“What’s the definition of THE?” The boy asked.

Definition of THE? Who gives a shit?

“It’s just a word that goes in-between things.”

“Look it up,” he commanded.

I did.

“The: The definite article in the… grammar of-“

“Stop. You paused. You have an ‘undetermined word’ in that definition. Define each word.” And so began the word chain. If I didn’t know one exactly, I had to look that up and so on and so on. Word after word after word. Definition after definition. Then I had to back track and keep going. It got so complicated I had to take notes.

The room was filled with dumpsters. At the bottom of nine steps, the floor was alive with cockroaches. Flies were buzzing around everywhere. Their sound would have been deafening if you could hear them over the fire. In the center of the room was a large furnace with pipes leading up into the ceiling. Even from back here I could feel its heat. But it wasn’t the bugs or smell that held my attention.

Two kids with shovels were scoping garbage off the floor or out of the dumpsters and tossing it into the furnace pulsing with heat. They were covered with soot, smeared from their constant perspiration. Flies were crawling all over them. They looked like coal miners with bubonic plague. I even saw some flies crawling out of their noses, but it was their faces that chilled me. Dead eyes like the kids in Ethics. My throat felt cold, like I’d swallowed refrigerant. This place was hell.

I thought they were joking when I was told that masturbation was forbidden at Lamia.

“Come on,” I said. “How are they going to enforce that?”

Oh, but they did.

A few months into 8th grade puberty hit me hard and aside from the physical abnormalities I became very introspective and depressed. I didn’t understand why I felt this way. It felt as if I knew something about the world that nobody else did or could. I would see people going about their lives and just wanted to shout at them, “Stop! Don’t you even think about what you’re doing? You have a life and you don’t even know it!” I felt separated from everybody.

I’d seen Nazi war reels and always wondered how everyone in Germany just went along with it. Every kid around me was letting themselves be told what to think and what to do because they were afraid. Afraid of what could happen to them if they didn’t.

“See this guy?” Istvan pointed to a car that had just pulled out in front of us from a parking lot. “He could have waited until we’d gone by but see how slow he’s going? Now watch this.”

Istvan moved over to the left lane and passed him.

“See how fast I had to go to get around him? He sped up, you see?”

Istvan flipped the guy off. I tried not to smile. He was so convinced that you almost wondered if he was right.

Why would James just go over like that? The only thing that made sense was that he had been brainwashed. I mean, really brainwashed. I thought that was just a movie thing but if anything was, this was it. I fingered my reminder in my pocket. Don’t forget this is a war, Leif. If you forget you’ll end up like James.

“I caught a tube!”

It was my first and it was everything I’d ever hoped it could be. Just then the sun came up over the northern flank of Mauna Kea. The breeze was so cool on my face. I knew it, even then, that this was the best moment of my life.

I giggled with excitement. My first bomb. It was beautiful. I couldn’t wait to see Rob’s charred guts splattered on Lamia’s walls. Too bad it wouldn’t hurt. Maybe it would only rip his limbs off and he would be crippled for life or paralyzed. Oh, I was just too fucking good!

Like an ice sculpture shot with a rifle, the image I had of Katrina shattered and fell to the ground cutting me with its millions of sharp edges. Nothing seemed real. Nothing made sense.

Fuck this godforsaken place! I am not a stalker! I am not a thief! I am not accident prone! I am not a delinquent! And I will not be a gas station attendant! I am not! I am not!

I began to loosen my grip on the bomb.