School had been easy for me. I aced all my tests from English to math to social studies. Part of me didn’t want to, but I couldn’t resist answering questions I knew the answers to. I read my textbooks and I understood my lessons, but I rarely did my homework, which was enough to keep my grades down and prevent me from being loved by any of my teachers. And I continued to hide my love of books. Books filled with history, fantasy, and politics—I adored them all . . . I loved escaping into other people’s worlds, other people’s dramas, other people’s minds. But the only ones who knew about my passion were the local librarians, who delighted in giving me their recommendations but never bothered to learn my name. They liked books better than people too.

I kick aside a discarded beer can as I consider the littered path that’s led me to this point in my life.

Shortly after my sixteenth birthday, my foster family took me to see their son perform a one-man show. I remember sitting in that tiny theater listening to their son launch into one pointless tirade after another. To this day, one-man shows annoy me.

But that night, as I sat in the audience, it occurred to me that there was a parallel between this fledgling actor and me. This college kid was verbally beating himself up in his one-man show. But me? I was fighting a one-woman war.

I was all alone on my little battlefield and I was killing . . .

. . . and I was dying.

Ahead of me is a single lightbulb mounted on the wall under a folded-up fire escape. I stand in front of it, noting how it casts a welcoming light on the gang insignias scrawled beneath it.

I look down to the end of the alley and see a man walking toward me. I recognize the gait. It’s Lander.

I step out of the light.

The first time I saw Lander, he was on TV; testifying at my mother’s trial. I was ten; he was almost twenty-one.

The second time was by accident and I wasn’t quite seventeen. I saw him outside HGVB Bank. I had been living in a shelter for homeless teens for almost three months and, coincidentally, I had been working at a used bookstore near the bank’s offices. I was saving up my pennies, even performing a little better in school. I was looking for new ways to survive.

When I saw him that time he was standing with his father and Sean White. They were all jovial and appeared to be very close.

At that moment my mind started to spin.

I knew Lander from the trial.

I knew White from the arrest.

I knew Edmund Gable from the time he had urged my mother to publicly fight for Nick Foley . . . a few weeks before she found Nick’s body.