Wandering Stars: A Novel

Orvil is homebound after the shooting. He searches Google for stories about other survivors and watches videos of children who survived school shootings. He prefers the videos about survivors who still haven't quite made sense of what happened to them, as this is his current perspective. The stray bullet that hit him is still in his body, the shard shaped like a star. As he lays in his bed, he feels the pain recede because of the drugs he's taken. His grandmother, Opal, comes in to give him a guitar.

At first, Orvil does not play it, but one day when he is feeling the effects of his pain medication, he starts playing. Orvil realizes he might be developing a substance use disorder. He knows that his mother also experienced substance use disorder and remembers using a needle to use her substances when he was a child. He felt that substances gave him feelings he could not otherwise access, so he keeps taking them and playing the guitar, which feels like a language he is just beginning to learn.