i remember going to the mall, the odd assembly of stores packed tight, robbing kids of their beepers because we knew someone who could tune them up and resell them. i remember smoking in between subway cars, flicking open my butterfly knife and cutting the rubber seal to the conductor’s booth, announcing stations somewhere between here and hell. i remember chasing down the two muggers who snapped off our chains in the bronx and pounding the head of the one we caught into the sidewalk until it was wet. i remember firing my first gun, a .22 raven off in the dark of forest park, not hitting anything but wishing there was something to catch the bullets in between the trees. i remember running across queens boulevard and someone saying, it’s him, it’s him, and we had guns drawn down our sides like mad men, then suddenly, when the guy at the pay phone looked at us, we stopped abruptly, turning away, it ain’t him, it ain’t him. i remember learning they finally snatched up into a cargo van the kid that had stabbed me and that they broke both of his arms. i remember the rage and the clear detachment, the grief and the guilt, and the curious sense we were all toeing a very dangerous line and at any time it could have gone either way.