Jim Shepard - Project X

And I’m screaming louder no matter how deaf I am because I know where I’m headed, with cops and reporters and counselors and shrinks asking what I knew, everybody wanting to know what I was in on and what we wanted. The vice principal’s shouting something in my ear and some kid’s working on a headlock but I keep getting out of it. I’m crying and screaming Flake’s name, which pisses off whoever’s holding my arms, and they start punching my face to shut me up.

And weeks from now when they tell me how Flake died and actually show me on the tape from the security camera I’ll see myself in the background, standing there pointing my gun and doing nothing with it. And Michelle will be like He didn’t shoot and the vice principal will be like He didn’t shoot and everybody will be like Flake was the bad one, Flake fucked him up, Flake made him what he was.

Because they know who Flake was. He took no shit and never lied to himself. Good, I think, do it, while they grind my head into the floor. Now I’m like everybody else—a liar—and nobody knows and nobody cares. Nothing about me is any good. Nothing I wanted to be is left. If I could get hold of the gun I’d turn it on myself. And sometime soon they’ll be right: the danger will be past. My dad will say, standing in the hall one night when he thinks I’m asleep, “Maybe we’re out of the fucking woods here.” And we will be. No more woods. I’m a faggot. I’m a joke. I’m a blowup with nowhere to go, a dick who couldn’t do one simple thing, a house burning down from the inside out.

Jim Shepard

PROJECT X

Jim Shepard is the author of six novels and two story collections, including most recently Love and Hydrogen . He teaches at Williams College and in the Warren Wilson MFA program, and lives in Williamstown with his wife Karen, two sons, and tiny tiny daughter.