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again.
    “What’s funny this time?” he asks.
    “Your name is Guns,” I say. “That’s a really stupid name.”
    It’s his turn to laugh. “My name isn’t Guns,” he says. “My name is Justice.”
    We laugh together.
    “That is a corny-ass name,” I say. “Where’d you get it?”
    “I gave it to myself,” he says. “But I wish I’d been given my name by Indians. You guys used to give out names because people earned them. Because they did something amazing. And it was the old people who gave out those names: the elders, the wise ones. I wish the wise ones were still here.”
    I think of the great Oglala Sioux warrior Crazy Horse, who was given his name after he battled heroically against other Indians.
    Yes, Indians have always loved to kill other Indians. Isn’t that twisted?
    I think of how Crazy Horse was speared in the stomach by a U.S. Cavalry soldier while his best friend, Little Big Man, held his arms. I think of the millions of dead and dying Indians.
    “Do you know about the Ghost Dance?” I ask.
    “No,” Justice says. “Teach me.”
    “It was this ceremony created by the Paiute holy man Wovoka, back in the eighteen-seventies. He said, if the Indians danced this dance long enough, all the dead Indians would return and the white people would disappear.”
    “Sounds like my kind of dance,” Justice said.
    “Yeah, but it didn’t work. All the Ghost Dancers were slaughtered.”
    “Maybe they didn’t have the right kind of music.”
    “Yeah, they should have had Metallica.”
    Justice and I laugh. And then he stops laughing.
    “Did you ever try to Ghost-Dance?” he asks.
    “Nobody’s Ghost-Danced in over a hundred years,” I say. “And I don’t think one person can do it well enough to make it work. I think you need all Indians to do it.”
    “Well, I think you’re strong enough to Ghost-Dance all by yourself. I think you can bring back all the Indians and disappear all the white people.”
    I want to tell Justice that the only Indian I want to bring back is my father and the only white people I want to disappear are my evil foster families.
    I guess Justice doesn’t realize that a successful Ghost Dance would make him disappear, too. But maybe he doesn’t think he’s white. Or maybe he thinks he’s invincible.
    “The thing is,” Justice says, “what if this Ghost Dance is real? What if you can bring back your parents if you dance?”
    “I don’t have rhythm,” I say.
    “Be serious,” he says, and flashes the pistols at me. “What if you could resurrect your parents with these? Would you kill a white man if it would bring back your mother?”
    Jesus, what a question.
    Justice lets me think about my answer for two or three minutes, but I can’t say yes or no. I don’t know what I would do if I knew that killing someone would bring my mother back to life.
    Then Justice says he’s hungry, so he hides the pistols again and we go on a food quest, rummaging through supermarket Dumpsters and restaurant trash cans.
    For two weeks, we hunt for food during the night and talk during the day.
    When we talk, Justice lets me hold the real pistol. We take the bullets out of it, and I practice pulling the trigger.
    Click, click.
    Then we tape up newspaper and magazine photos of people we hate, like George W Bush and Dick Cheney and Michael Jackson and that British dude from American Idol, and I practice shooting at them with the empty gun.
    Click, click, click.
    Then we go up on the roof of the warehouse, and I practice shooting at cars driving by on the freeway. And at people walking the streets down below us.
    Click, click, click, click.
    Some nights, Justice and I go out with the paint gun, hide in dark places, and shoot people.
    The thing is, when two kids jump out of an alley and point a gun at you, it isn’t like you’re going to think, Oh, it’s just a paint gun.
    Nope, you’re going to think, Oh, shit, two kids are going to kill me!
    So, man, oh, man, do I hear some