It would be easy to stay angry.

Dark memories sometimes cause 19-year-old Jaylin Howard to close his eyes, sink his chin to his chest and shudder.

From behind, his mother wraps her arms around him where Jaylin sits in his wheelchair in their Independence, Mo., home, and together they just breathe.

On this day in April, one of his teachers who is also the director of Star School — LINC’s online education program — had come to visit, bringing with her the royal blue graduation cap and gown that Jaylin will wear later this summer when he receives his high school diploma.

The graduation honors show where Jaylin is now in his life. That achievement is what Jaylin, his teacher, Amy Holliday, his mother, Shalinda Howard, and his grandmother, Shawnett Wright, gathered to celebrate. All in praise of a young man with a high school degree that has lent confidence to his plan to become an entrepreneur, a dealer in real estate, a manager of properties.

But the moment also retraces the fresh and ongoing struggle in Jaylin’s journey.

“I was angry,” Jaylin said, after raising his eyes again.

“It was a struggle . . .,” Shalinda Howard said, “. . . all the things he’s been through.”

An accidental shooting by a relative when Jaylin was 16 sent a bullet through his right arm, into his side and to his spinal cord where it took away the use of his legs.

This happened just four months after Jaylin had earned his release home from a state residential center in the juvenile justice system.

One of the people who came to see him as he lay in the hospital in December 2022 was a friend he’d made while in the system — Ricky Monroe. Jaylin and Ricky had rallied around each other, spurring each of their ambitions to show the character and leadership that would get them out of the state system and fuel their plans for the future.

“When you’re doing it right,” Jaylin said, “you know you’re doing good. You know you’re going to be on your way home.”

Ricky, though he was a teenager like Jaylin, “was a grownup to me,” Jaylin said.

Then, six months later in June 2023, Ricky was struck by gunfire that erupted outside of a house party in Kansas City. He was murdered at the age of 17.

“He’s got a lot on his mind,” said Jaylin’s grandmother, Shawnett Wright. She has watched all this pain, she said, and “I want him to be comfortable. I want him to have a chance.”

It was while he was in the juvenile justice system, Jaylin said, that he began to put his energy into his education. First, performing in schoolwork was a key to getting back home as soon as possible. But it was also important in getting to whatever he could do next, he said.

A case manager at the Division of Youth Services facility shared options for Jaylin to continue his education on his release. He could seek admission to high school, or enroll with the online program, Star School, and work with its team of certified teachers.

He opted for Star School, he said, because he liked the support it offered and the flexibility of working online.

He couldn’t have foreseen how important that flexibility would become.

In the fall of 2022, Jaylin was enjoying being back at home, doing well in school, getting a job at McDonald’s, getting back to the things he used to like to do, like joining friends at video gaming and bowling at Main Event and talking to girls.

He had come out of the juvenile justice system schooling with 11 high school credits, needing 13 more through Star School to attain the 24 required for a state high school diploma, and he was on his way.

But then he was shot. He went through emergency surgery at Centerpoint Medical Center in Independence, then months of treatment at Children’s Mercy in Kansas City. It would take some months to see a way forward again.

Holliday would check in, and she was also always available when Jaylin emailed her for help. Soon he was earning high school credits again.

“We were flexible,” Holliday said. And then, to Jaylin, she added, “you’re learning about life now.”

He put together a transcript of mostly A’s and B’s — an outstanding GPA, Holliday said.

His success in school and his determination to work hard at physical therapy has Jaylin feeling great confidence.

“I can do everything but walk,” he said. “I’m going to see what I can do next.”

Shalinda Howard is proud of her son’s achievement and his ambition.

“Thank God he was able to get through school,” she said. “He hasn’t given up.”

Said Wright: “I’m so glad he got it done.”

And if Ricky could be here, Jaylin said, he knows he’d be proud of him too.

“He’d say, ‘You did it! You did it!’ “