I stopped boxing and threw myself into my school work. I didn’t know much about life outside of South Philly, but I knew the only way out of that neighborhood was to go to college, and the only way to go to college was to get a scholarship to pay my way. My mind had always held on to concepts like a magnet, but before, it didn’t seem to matter. Now it was everything.
For three years, I studied harder than I had ever worked at anything, not because I liked school, but because it was my way out. I was angrier than ever, but I learned how to keep it in check—too many fights in school would ruin my chances. Every night, I pounded the speed bag in my basement until my hands bled.
Physics came as a complete surprise. It was simple and beautiful. It explained the world in clear lines of power, motion, and speed. It wasn’t the violence of it that attracted me; it was the unequivocal nature of it. So much of the rest of my life was complicated. Physics was simple. It was how the world ought to be.
We’d been learning about Einstein, a relative nobody who, in his spare time as a patent clerk, came up with four papers that turned the world upside down. I thought if he could do that, then I could at least get myself out of Philadelphia. In the spring of my junior year, I applied to Princeton, Berkeley, and MIT. I was lucky enough to match perfect grades with a political academic environment that made it desirable to accept applicants from low-income neighborhoods. I was accepted, with full-ride scholarships, to all three.
By then, Uncle Colin was in prison, and my mother hardly knew I was alive. I left them behind without looking back, packed most of what I owned in an old suitcase of my father’s, and took the bus to Boston, Massachusetts.
MIT was mostly what I expected—it seemed like everyone I met was either a rich American kid with a home in the Hamptons and a chalet in the Alps, or else the favored, oldest son of a politically connected family in Korea or China or Vietnam. Nobody’s background was anything like mine, and it was hard to make friends. But the physics! Everything I loved about it was right there, codified in perfect, uncluttered symbols. Torque and inertia, linear motion and angular displacement, force equals mass times acceleration, decisive action with equal and opposite reaction. It made sense. It meant the world made sense.
The professors treated us like we were the cream of the new generation. There was a spirit of excitement at MIT, no matter where you were from, a sense that we were at the center of the scientific world, a specially chosen elite, given this great opportunity to study with the best in the field. I’d never felt that way before, and I soaked it up. I loved physics more every day.
The anger receded into the background, like a pit bull chained in the shadows. I still worked out with the bags in the gym, but I didn’t talk much about my background. I wanted to leave it behind. I was a scientist now, someone who believed in the inherent order of the universe. The chaos was behind me.
The gun went off with a deafening blast. The coffee mug Elena was holding exploded into shards. I didn’t think; I just reacted. I leaned toward Brian, pivoting my hips and throwing my weight into a right cross as hard as I knew how. The punch knocked him backward, sending him sprawling in a jumble on the floor. I looked at Elena.
She still sat at the table, eyes wide and mouth slightly parted, her face ashen. Her mug lay shattered in front of her in a pool of coffee.
“Are you hurt? Elena!” My ears were ringing; I could hardly hear the sound of my own voice. I rushed to her side. She was still sitting in the chair, breathing, stunned but apparently unharmed. I couldn’t believe it. I thought at first the bullet must have deflected off of her coffee mug, but no—in the wall behind her, following a direct line through the middle of her chest, there was a hole punched into the drywall. The bullet had gone straight through her.
“Call 911,” I said.
She didn’t move.
“Elena!”
She jolted, as if startled awake, and fished the phone out of her pocket to make the call. Brian hadn’t moved from the floor. He was still breathing, but the punch had dazed him.
“Yes,” Elena said into the phone. “Someone… a… a man just fired a gun at me in my house.”
Brian stirred and looked at Elena. His eyes focused suddenly, and he shook his head. “What are you doing? Are you calling the police? Don’t do that.” He looked at me. A trickle of blood was running out of his left nostril. “Please!” he said. “Look at her—she’s not hurt! The bullet diffracted around her, just like I told you! I was just showing you.” He stood shakily to his feet.
“Right here in the kitchen,” Elena said. “Please hurry.”
“Please, put the phone down,” Brian said.
I stepped between them. “Get out of my house.”
“Jacob,” he said, his voice pleading. “I need your help.”
I advanced on him, fists raised, heedless of the gun he still held in one hand. He turned and started yanking on the door that led to the backyard. It didn’t budge. He fumbled at the lock. I didn’t help him. It was all I could do not to hit him again. Finally, he managed to turn it and yanked the door open. With one last backward look of reproach, he ran out barefoot into the snow.
The stairs thundered with descending feet, and Claire, Alessandra, and Sean burst into the room, all talking at once.
“What was that sound?” Claire asked.
“Did he shoot a gun at you?” Sean asked, eyes wide.
“It’s all right,” I said. “He’s gone now. Go and get dressed. The police are coming, and I’m sure they’ll want to talk to you, too.”
Elena was shaking. I put my arms around her, and she clung to me. I felt her slim neck and delicate bones and stroked her hair and thought about what might have happened. About what my life would be like if she were dead. I felt the pit bull in the shadows, tugging at its chain, wanting to get free. I wanted to hurt someone. I had it under control, for the moment, but I knew that if Brian came to my house again, that control wouldn’t last.
Elena didn’t let go, and neither did I, and we stood that way until the police arrived.
CHAPTER 4
The prosecution’s first witness was Officer Richard Peyton, a big guy with a thick neck, red blotches on his face, and blond hair cropped so close to his scalp that you almost couldn’t see his receding hairline. He climbed the short stairs to the witness box, stiff in a freshly cleaned and pressed uniform and holding his cap, which he set on the rail next to him.
The court officer held out a Bible, and Peyton placed his hand on it. “Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?” The officer rattled it off like it was one multisyllable word.
“I do,” Peyton said.
Haviland advanced. “Officer Peyton, what is your profession?”
“I’m an officer for the Media Police Department.”
“How many years have you been a police officer?”
“Eight years, give or take.”
Next to me, Terry Sheppard slouched, apparently bored with the witness, and played with the end of his mustache. I figured it was a pose, meant to communicate to the jury a contempt for the witness, but I wasn’t sure. He did this all the time. He might actually be bored.