At the Bethlehem High School, A Teacher is asking if anyone knows what a mutant is. No-one answers so the teacher picks on Jared for an answer. Jared answers the question with a quotation from Webster's dictionary. Jared tells his story to the reader. He has always felt different, but he doesn’t think there is anything wrong with him. He scored straight A’s since starting school and had always studied. He has even skipped three grades. The only friend he has is Kate Cooper, who sits by him in class. He has read many books but cannot understand why Kate likes him.
Kate and Jared are walking home from school, when Jared gets hit with some snowballs. Kate defends him, against Duncan 'Dunk' Sebast, who teases Jared, thinking him to be a mutant who can mindread, and that’s why he always gets the answers right. Dunk is about to throw more snowballs at him but Kate stops it, before they leave to walk home.
Jared gets home and his dad is in the garden shooting tin cans. He thinks that his dad is the only person who hates him more than Dunk. His father asks if he got the frozen dinners from the store like he asked. Jared forgot and said he would after he got changed. His father points his gun at Jared and says to get them now. Jared goes to the Dairy Mart, picks up the food, and goes home to his father watching TV with a beer in one hand and his gun in the other. Jared goes to his room and types the names of his bullies; dunk, josh, nelson, mike. He thinks that the coolest revenge would be if he ran off to work for a big company with Kate while Dunk ends up pumping gas. But that is before things change and he becomes a hero.
The next day, the teacher hands out report assignments. Dunk gets Nelson to distract Kate, while he asks Jared if he’ll do his report for him. He just wants an average grade, so not to arouse suspicion. Jared agrees, and Dunk makes his friends lay off him. He works on the report to make sure it was just what Dunk wants. When Jared hands the report to Dunk a couple of days later, one of Dunk's friends pushes past Jared and Dunk tells him to watch what he is doing.
A couple of days later, the teacher gives out the next report assignment, and after leaving class, Jared sees Kate and Nelson kissing on the stairs. He goes to the lockers looking for Dunk and asks Dunk to get Nelson to lay off so that he might stand a chance. Dunk can’t believe what he is hearing and tells him to go away. Jared begs him and offers to do all his reports but Dunk smacks him in the face with a basketball and tells him that he doesn’t care. They decide to have a quick game of dodge ball with Jared.
Jared goes home and his father sees him as a bloody mess but doesn’t do anything. He types away on his computer and relieves an old memory of him and Kate. He tells the reader that he underwent some serious changes and lost it as he then remembers Nelson kissing Kate. Jared type one more name to the revenge list on his computer : kate. He remembers Kate saying goodbye.
The next day Kate and Nelson are talking with Dunk, Jared walks into the hall where they are standing and pulls out his father‘s gun, firing on the group of them. Dunk suddenly stretches his limbs to avoid the bullets but Jared keeps on firing. He finally hits Dunk, who falls to the floor. Teachers and students are staring in disbelief. They think that Dunk was a mutant and start saying that Jared saved them, but Nelson notices that Kate has been shot dead as well. Jared looks horrified and drops his gun. Jared is handcuffed and taken to a police car as they mark off the area. Jared thinks that his life had changed right at that moment, although he believes that it happened a lot earlier.
Back at his home Jared's dad is asleep in front of the TV, which is showing a News Flash of the school shooting.
