You’re ten. You don’t remember your ma—she died birthing you. Your pa is a gunsmith and the part-time sheriff of a town too small to afford a professional lawman. Four drifters ride into town and leave Pa sprawled in the sun-baked dirt of Main Street, life pulsing out of …

  The black crayon—the one School Resources Officer Gary swore looked like a gun (“or maybe a knife…definitely something!”)—rolls out of Melvin Jenkins’s limp hand. It comes to a stop under the water fountain outside Miss Beverly’s classroom. Blood, splashed across white porcelain fountain, drips down. Droplets splatter against a …

  Fireworks skitter, spitting sparks down the sidewalk.  The sky fills with flowers burning out of existence as they burst and bloom.  Under the blossoms, Elli sits on her porch watching Betsy Russell dance.    Last week, Betsy went wandering the woods.  She carried a machine gun and spitting shark …