Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock

In addition to the P-38, there are four gifts, one for each of my friends. I want to say good-bye to them properly. I want to give them each something to remember me by. To let them know I really cared about them and I'm sorry I couldn't be more than I was--that I couldn't stick around--and that what's going to happen today isn't their fault.

Today is Leonard Peacock's birthday. It is also the day he will kill his former best friend, and then himself, with his grandfather's P-38 pistol.

Maybe one day he'll believe that being different is okay, important even.

But not today.

The New York Times bestselling author of The Silver Linings Playbook, Matthew Quick, brings an unflinchingly eye to the impossible choices we deal with every day--and the light in us all that never goes out.