Sharp explosions popped to his right.

Someone was shooting at him. Nathan jerked violently at the sound and reflexively clapped a hand over his mouth to keep from screaming out. His instinct was to bolt out of his hiding place, but a voice deep inside told him to stay put.

If they were shooting at you, you’d be dead now, he reasoned. His heart pounded in his temples.

By pressing the left side of his face further into the mulch and closing his right eye, Nathan could see through the bottom of the boxwood that served as his shield against the world. There were no gunmen. Just a bunch of kids, five of them about his age, setting off firecrackers in the street. Ladyfingers, it looked like. As Nathan watched, the tallest of the kids lit another pack and dropped it casually onto the curb, moving back a couple of steps for safety. Another extended ripple of explosions followed, sending sparks and paper dancing randomly along the pavement in the dark.

Nathan’s mind played back a scene of his father and him lighting off their own ladyfingers out in front of their own house. The scene in his head had all the clarity and detail of a Panavision movie. He remembered his dad assuring him, “They won’t put you in jail for playing with firecrackers, son.”

No, just for getting beat up.

A thousand thoughts and pictures suddenly flooded Nathan’s mind. Life sucked. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right how his dad went off to heaven and left him in hell, alone with Uncle Mark; how people treated you like shit when there wasn’t a grown-up around to help you; how everything you said was a lie just because you’re a kid, and every lie a grown-up told was the truth just because they’re a grown-up; how sometimes you had to kill…