The news of Coyle Haven's death shocks the school. Things become quieter, conversations in the hallway are reduced to a murmur. You could feel it in the air: something terrible has happened. He was found dead, mutilated, in a dumpster in the back of a gas station.

It's a tragedy, said the Royal Woods Tribune. Such a disregard for human life, such a burning hatred for humanity—in times like these, we ask ourselves, just who is capable of committing such an atrocity?

"I want you girls to keep quiet about this," Mother says as she pulls me and my older sisters aside. "We don't need any your younger siblings to be upset over this."

At school later that day, outside of my locker, my two best friends, Becky and Blair, approach me.

Blair leans in close. "Did you hear about the—" she looks around as if someone might have been eavesdropping in on the conversation, and then says in a low whisper—"murder?"

I nod. "It's totes scary. Like, what if someone we know is next?"

"That is scary," says Becky, nodding violently in agreement. "Like, someone important? Someone… popular?"

All three of us shudder at the prospect.

"Did you hear the news about Jessica?" asks Blair, changing the subject. "She broke up with Blake."

Becky looks disgusted, forgetting about Coyle's murder. "What a fucking whore."

The day drags by slowly, not unlike Coyle had tried dragging himself across my garage floor in a desperate attempt of escape. When it finally mercifully ends like I had mercifully ended Coyle's life by snapping his neck, I return home and retire to my room. Lori is sitting on her bed, holding a worn paperback and reading. The radio is on, and shitty pop music blares from the speakers.

I toss my backpack next to my bed and throw myself down on my back on top of my covers, resting. Lori looks up from her book and gives me a nervous glance, and I notice worry in her eyes.

"Leni," she says, "you're the oldest kid in this family other than me. You need to be careful out there, you know?"

"I know, Lori."

"You need to be responsible. You need to make sure that Lincoln and the others are home from school on time. Right? You need to notice if one of them is missing. Right?"

I sit up and grab my knees. "I'll do my best, Lori."

She returns her attention to her paperback, and I see her eyes slowly moving across the page as she reads. I get up, sort out the things in my backpack, and feel hungry. As I go into the kitchen for a snack, I notice Luna sitting on the table, messing around with her guitar. While she's usually a decent musician, today, her notes are sour and she quickly grows frustrated.

"Are you having trouble?" I ask sweetly.

Luna puts down her guitar. "No, it's just… hard to concentrate, I guess. A lot on my mind."

I nod, understanding.

"I knew Coyle," she says, looking out the kitchen window. "I didn't know him well, but he was in my math and history class. One day, he's sitting at his desk just like everyone else, and then…" she doesn't finish.

I put my hand on her shoulder, and she looks up at me. "It's scary, I know. There's some really bad people out there…" I feel the sudden urge to giggle, and I suppress it with all my might. "There's evil people who want to hurt others…" I bite my tongue. "There's sickos out there that like causing harm to other people for no reason… horrible, horrible sickos…"

My cheeks turn pink, flush with emotion. I can't help it anymore—I burst out into laughter. Luna looks at me like I have three heads.

"Sorry, sorry," I say, wiping away a tear. "I just remembered a really funny joke."

Luna nods and smiles. "Leni, you're always just so… upbeat. You're sitting here talking about a dead student, and you're still positive. Sometimes, I want to be more like you. How do you do it? Just be so happy all the time?"

My laughter stops completely and my expression turns serious. No, Luna, you don't want to be more like me, I think, but don't say.

"Just… focus on the good things," I say. "Look for the best in people. That's the easiest way, I guess."

Luna nods, and gets back to her life. I walk over to the counter, and make myself a salad—my favorite snack, but only because it's nutritious. I add a lot of bite-sized tomatoes because when I chomp down on them, it feels like a head exploding inside of my mouth, and take my bowl over to the living room. Luan is sitting on the couch, watching TV, but I can tell she can't pay attention to it. There's too much on her mind.

"Hey, you okay?" I put a concerned hand on her shoulder.

She flinches as if being hit but then notices it's just me. "S-Sorry," she says. "I'm just a bit… jumpy, I guess."

"It's totes no problem."

"I-It's just so s-s-scary that someone I knew… he…" She doesn't finish the sentence, but she doesn't need to. "It makes you think… am I next?"

"Luan," I say, stretching out the word sweetly. This sickens me, but I must keep up my front of being someone who actually gives a fuck. "You have a big family, and we all love you. We won't let anything happen to you." I wipe a tear from her eye. "If it makes you feel better, I'll walk you home from school every day."

She smiles and sniffs. "Thanks, Leni. You're… you're really kind, you know?" She hugs me, her wet face pushing into my dress. I want to scream out You bitch, I just washed this! but I remain calm and collected. "I'll let you know if I ever want to come home with me."

"Leni!" I hear Lori's voice call from the upstairs hallway. She walks down into the living room, swinging Vanzilla's keys around her finger. "Mom and Dad said that someone needs to walk Lynn home from practice. I already made plans to drive and meet up with Bobby… would you mind walking her home?"

I haven't even gotten a chance to take one bite out of my salad yet, and already I've been interrupted. Hot rage fills me, enveloping me, but I keep my cool.

"Sure thing, Lori."

I make good time, so when I get to the middle school, Lynn is still practicing football outside. I make my way to the bleachers, brush the dirt off so that I don't get my dress dirty, and sit down.

There's a tap on my shoulder. "Hey, Leni." I look behind me, and it's Chaz, a boy from my grade. "How's it going?"

I smile. "Good," I say. "How about you?"

"Now so well…" He shakes his head. "I was pretty close to Coyle."

On the field, there is a loud cry, and I look to see what's going on. One of the football players was hit to the ground, and she cries out in pain. I bite my lower lip in an attempt to stop from smiling.

"Ouch," says Chaz in sympathy. I look back to him.

"I'm really sorry to hear that, Chaz."

"It's just so… fucked, you know? His body was, like, all ripped up and stuff. Who in their right mind would do something like that to him?"

"I don't know," I admit. "Someone… not… fully there." I change the subject. "What are you doing here, anyway?"

"My little sister's on the football team. I'm walking her home from practice. It's… dangerous out there."

I smile. "Oh, mine too. I'm walking her home after this is over."

"You seem so nice," he says after a brief pause. "We need to hang out more, you know? How about, uh, we get a drink or something tomorrow? My treat."

I'm not flattered by his date request. "Sorry, Chaz. I need to look after my siblings. My family's on edge after the, whole, you know…"

He shakes his hands quickly. "No, no, it's okay! It's fine. I was just wondering."

I turn around, and silence presides over us, the football field, and the town as a whole in the wake of Coyle Haven's slaughter.

The following things are in order of greatest to least importance to me:

Every morning, I wake up an hour before everyone else, even Lori. I go to the bathroom, and take a long bath. I use Pink Pepperpod Nourishing Body Lotion by Molton Brown, and Lime Basil & Mandarin Shampoo by Jo Malone. When I shave my legs, I use a Venus Breeze Razor by Gillette. I comb my hair exactly fifty times with my Hershesons Mixed Bristle Oval Cushion Hairbrush by Hershesons. My towel, a light green one, is made of Turkish-cotton by Kassatex. I store most of my products in my room, only taking them to the bathroom when I need them, in fear of my siblings getting their hands on them, an admittedly terrifying prospect for even me.

My clothing is nearly all custom made. My favorite outfit is a seafoam green dress, with white frills, and triangular sleeves. The fabric is all by Joann. With this, I wear 2 and a half inch red hoop earrings by Divas. For footwear, I usually wear white sandals, topped with light green bows, and a pair of rounded white sunglasses with black lenses on top of my head, both by Forever 21.

My two best friends are Becky, a skinny redhead, whose appearance is not at all comparable to my own, and Blair, who is admittedly relatively attractive (not at all, however, as attractive as I) but has a high pitch voice that is annoying. I don't know the last name of either one of them.

My name is Leni Loud. I am 16 years old, living in suburban Michigan in 2018.

I have nine sisters, an older one and eight younger ones, as well as a little brother.

September turns into October, and October begins its crawl to November. It takes almost two months before things go back to normal, before the dust settles. People, the trivial beings that they are, focus on the next big thing in the volatile news cycle, which this month is a mother that doesn't live too far from me that gave birth to quintuplets.

I'm walking, alone, on a path up a mountain. At the top, there's a really good view and it'd make a great picture for me to post online. I was planning to meet up with Becky and doing it with her, but she had to drop out at the last minute because her father got into a car crash. She had called me on the phone to apologize for not being able to make it, and then broke down sobbing and saying that she hoped so bad that her dad was going to be okay.

"It's totes fine," I said, "you can hang out with me anytime—right now, you need to spend time with your family."

This false display of concern took a lot out of me, and as I talked with Becky and she droned on and on about her problems, I grew tired and unconsciously begin to slide down with my back on my bedroom wall, not realizing I was doing so until I was sitting on the ground. Killing Coyle had changed me, altered me in some mysterious way, and the long term consequences have yet to be observed. It's growing harder to live the lie that I've lived ever since I was able to form coherent thoughts.

I'm about halfway up the mountain, now, and I see a hiker standing on the edge of the trail, just in front of a fairly large drop, admiring the view. He's about my age, and he's distracted—he doesn't hear me coming up the path. I look up and down the path to make sure that nobody is near, and, quickly, not wanting to waste time, I rush over to the hiker, raise my boot, and kick him powerfully in the back. He lets out a yelp and stumbles forward before quickly losing his purchase and falling off the path. The drop isn't too steep, so I doubt he's going to break a leg or anything, but I knew that it was still going to hurt regardless.

I run away as fast as I could, and not until I've sprinted for a whole ten minutes do I feel safe and slow my pace. I'm breathing heavily, and I begin to sweat, and this terrifies me. I'm wearing a brand new windbreaker by Zumiez, and getting sweat on it is the last thing I want to do. I spend a good twenty minutes on my hair alone this morning, too, and to have it all gone to waste because some fucking jackass decided to stand on the edge of a drop off is in no way my fault.

It is now that I realize, not for the first time, that the world is cruel and unfair.

I rest for a little, regain my energy and willpower, and begin back up the path again at a slightly faster pace than before. I notice that in my haste, I stepped in some mud and got my Merrell Women's Accentor Ventilator Waterproof Mid Hikers with M-Select GRIP outsoles and open mesh uppers team with waterproof membranes (By Cabela's, $328… although I stole them) a little dirty and mentally kick myself.

The forest has always been alluring to me. Deep in the woods, animals slaughter one another without remorse all in the name of survival. A bobcat eats an entire family of rabbits without care, a mother bird consumes one of her own children to feed the rest. In the forest, if you go even deeper, nobody can hear you yell. Many times, I have traveled far into the woods and screamed as loud as I could. It's tough living in such a big family, especially if you spend every waking moment living behind a facade and hiding your true self because it's the only way you know how to interact with others while keeping your murderous desires a secret, and a good scream every now and then helps.

Before long, I finally reach the top of the mountain. I breathe in the fresh air, and soak in the view around me. The forest spreads out for so long that I can't see the end, going far beyond the town border. I take a couple of pictures on my phone, and just as I'm getting ready to leave and start heading back down the mountain, a boy about my age comes up the path.

"Hey," he says.

"You look… filthy," I say, noticing how he's covered in dirt and mud. There's even a couple of small twigs in his hair.

He chuckled. "Yeah, someone or something pushed me off a ledge when I was coming up. I have no clue what the hell it was. Maybe a branch falling, maybe even someone that wasn't paying attention to where they were going and knocked me off. I don't know, though. Whatever it was, it hit pretty hard, and no one was around to help me back up. I have no clue."

"That sounds pretty rough," I say, only just now remembering that it was me that pushed him off. "Hey, what's your name? I like knowing people's names."

"Walter," he says.

We look at each other for a while, and he smiles. I don't know what compels me to do so—maybe it's the anguish I'm experiencing from having gotten my boots dirty, maybe it's the joy I've extrapolated from reaching the top of the mountain, maybe it's just because I'm crazy but I know there's nothing I can do to help myself and there's no one I know that would be willing to help me—but I say something that's not at all unlike what I think of every day but saying out loud is very un-Leni.

I smile back at him. "Hey, want to hear a joke?"

There's a brief pause, and then he rolls back on forth on the balls of his feet. "Sure. What's the joke?"

I giggle. "How do you make a mountain bigger?"

There's another pause as he thinks. Eventually, he gives up.

"I don't know. How do you make a mountain bigger?"

"By pushing everything else to the earth."