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me.
    “Empowered means you feel powerful,” I say.
    “Well, yes, that’s obvious,” he says. “But how do you obtain that feeling of power? And what do you do with your power after you’ve found it?”
    “I don’t know,” I say.
    He smiles. I can see all thirty-two of his teeth.
    “I can show you,” he says.

Three
    S UDDENLY, THE PRETTY WHITE boy is my best friend. Maybe the only real friend of my life.
    We talk for hours. He understands me. He’s only two years older, but it seems like he’s lived for two thousand years.
    I fall in love with him. Not romantically; it’s not about sex or anything physical like that. No, this kid is some kind of Jesus. I know it’s silly. And I know this kid doesn’t even like or respect Jesus—or Allah or Buddha or LeBron James or any other God. But I really get the feeling this white kid could save me from being lonely. I bet he could save the whole world from being lonely.
    When I tell him my mother is dead and my father is invisible, the white kid says, “Santayana says there is no cure for birth and death so you better enjoy the interval.”
    When I tell him I’m an Indian, he says, “I’m sorry that my people nearly destroyed your people. This country, the so-called United States, is evil. And you Indians were the only people who fought against that white evil. Everybody else thinks we live in a democracy. Everybody else thinks we’re free.”
    “Indians have never been free,” I say.
    “Exactly,” he says. “Do you know what Teddy Roosevelt said about Indians? He said, ‘I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indians are dead Indians, but I believe nine out of ten are, and I shouldn’t inquire too closely into the case of the tenth.’ How can it be a democracy when presidents talk like that?”
    When I tell him I like to start fires, he says, “It’s wrong to burn good things. If you want to set fires, you must burn down bad things. Remember, revolution is not about spontaneous combustion. The true revolutionary must set himself aflame.”
    When I tell him that I get lonely, he says, “The individual has always had to work hard to avoid being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high for the privilege of owning yourself.”
    “Who said that?”
    “Nietzsche.”
    He amazes me. I’ve never known anybody, especially a kid, who can talk like him.
    “You’re so damn smart,” I say. “How many books have you read?”
    “All of them,” he says.
    We laugh.
    And he hugs me. I’m not afraid of him. I’m not afraid that the cops might see us hugging. I’m not afraid of myself for hugging him. I’m a fatherless kid who wants another teenager to be my father.
    This pretty boy gets out of jail before I do, but he promises me he’ll come rescue me from wherever they send me.
    I hate my country. There are so many rich people who don’t share their shit. They’re like spoiled little ten-year-old bullies on the playground. They hog the monkey bars and the slide and the seesaw. And if you complain even a little bit, if you try to get just one spin on the merry-go-round, the bullies beat the shit out of you.
    I get so angry sometimes that I want to hurt people. I dream about hurting people. About killing them. I’ve always had those kind of dreams.
    I have this recurring dream where I’m attacked by this gang of black men. They’re punching and kicking me, and I think I’m going to die. But somehow I get to my feet and turn into a raving maniac. I tear those black guys apart. I kill them and go cannibal. I rip open those black guys’ bellies and chests and eat their livers and lungs. I break open their skulls and eat their brains.
    Sounds racist, right?
    But I don’t think I’m a racist. I measure men by the content of their character, not the color of their skin, and I find all of them are assholes.
    A couple years back, this kid psychiatrist told me I have