He has a plan, and he has a note.

The plan is as follows:

He is going to go to the library and destroy as much as he can. He is going to rip up books and throw explosives at the shelves and hit chairs until they break, and it will be fucking cathartic, but more than that, it will be something that people might notice and remember even if they don't know who he is. He is going to put his note and Tommy's mana crystal into the container Eret made, the one that can't be destroyed or moved. He's going to cut himself and smear blood on it, partly so that mals will come but partly in the hopes that the people who matter will notice and look inside. And then he's going to stay past curfew.

The note reads:

It's time for Chekhov's gun to go off.

The scholomance was built with the motto to offer sanctuary and protection to all the wise-gifted children of the world. I wanted that too, once. But I don't think it's possible anymore. The thing that I worked towards doesn't exist, and it never will. As Eret said when he betrayed us: It was never meant to be.

This was going to be my great unfinished symphony. Now it will be forever unfinished.

He feels... Lighter, as he walks, but also jittery, somewhere between afraid and excited. He laughs a little, to himself, and then more and more. It feels weird. He's come so close so many times already; this is his seventh or so last day alive. He's confident this time, though. Nobody around to stop him, no Tommy or Alex or Toby. Only himself.

The stairs to the library are longer than usual, but he counts the steps, makes a point of believing very hard in the exact specific finite distance, and he reaches the top. It's the same with getting to their spot; the aisles stretch and stretch, putting more and more books between him and where he wants to go, but instead of trying to run he stops, looking at all the spines, picking out the rarest ones to take off the shelves and tear into confetti. "I'm just going to keep doing this until you let me make progress," he tells the school very firmly, and suddenly the shelves are a more normal length again.