I'm not very good at that, actually. I can be just as mean when I've got a lot of anger. Like when I was nine years old, we had to sell my mom's house. I hated that we had to move from the little house in the country with the view of the river, and I was real mad because my mom cried and she was sad. I was nine years old, and it would have been nice for her not to have been so sad. It was hard for me to be a little kid in a new town. I could remember where the school was, but not everyone there was nice. Sometimes when we walked down the street, kids would shout at us and laugh. I hated that. I couldn't take it. One day when we were all on the bus on the way to the new house, I found my sister's school diary. She'd written about all the kids who teased her, the mean things they said, the way they bullied her. My sister is a very beautiful girl. She's got these long dark blond hair, and this great big heart shaped face. People tell her she is very beautiful, and they look at her like she's a princess. The other kids used to call her names like "whore" and "slut" and "bitch" because she wears short skirts and has long hair. There are a lot of kids who take drugs and do all kinds of weird things. I don't know if I should tell you this or not, but some of the kids who teased her, they told her she looked like a boy, and that the boys would have sex with her. Amy and I used to have fights, but I always felt bad afterward because my sister was so beautiful. One day, I went to the bathroom and saw some of the kids. When I saw them looking at my sister's diary, I almost went crazy. I went in the bathroom and started tearing up my sister's diary. I ripped it up and threw it down into the toilet. I didn't know why I did that. It's stupid because the only thing that I've had to worry about is school, and going to church on Sundays, and making money, and I've had enough trouble making friends. But I didn't know what happened to that diary. I found out a week later that it washed into the pipes of the building, and I've been having trouble with my parents since then. I got sent to a kid's camp for a while, but I was able to go back after a while. I tried doing like my sister did. I went to the school one day when everyone was at recess. It was the end of first grade, so there were a lot of different kids there. Some of them were pretty mean and ugly, and they kept telling me that I was ugly too, and asked me if I'd been sent home from school to have the operation on my face. They said that they would do it on me too if they could, because it was really disgusting. Sometimes kids at school called me ugly, and I would just give them this look. They would say things like, "Ugh, if I ever looked like you I would kill myself," or "You are fat," and stuff. One of them said, "You're a fat pig." When they said that, I was shocked. I'd never thought about it before. There's lots of stupid kids who are mean, but some of them have really sharp tongues. Sometimes they are so mean and ugly that I just can't stop myself from killing them. There's a kid at school who's really ugly. He has purple hair and is always dirty, and he sits in front of me and he never stops. He always calls me stupid names and says that no girl would talk to me. I used to call him names, but now he says that I'm just like him. When he says that, I get so mad that I want to hit him. Sometimes I think, "How would it be if I killed him? I've always thought that it would be great if I killed him." Another kid in my class made fun of my teeth, and the way I talked. I like listening to music, and he called me a "fag" and said that if I was nice to him he wouldn't call me names anymore. Another one of them said that I was ugly, and so was my mom, and I should kill myself because no one would want to have sex with me and be the mother of a fat pig, so what was the point? A couple of years ago, my dad had a breakdown. He had these problems for a long time, but when he had the breakdown, he got really sick, and he had to have an operation and talk with a doctor. My mom said that Dad's problems had nothing to do with me, but I think that he wants to talk about me sometimes. I know that he does because sometimes he says "I'm sorry" and sometimes "I'm so sorry" when I remind him about what happened to me when I was a little kid. Sometimes I think he thinks he should be in prison for what happened to me. Kids say that no one knows who I really am. They say that I'm a murderer, that my mom doesn't love me, that I kill people. It's stupid to try and pretend that I'm not doing it. People have a lot of ways of finding out about things like that, especially if I keep lying about who I am, like I do. People don't think that I'm being mean, and they believe that everyone else is a mean person. But I say to myself "I can be the best at being mean. I can be the best at getting my own way. I'm going to be even better at it now, since there's nothing anyone can do to stop me." I'm ten now. I go to some public school, and I try to be invisible. I know that everyone looks at me and no one knows who I am, except the teachers and the principal. I think that if they knew who I really was, they wouldn't like me, and it would be pretty scary if someone else knew that I was the one who killed my mom. Sometimes when I walk down the halls and hear other kids joking about my appearance, or when I hear people laughing, I want to kill myself. I've tried so many different things. Once when my mom was alive, I'd been bad at school. I stole a notebook from her and tore it up. She didn't know that it was my fault, but she knew something was wrong. She knew she couldn't get me to admit to it, so I got blamed. When I confessed and took the blame, she decided to take me to the emergency room to make me go to bed early. I fell asleep at the hospital, and I was so mad because I'd lied to my mom, and she'd lied to me. She was so good to me and was always telling me to do good things, and making me promise not to lie or to steal. But all I wanted to do was sleep, and I felt like I'd been betrayed. My dad got mad, and he said, "Now you've done it! Now you've caused us all to get in trouble!" I cried, and my mom cried too, and she felt horrible, and she told me to shut up and said that I could sleep in my own bed next time. Whenever I would try to tell my mom how I felt, she would just get upset, and it didn't matter what I said. She just wanted me to be quiet. But if I talked with my dad, he would listen to me. He'd take my side, and I'd feel better. He used to tell me that I was stupid and that no one would ever want to talk to me, or even look at me. He would look at me and get upset, and he would tell me that I was evil, and that there was something seriously wrong with me. He got real close to me and looked me in the eyes, and I would get nervous. He told me, "You're going to be like me. You're going to be a killer." It was weird for me because I didn't feel like I was a killer. I didn't feel that I was bad. Sometimes it felt like he hated me because he knew my mom was going to leave him. He thought that everyone would go away and leave him. He always knew about my mom's friends coming to see him, and he'd tell me that they were all liars. He said that he hated them because he couldn't trust them. He kept saying that his boss didn't trust him and that people just wanted him to be stupid. He was never going to be stupid. I always used to ask him what it was like being stupid. He told me that it was like living in a jail, where everyone was locked away and no one knew anything. No one knew about me being stupid, and I felt bad about it. But my dad hated everyone, and he wanted them to leave him. After my mom left, I took a lot of clothes from the washing machine, and I went and hid them in the woods. I took all these bright shirts and some nice pants and a jacket that I thought were my mom's. It was a good thing that I had some of her things, because I would never have dared to go out in public without my stuff. I hid my stuff in the woods all by myself, and I made sure that no one