“When had his back been broken? When had his seventeen-year-old passion been snuffed? Was it his professor’s words? Or was it the hundreds, thousands, millions of side-eyed glares and breathless sneers, the looks that promised a beating, a killing, if he only waited around for the pleasure. The news that told him every day he was worth less than all others. He was expendable. He wasn’t worth saving. His life was measured in statistics, in timescales and chances and tsks and sighs.”