The echo of the voice came again: You have to remember me.

He walked to the doorframe. Carved into the wood with Papa Z’s trusty pocketknife were the boys’ height markers. The undertaking had lasted one summer month, until it became clear that given turnover and growth spurts, the notches would chew up the entire jamb.

Evan ran the pads of his fingers over the nicks and the carved initials next to them.

There at the top, the highest by a good six inches, were three letters: CVS.

Charles Van Sciver.

Then Ramón. The others descended in a cluster, the initials overlapping, turning the wood into a crosshatched mess.

Way down at the bottom, as far below the scrum as Van Sciver’s was above, there was a solitary notch.

It has to be you.

Evan had to crouch.

There it was, the E still holding on after the years, though the initial of his original surname had long been effaced.

How small he’d been. He’d known it back then, of course, but he’d never let himself recognize it. He’d been too busy scrapping and fighting for his life, for his sanity, for a way out. He had neither size nor strength, so he’d had to rely on grit and tenacity. Only these he could control. Everything else he had to ball up and cram down deep inside himself.

It has to be you.

That nick, set apart so far below, made it undeniable. His vulnerability. His powerlessness. His loneliness.

What had he hoped for back then? What kind of future had he dreamed of when he’d stared up at the lightning-fork crack in the ceiling? Had it been visions of Wilson Combat 1911 pistols and encrypted virtual private-network tunnels and trauma surgeries to patch himself back together? Drinking vodka at his counter, sharing each night with a wall of herbs and a city view? Sleeping inside a penthouse prison cell of his own making?

He’d been desperate enough to grab the first ticket out. Had he stayed behind, he’d be in prison by now, long dead, or jackaled out from the streets or drugs. Jack Johns had saved his life as surely as when he’d swooped in on that Black Hawk. And yet Evan hadn’t looked back since climbing into Jack’s dark sedan as a scared twelve-year-old kid. Hadn’t reconsidered whether the tooth-and-claw skills that had gotten him out of East Baltimore were still the best ones to carry him forward. When he’d driven off with Jack, the world had yawned open to him like a summer day, but a part of him had been put on pause, as stalled as a stuck DVD.

He fought his way back to that scared little kid, pried open the rusty hatches, and looked at what was locked inside. It was hard to acknowledge, harder yet to feel.