Of course his thrill comes with new worries. What would happen if the police knew it was him? How many years would he spend behind bars? Swallowed up in a prison, disappeared from the world. The nerves that keep him awake at night, staring at the ceiling, are only calmed by more fires. Sometimes he will sit in his room and strike a match, just for a little taste of heat, a hint of power. A mere reminder of what he’s capable of. He’s seen the pictures in the papers—the dark husks and charred frames, the firefighters in their yellow helmets, the stern lines of their mouths.

He still follows the girl, too, though he doesn’t know what he wants from her. Maybe he wants to simply say he sees her. He sees her pain, which must feel like his when he thinks about his grandparents. The ache between his ribs. The sense that the city stole them, too; stole something he’ll never have back. He practices writing out the words, the ones that inch toward describing what he means. He writes I SEE on a scrap of paper. He tries to think of what else there is to say, but there aren’t any words that could protect him—he hopes I SEE will be enough. He folds it in half, then in half again, until it’s small, another secret he’ll keep close until the time is right.

He takes to carrying the scrap of paper in his pocket, and soon it becomes as worn and soft as the two-dollar bill. He follows the girl on her lunch break, sometimes through the parking lot. He follows her to the boardwalk again, where she goes to the red-haired girl. While she was inside, he told himself he’d give her the note and the bill that afternoon, in the bright glare of the sun. But he noticed another man standing just outside the door, waiting, listening, his eyes so pale they looked like glass. Something about the man scared Luis—the way he stood or cocked his head toward the doorway. As though he owned it all.

He goes for another one of his walks that night, a lighter in his pocket, still thinking of that man’s stare, the angle of his head, the strange smile that looked a little like a grimace. The buildings of the city are spread before him, like a buffet, but none of them have the right feel. Nothing calls to him, summoning him in the way he’s come to expect. He walks farther, alongside the Black Horse Pike, underneath the spotlit billboards featuring bright blue drinks, platters of seafood, or big-breasted women in their underwear, blowing on a pair of dice. How beautiful it would be to set one aflame, to see one of those garish, ridiculous signs ablaze, an island of fire high above the grass.