—Sí, Mami, a head.

—I did not sacrifice my life so you could get a GED. She wanted a real, certified diploma from her, one she could frame in the hallway among all the other accomplishments she hoped they would achieve.

Don Chan sat down and was surprised to see Bobby.

—Where’ve you been? Don Chan asked.

—Traveling, Abuelo. Seeing the world.

—That’s good to travel. It’s the best way to learn. I’m from China, you know.

Bobby sat on the front steps of his building. Overwhelmed, he tried to take in the world that he took for granted before juvie, in homeopathic doses. A few drops at a time. The questions: Why? How? Who? Where? The suggestions: Why don’t you…Can you…Shouldn’t you…The worrying: Why are you out so late…Why do you look so pale…Eat something…Drink something…The demands: You can’t just stay home all day without working…Mami, aren’t you going to make Bobby do shit around the house, too…Watch after your grandfather and sister. You’re the man of the house now. The smells: burned sugar. If Esperanza was making flan, that meant she was in a good mood or she needed a favor from someone. Pepper steak. Grilled onions, bloody steak, tossed in a pan. All he could eat. Ice cream. Shot up to his forehead and coated his stomach, preparing him for a nap. Had it always been so sweet? Remote controls. Jeans. Choices. Girls. Quepasó Street was full of them. Winking, smiling, ignoring, flirting. Girls who had become women while he was gone. The new crop that was too young to know about what had happened to him. Beer. Weed. The nudie channel. The ability to go wherever he wanted, whenever he wanted. All his senses were tuning in, reminding him of the narratives tucked into his past. If he wasn’t careful, all of it would come at him too fast. He wished he could put all of it inside a computer screen. Cut and paste everything he was rediscovering into one file, the way he had learned to organize his computer exercises from the tutorials he finished in juvie.

—Computers are not that difficult, the instructor at the detention center told him. —Not if you take your time with it.

When he first worked on a computer, every button opened up a file, a layer, erased something he had worked on, and then the lost file became a mystery. He didn’t think he would ever figure it out. But when he started learning the computer programs, for the first time ever he felt he controlled something. He used to look forward to working on that keyboard. It was four hours a week. A reward for his good behavior. Four hours and Bobby’s fingers searched for a way to delete the people who irritated him and tab forward into a better place. And now that he was on the outside, he felt cap locked and bold. Everyone could see him: EX-CON. They assumed he was dangerous. That he had messed up his life in some irreparable way. There were no backspace or insert options to fix what had happened three years before. He needed an escape button to start over.