ZERO’S HERO

ZERO’S HERO—a 55,000-word, hybrid, contemporary realistic fiction, middle-grade novel with graphic novel elements about secrets, survival, and strength—tells the antagonist’s story in VICTORY STUMBLES: guilt-ridden, thirteen-year-old PATRICK believes his younger self destroyed his own life when he told DAD he saw MOM kiss another guy. Now, Patrick must trust his instincts to protect Mom from her new security-officer boyfriend, TONY, who invades their home. 

To help Patrick process his pain, GRANDMA tells him to write her a high and a low for each year of his life, day one to year fourteen, which he does using a comic app. He likes Grandma’s idea because one positive plus one negative totals zero. Zero gets a bad rap, but Patrick knows that when you’re nothing, nothing’s all you’ve got. Zero’s cool with that. Patrick, too.

Patrick’s sum could total the results inherent in Emily Barth Isler’s (2021) After Math, but just because Patrick’s personal dynamics are complicated, such complications do not form him into a monster who would ever hurt anyone. Patrick’s story provides one way, I hope, to help readers, especially those who feel like outsiders, before gun-violence trauma reaches a level where there is no turning back.

ZERO’S HERO has been in progress since the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida in 2018. That night, I tucked my 9-year-old daughter into bed and, with alligator tears in her eyes, DeLainey whispered, “Mommy, are you afraid to go to school?” Some questions do not have answers. In that moment, I knew why Patrick was expelled from school in VICTORY STUMBLES. At that time, I thought I might be able to write a book about a school shooter, but I cannot because of the events that occurred in my three children’s school district.

It’s within the storm of tragedy that words hold such little power to fully express all that the heart feels. As an Oxford, Michigan resident, my heart shattered on November 30, 2021 for the families whose children did not come home that day. My heart will never be the same because that reality is a part of my family’s and community’s story.

Because of that pain, I thought I would never be able to tell Patrick’s story even though my writer’s heart wanted to understand him. After reading Jillian Peterson’s and James Densley’s (2021) book, The Violence Project: How to Stop a Mass Shooting Epidemic, my heart—as a mother, educator, and writer—is committed to tell Patrick’s story. His life has many of the elements Peterson and Densley highlight in their book, but he would not and does not make the irrevocable choice to hurt others, a choice my mind and heart cannot comprehend. I will always believe that acts of love can and must prevail over evil. I believe individuals hurting like Patrick must learn to ask for help. When we are hurting, we must find the helpers, who are always available.