Kendrick felt ten feet tall in his new sneakers . . . until four six-foot-tall kids jumped him and stole them off his feet. His nose was bleeding and walking home in his socks was painful, all resolved by this boy in glasses who gave Kendrick a packet of tissues he’d had in his backpack and the sneakers off his feet in exchange for nothing. Kendrick never saw him again, never got his name, but he didn’t care about that. Never getting his ass kicked again was the only thing that mattered.

That’s when Damien Rivas, once his classmate, now a proud dropout, made Kendrick strong. It took Kendrick one weekend with Damien to learn how to break the wrist of anyone who swung at him. Damien sent him out on the street, unleashing him like a fierce pit bull onto other unsuspecting high schoolers. Kendrick would walk up on someone, clock them, and lay them out in one hit.

Kendrick became a Knockout King, and that’s who he is today.

A Knockout King without a job.

A Knockout King with no one to hit, since his gang disbanded after their third, Peck, got a girlfriend and tried to live his life right.

A Knockout King in a kingdom of people who keep taunting him with their purposes in life, straight begging to get their jaws dislocated.

MATEO

10:12 a.m.

“I know I’m not supposed to have any more ideas. . . .”

“Here we go,” Rufus says. He’s riding his bike alongside me. He wanted me to get on that death trap with him. I didn’t do it before and I’m not doing it now. But I couldn’t let my paranoia keep him from riding himself. “What are you thinking?”

“I want to go to the cemetery and visit my mom. I only know her through my dad’s stories and I’d like to spend some time with her,” I say. “That phone booth graveyard did a number on me, I guess.” My dad normally visited my mom alone because I was too nervous to make the trip. “Unless there’s something else you want to do.”

“You really wanna go to a cemetery on the day you’re gonna die?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m game. What cemetery?”

“The Evergreens Cemetery in Brooklyn. It’s close to the neighborhood where my mom grew up.”

We’re going to take the A train from Columbus Circle station to Broadway Junction.

We pass a drugstore and Rufus wants to run in.

“What do you need?” I ask. “Water?”

“Just come on,” Rufus says. He wheels his bike down the aisles and stops when he finds the bargain toys. There are water blasters, modeling clay, action figures, handballs, scratch-and-sniff erasers, and Legos. Rufus picks up a set of Legos. “Here we go.”

“I’m confused. . . . Oh.”

“Gear up, architect.” Rufus heads to the front counter. “You’re gonna show me what you got.” I smile at this little miracle, one I doubt I would’ve thought to grant myself. I pull out my wallet and he flicks it. “Nah, this is on me. I’m paying you back for the Instagram idea.”

He buys the Legos and we head out. He puts the plastic bag in his backpack and walks beside me. He tells me about how he always wanted a pet, but not like a dog or cat because his mother was deathly allergic, but instead something badass like a snake or fun like a bunny. As long as both snake and bunny never had to be roommates, I would’ve been cool with it.

We reach the Columbus Circle subway stop. He carries his bike down the stairs, and then we swipe our way in, catching the A train right before it departs.

“Good timing,” I say.

“Could’ve been here sooner if we rode the bike,” Rufus jokes. Or I think he’s joking.

“Could’ve been at the cemetery sooner if a hearse carried us.”

Like the train we took in the middle of the night, this one is also pretty empty, maybe a dozen people. We sit with our backs to a poster for the World Travel Arena. “What were some of the places you wanted to travel to?” I ask.

“Tons of places. I wanted to do cool stuff, like surfing in Morocco, hang gliding in Rio de Janeiro, and maybe swimming with dolphins in Mexico—see? Dolphins, not sharks,” Rufus says. If we were living past today, I get the sense he’d be mocking the Deckers swimming with sharks for a long time. “But I also wanted to take photos of random sites around the world that aren’t getting enough credit because they don’t have cool history like the Leaning Tower of Pisa or the Colosseum, but are still awesome.”

“I really like that. What do you think is—”

The train’s lights flicker and everything shuts off, even the hum of the fans. We’re underground and we’re in total darkness. An announcement on the overhead tells us we’re experiencing a brief delay and the system should be up and running again shortly. A little boy is crying as a man curses about another train delay. But this feels really wrong; Rufus and I have bigger things to worry about than getting somewhere late. I didn’t observe any suspicious characters on the train, but we’re stuck now. Someone could stab us and no one would know until the lights flash back on. I scooch toward Rufus, my leg against him, and I shelter him with my body because maybe I can buy him time, enough time to see the Plutos if they manage to get released today, maybe I can even shield him from death, maybe I can go out as a hero, maybe Rufus will be the exception to the Death-Cast-is-always-right record.

There’s something glowing beside me, like a flashlight.

It’s the light from Rufus’s phone.

I’m breathing really hard and my heart is pounding and I don’t feel better, not even when Rufus massages my shoulder. “Yo, we’re totally cool. This happens all the time.”

“No it doesn’t,” I say. The delays do, but the lights turning off isn’t common.

“You’re right, it doesn’t.” He reaches into his backpack and pulls out the Legos, pouring some of them into my lap. “Here. Build something now, Mateo.”

I don’t know if he also believes we’re about to die and wants me to create something before I do, but I follow his lead. My heart is still pounding pretty badly, but I stop shaking when I reach for the first brick. I have no clue what I’m building, but I allow my hands to keep aimlessly laying down the foundation with the bigger bricks because there’s a literal spotlight on me in an otherwise completely dark train car.

“Anywhere you wanted to travel to?” Rufus asks.

I’m suffocated by the darkness and this question.

I wish I was brave enough to have traveled. Now that I don’t have time to go anywhere, I want to go everywhere: I want to get lost in the deserts of Saudi Arabia; find myself running from the bats under the Congress Avenue Bridge in Austin, Texas; stay overnight on Hashima Island, this abandoned coal-mining facility in Japan sometimes known as Ghost Island; travel the Death Railway in Thailand, because even with a name like that, there’s a chance I can survive the sheer cliffs and rickety wooden bridges; and everywhere else. I want to climb every last mountain, row down every last river, explore every last cave, cross every last bridge, run across every last beach, visit every last town, city, country. Everywhere. I should’ve done more than watch documentaries and video blogs about these places.

“I’d want to go anywhere that would give me a rush,” I answer. “Hang gliding in Rio sounds incredible.”