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themselves tumbled under a wave of bodies.
    Just then a few of the stage lights flashed on, and the screaming voices of the crowd in the video were replaced with an even louder rush of music, as Fitch, Holmes, and April started to play.
    The music came fast, Fitch and Holmes bent over their guitar and bass, grimacing. In the back corner of the stage, just below the sheet, eyes wide in terror, April hammered an unsteady beat. Fitch’s voice thundered over the speakers. The kids had moved away from the wall, watching with open mouths.
    On the screen flashed a fractured collage of images: crowds and banners and dancing protesters. The images flickered as fast as Holmes’s bass, returning once every twenty seconds to the continued unfolding of the opening scene.
    Some of the kids around Myles were shouting at the screen, their faces flush and alive. This was the passion Myles had been talking about. This was what he’d been trying to explain to McGee. They needed to recapture the pleasure, the joy. He looked around again. She still wasn’t here.
    He had to remember this scene, every detail; he would have to describe it to her in a way she’d understand. He’d have to tell her everything she’d missed.
    The kids around him were raising their fists. He saw clenched teeth, sharpened lines across their brows.
    And that was when he realized he’d been wrong. This wasn’t joy at all. The kids’ mouths were twisted and angry. Myles glanced at the screen. They were delighted by the trampling of the police, thrilled.
    “No,” Myles said out loud, but nobody heard him. No one could. “No,” he said again. They’d gotten it all wrong.
    By now Myles had seen the video at least a hundred times. But even so, watching the events unfold on the screen was like reliving them all over again. He felt himself clutching the camera. He felt himself running.
    Then the screen went black.
    The video cut off so suddenly, so unexpectedly, that it was as though the ground had given way beneath him. Myles thought he might fall. The room had changed, become just a room. He could see the kids around him felt it too. But then they began to move to the music. The band played on.
    Myles was the only one left standing against the wall. He raised his arms and waved. He needed to tell them—Holmes, Fitch, April. Anyone. They had to do something to fix the video. But Holmes stared vacantly out at the audience. Fitch was gazing at his shoes. April’s eyes looked as though they were closed.
    Still waving, Myles made his way across the floor, bumping into the scattered crowd. He was halfway to the stage when he felt someone touch him—a tap on his shoulder.
    “They can’t see you.” There was a guy standing beside him with wild, curly red hair, dressed in a winter coat. The guy was older than the kids, but Myles wasn’t sure if he was supposed to know him, if he was one of those people from back in the day.
    The guy pointed toward the ceiling. “The lights,” he said.
    Myles kept going. He waved until he’d nearly crawled up onto the stage, and then it was Fitch, not Holmes, who saw him first. Fitch followed Myles’s finger. He saw the blue screen. He nodded. But he showed no sign of having understood. There were too many wires on the stage, too many plugs. Myles looked for the remote control, but it was too dark.

    Between songs, Holmes got the video running again, but by then the pool players had returned to their game, the bartender to the bar, the others to their tables and their drinks. The narrative had been broken. Myles was afraid only he remembered how it all began, the original embrace, the innocent expression of hope. The kids had missed all the beauty—what might have been. They’d missed the whole point.
    Myles reached into his pocket and took out his notes. He’d have to explain to them all the things they’d misunderstood.

Three
    The moment he opened the door, Darius heard the garbled sound. It was five A.M. At that hour, no