as he broke free, as soon as he punctured this elastic placenta, the thudding in his temples, the scrapes of teeth and burns of facial hair on his knuckles, the tremors of concussive shock against skulls and jaws were given to silence. All that flickered was the moving image of his fury. Flashes of contact with the human skin. The way blood always sprinkled in mysterious constellations. The way he couldn't stop. Each clap of knuckle to the cheek was like a sudden, irrepressible dream, only faster and brighter. And warmer. A vision so powerful and true, a recollection so primal, that when he finally lost control of his hands, there was no mistaking it. He remembered this student. He knew him. He finally recognized his squalid brown face. He saw him in the Jolan District of Fallujah in 2004, his head wrapped in a spotted towel, aiming an RPG at the guys from the 2nd Mechanized amid the worst of operation "Phantom Fury." No, no it was in Tikrit. That's right. That's where he saw him, planting an IED on the side of the road with two other Hajis. Or maybe, maybe it was the cousin back in Anbar, yes, the one they got intel on, the one whose wife they shot twice in the chest. No, that's not it. It was the cousin's neighbor—it had to be—the one they gutted with bayonets and left bleeding in a house full of children. Fitz heard him screaming, "Please, stop! I'm sorry! I am sorry!" But he couldn't tell whose voice it was or where it was coming from, or where he was himself. He couldn't see or feel much either, other than this wetness, a slush of blood and mucus somewhere at his knees, and his hands covered in it. "Please! I'm sorry. You don't have to fix anything! I am sorry!" But it was too late. It was as though something inside him, some ravenous beast, something which held its breath for years, had finally come up for air. And in a flash, this tingling modicum of ecstasy roared out of him, expanding in all directions. "My god, no! Please! I am sorry!" the voice cried. But this was it. This was the freedom he fought for. Incipient and pure. Like being born.

***

The cops never cuffed him. There were just two of them when they came—an obese, ginger mustached policeman who yawned with an open mouth and a Hispanic female officer so young and tiny Fitz wondered if NYPD had to tailor a uniform just for her. Fitz was sitting in an empty classroom, Bernie and Tito beside him, their hands on his shoulders. "You're okay, buddy," they kept saying. "Everything's okay now." Out of the open door he saw a brown-skinned kid sitting up against the wall, a group of students gathered around him. Fitz wondered what happened. But then the two officers showed up and waved him over. And when the three of them left the Dodge Hall building the cops just pointed toward their police car, parked on Broadway near the campus gates, and told him to follow them. Fitz didn't think this was strange until things started to come back to him and another memory suddenly sifted through—an after-school prank he played with four other boys on their history teacher, Mr. Falco. Together they lifted his Geo Metro and moved it across the street. When Mr. Falco didn't find his car where he left it, he called the Police. Just two minutes later they came from everywhere. Five cars. A dozen officers. A Delta-style raid on five sixteen year-old boys. Before Fitz could fight back they clicked his wrists together and smashed his face against a concrete handball divider. As it turned out, moving a vehicle twenty feet wasn't just a prank—it was also grand theft auto. But now, after nearly killing an Ivy League student with his bare hands, Fitz walked uncuffed twenty feet behind a three hundred pound man and an eighty pound woman who joked about yesterday's pizza.