Daniel Valdez loves skateboarding with his friend, Gracie. Sometimes he even wonders if they can be more than friends. Then Gracie’s mother kills her two children before turning the gun on herself. As grief counselors swoop into his high school and the whole community reels from the horrific deaths, Daniel drowns in his own pain and disbelief. What is his life without Gracie in it? As Daniel works through his grief, he’ll need to find a way to move forward without leaving Gracie behind.  

I brought this book for a flight, planning to read and review it for YAdudebooks. 

It’s got a strong start: poems telling the story of a high school girl, Gracie, who likes to paint and skateboard, and her friend Daniel, the narrator. She calls him Dez, but no one else does. They have a normal Friday evening doing tricks at the skate park and going home to hang out as her little brother, Abe, lingers nearby, wanting to be included.

And then.

I had planned to read this when I had time over the next few days, when I wasn’t working or doomscrolling or watching the broad selection of in-flight entertainment.

I had NOT planned to weep openly in seat 23F, more snot running down my nose than the snack napkin could catch.

I hadn’t planned to see, so vividly, the teenagers in my life I love so much, and remember the teenage me whom I love and hate and cringe at and try to forgive.

I hadn’t planned to finish it 45 minutes after I started.

This is a story about grief. It’s called Three Shots, and it’s not about tequila.

I wept for Gracie and Abe.

IRL recently, a teenage boy was shot when he went to pick up his siblings and knocked on the wrong door. I wept for him.

My close friend died last month. I wept for him. We didn’t skateboard together, but we did hike up a mountain as the cancer collapsed one of his lungs and poked out of his belly strangely. “Hey Matt, feel this.” A marmot snuck up behind him and made him jump six feet.

I got to say goodbye before he passed.

Dez doesn’t get that chance with Gracie.

The bureaucracy of support swarms in to help—teachers are lenient and grief counselors are available and students who barely even knew Gracie charge out in front of the microphones and cameras to talk about how horrible it all is.

And Dez is numb, because of course he is. And he’s angry, because that’s what it feels like.

That’s.

What.

It.

Feels.

Like.

This book bleeds directly from the vein of sorrow that I have, that you have, springing from a world drowning in grief. It understands that when you feel like this you don’t always want to read another goddamn happy ending book where maybe the hero has a trial or two but they’ll get through it with rainbows and the power of friendship. This book understands that you have every reason to mistrust everyone who’s trying to help you because what do they know, and fine, I’ll go to the appointment with Kyle the therapist and see what he’s got to say, who cares, but he’d better not tell me it all happens for a reason.

And it’s true and it’s real and it’s raw and it’s true.

And I’m not going to say there’s a happy ending, even though there is, because that’s not why I want you to read this book.

I want you to read this book because for a brief moment it sucked the poison from my body. It stared down the grief that is so easy to ignore or numb or procrastinate and it said here, let me hold this for a bit. For 45 minutes, as the guy next to you watches Top Gun and the flight attendants try not to ask if you’re okay, I’ll hold this grief for you and I’ll let you cry for Gracie, for Abe, for the girl from Teribithia, for Trey, for Joel, for Bob, for Leah, for Van, for everyone you’ve outlived in your short breath of a little life, for everyone who needed more time.

Take the time. 45 minutes. Take the time. And be held.

-Matt Gill