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a lot easier. She wouldn’t have to worry about him screwing up anymore, and not “living up to his potential,” whatever that was supposed to mean.
    It was a phrase he’d heard all his life, from the first time he got a report card in first grade, and read the teacher’s comments on the back. Even now the words were still burned into his memory: “Josh doesn’t seem motivated to work up to his potential.”
    He hadn’t known exactly what it meant until he’d looked up the word when he got home that day. When he’d finally puzzled it out, he wondered what the teacher had meant. He could read and write better than anyone else in the class! In fact, when they’d started, he’d been the only one who could read and write at all. He’d already known his multiplication tables, when all the rest of them were just learning to add and subtract. Why hadn’t his perfect grades been good enough?
    His mother had told him it was all right; the teacher had only meant that Josh was a lot smarter than the rest of the kids. From then on he’d always had the feeling that no matter what he did, it wasn’t going to be quite good enough. Not for the teachers, not for his mom. Not even for himself. Anger burned inside him. What was he supposed to do? Was it his fault he liked to read and already knew all the stuff they were teaching in school? And every year it was the same.
    “Josh isn’t working up to his potential.”
    And he was always in trouble, too, and his mom wasalways getting called into Mr. Hodgkins’s office to talk about him.
    When that happened, it meant she couldn’t be at work, and Max wouldn’t pay her.
    The blade of the knife shimmered in the sunlight. The thought grew in Josh’s mind.
    If he were dead—
    If he were dead, he wouldn’t have to worry about anything anymore. Not about his mom, or about getting in trouble, or the other kids picking on him.
    He wouldn’t have to worry about not living up to what everyone expected of him.
    And his mom wouldn’t have to worry about him, either.
    She could just go to work, and come home and take care of Melinda, and stop worrying about him. And when Melinda got bigger, she could have this room all to herself.
    He held the knife in his right hand, his eyes fixing on the shining blade. He wondered if it would hurt.
    But even if it did, it wouldn’t hurt for very long.
    And it wouldn’t hurt nearly as bad as he’d been hurting most of his life.
    His hand tightening on the knife’s handle, his eyes wide open, he slashed the blade across his left wrist.
    Instantly, a geyser of blood spurted from his wrist, and he quickly transferred the knife to his left hand.
    A second later another red geyser spouted from the artery of his right wrist.
    Oddly, it didn’t hurt at all.
    But there was a lot more blood than he’d thought there’d be.
       Brenda’s eyes came back into focus as the soap opera ended and the commercials began. She glanced up at the clock over the television set, realizing that she must have dozed off. The half hour she’d allotted for herself after Mabel Hardwick had finally left was almost gone.
    Melinda was sleeping peacefully in her arms. Brenda slowly got to her feet. If she was careful, she could get the baby into her crib without waking her up, and by now Joshshould be calmed down enough so she could apologize to him.
    She moved silently to the kids’ bedroom door, quietly opened it, then froze in shock at what she saw.
    Josh, his face pale, was standing in the middle of the room.
    There was blood everywhere—his clothes were covered with it, as was the bed, and the carpet on which he stood was no longer avocado green, but a dark, muddy maroon.
    The moment in which her eyes took in the scene seemed to stretch on forever as a series of snapshots were etched into her memory forever.
    The hunting knife, its blade covered with blood, lying on Josh’s pillow.
    The sunlight, glowing redly through a smear of blood that had somehow gotten onto