Truth be told...

I like the premise of this story, and it has a lot of promise, but needs some work to get going.

Characters:

The lead character and his dad start off well. They both have a complex emotional back-story, and the lead character's emotions at the start of the flashback are coherent and interesting. His dad's speech is a little expositionary, as reported (see below on the lack of dialogue), and seems like it should be more supportive in this moment, rather than dredging up the past.

The other characters don't seem as well-formed - mostly they seem to be there only to persecute the protagonist, and are lacking any characterisation or motivation of their own. I think this is partly an inevitable result of the first-person POV, which is fine, but I felt like they needed more space than they are given to be realistic - otherwise they just feel like cyphers.

Plot:

The premise is an interesting twist on quite a classic tale of persecution and revenge - I personally think it falls on the right side of cliche, given the decent back-story, but YMMV. I think the initial idea works well up until the persecution really kicks in - this, I felt, was far too fast and concentrated.

Essentially, the entire meat of the plot happens in one afternoon and evening of the kid's very first day of school. This didn't seem plausible to me, as opposed to, say, a bad first day, leading to a worst first week, leading to the eventual climax - this would also give more time to establish characters and motivation. Not to say the single-day descent into madness couldn't happen - but it feels to convenient and contrived as it is.

The climax itself I liked, up to the point the dad returned. Until then the emotions felt very real, and the idea of the protagonist going from fear to rage felt right. But after the shooting of the lead jock, things didn't hang together as well - it seemed far to neat for the dad to be able to take the fall. What about all the physical evidence on the protag - blow-back, blood? What about the other two kids witnessing him brandishing and firing off the shotgun, and presumably they would still be in earshot of the fatal shot.

So the dad's cover-up definitely needs more attention - and there were also some anomalies after the police show up. Why didn't they question the protagonist and take his statement? Why, later, did the dad plead "not guilty" if he wanted to take the fall? Again, this is probably all doable - but it needs work to make it realistic.

Writing:

I think you could look again at some of the stylistic choices you made in the writing. The lack of any dialogue at all, or any character names, makes it hard to relate to anyone but the lead character. The lack of dialogue especially means the story doesn't flow as well as it might. On the other hand there are lots of ways to use these tricks to your advantage, but as it stands I don't feel like they are working hard enough to help the story.

Otherwise the writing style is good - I liked the sense of trepidation and hope leading up to the lunch-room incident, along with the climax. But there is a lot of random punctuation throughout the text ("Wiping tears from: my eyes"), and not enough where it should be. There are also a few strange mis-spellings of common words/phrases ("one flew over the coo coos nest" = cuckoo's; "Love they neighbor" = thy) which need to be fixed.

The last few paragraphs are confusing - they hint at a bigger mystery not yet revealed, but give no hint as to what that might be. This needs to be made clearer, as otherwise it's a frustrating note to leave the reader on.

Overall there is a lot to work with, but right now the story doesn't come together in a satisfying way.

I get what you weretrying to do with this and I think it could bereally improved with some trimming and re arranging of style. This is a good story idea that has the chance to be very poignant. But I was taken out of the story a few times by these stylistic choices:

You do a lot of telling and not showing.

' The morning continued in this blissful manner. Class after class, simple introductions of myself and new peers, coupled with small amounts of homework. No name calling, no shoving, no pushing or beating. Finally I seemed to relax and wonder, is it all over?'

paras likethis and the following bits about the bully and the principal could be a lot moreeffective if you toook your time wi them, describe th events with dialogue and action instead of telling us all these things happened. Especially with the principal, make it a conversation between them snd the protagonist instead of explainingg what happened--otherwise its hard to get engaged with the action.

similarly there are issues of pacing, i see you taking yourtime wi the bus ride and the build up tosc but the final scene seems rushed, as does developing the bully-- we dont know what they look like or talk like, except for limited snippets and that theyre captain of the football team. more time needs to be taken  with things crucial to the plot

I guessin general this story could be better with more careful selectioon of which scenes to draw out and show people the interactions between characters,and which scenes to omit or shorten. Thiis kind of thing comes with practice though and the story shows a lot of potential, keep at it!

Tom