

“What are you going to do to us?” Hastings asked.

“You sound concerned, Mike.
 
Should you be concerned?”

He didn’t answer.

“Your friends who helped you kill my parents are either in jail, dead or in an asylum.
 
That won’t change.
 
With the exception of Maxwell, they deserved what they had coming to them and I won’t be changing it.”

“Why did you kill Rob?”

“I didn’t kill Rob.”

“The hell you didn’t.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, so I suggest you shut the hell up and listen, Alan, or I’ll change my mind about both of you.”

He moved to speak, but stopped.
 
He glared at me and listened.

“About a week ago, I saw a kid being beat up in the school parking lot.
 
Mrs. Grimes was there and happily ignoring it, just as she and my other teachers have done with me over the years.
 
Kids his age were throwing punches at him, just like you used to do to me, Mike.
 
I saw one spit in his face, just like you’ve done to me, Alan.
 
And then it occurred to me that I could turn all of them into better people.
 
Not temporarily, but for the rest of their lives.”

“What does that have to do with us?” Stewart said.
 
“You planning on changing us?”

“Does being a good person scare you, Alan?”

“I like who I am.”

“Really?
 
You like being a bully?
 
You like murdering people?
 
Is that what you’re telling me?”

“I’m not a bully.”

“The fuck you’re not.
 
How about a murderer?
 
Because that’s what you are.
 
You’re a murderer.
 
You stink of death.
 
You reek of it.
 
And you’re going to live with it for the rest of your life.”

“I’m no fucking murderer.”

“Actually, Alan, you’re worse.
 
You’re a lying sack of shit.
 
But I’ll deal with you in a minute.”
 

I looked at Hastings.
 
“What about you, Mike?
 
What if your whole life was devoted to helping people?
 
What if you were put on this planet to do good and not evil?
 
How would that make you feel?”

He shrugged.
 
“There’d be no difference because I’m not evil.”

“You’re serious?”

“Look,” he said.
 
“Things got out of hand that night, okay?
 
I’m sorry about what happened to your parents.
 
It wasn’t meant to go down like that.
 
It was just bad luck, that’s all.”

“So, it was just bad luck that my parents died?”

“Pretty much.
 
We wanted to scare you.
 
It wasn’t meant to become some big frigging deal.
 
We were just fucking with you like we always have.”

I wanted to rip his head off and shove it up his ass, but I willed myself to remain calm.
 
“Before we go any further, let me get this straight.
 
You used an entire five-gallon can of gasoline, poured it around and on our trailer, lit a match and ran away from the scene because that only was supposed to scare us and not burn us alive?
 
Is that what you’re saying?”

He just shook his head at me as if I didn’t get it.

And that was it.
 
I held up my hand in front of them and tapped into the amulets.
 
“Here’s what your lives are going to look like,” I said.
 

Hastings bristled.
 
“Here’s what our what—?”

I ignored him.
 
“As you become adults, you’re going to become leaders in whatever community you call home.
 
You’re going to make it your life’s mission to stop bullying and to be kind to people.
 
Starting tomorrow, you will seek out the school’s new bullying support group and offer your services to those kids.
 
You will help them, you will befriend them and you will use your popularity to make certain others see that bullying is unacceptable.
 
That it’s a crime.
 
Then, going forward, each of you will part ways, as most of us will after high school, but your mission won’t end there.
 
It only will blossom.
 
You’ll take your anti-bullying crusade to a national level, people will hear you speak honestly and passionately about your own sorry pasts and then they will learn about your own personal reawakenings.
 
They’ll listen to why you changed your lives and why you’re urging others to change theirs.
 
You will visit as many schools as possible.
 
You will be successful in reaching those students you touch.
 
You will tell your stories and why you regret having been a bully.
 
You will tell them why it’s wrong to be a bully and that you believe there should be jail time if you’re a bully.
 
And then you’ll turn your address to the teachers in attendance.
 
You’ll make it a point to note that in your experience, teachers are some of the worst bullies.
 
You will give clear examples.
 
Haunting examples.
 
You will suggest that school administrators need to challenge the system and educate their teaching staff or consequences will follow.
 
And believe me, after you’ve done this for a period of time, your lives will be richer and more rewarding than either of you deserve.
 
You will be putting good back into the world.
 
You will be saving lives and you will be changing lives.
 
Got it?”

They nodded.

“Then make it happen.”

*
  
*
  
*

Next day at school, Jennifer was waiting by my locker.
 
She was wearing an orange dress that complemented the season, her hair was pulled away from her face in a ponytail and she smiled as I walked over.
 
We kissed.