Born a Crime

fence and knew exactly how to squirm through. Head, then shoulder, one leg, then twist, then the other leg—done. I was through. ...

Fuck. I ran to Teddy’s house in Linksfield. No Teddy. Monday morning I went to school. Still no Teddy. Fuck. Now I was worried. ...

Fuuuck. I eavesdropped on their whole conversation from the other room. From the start my mom was certain I was involved. “Well, ...

“No, we asked Teddy, and he said it wasn’t Trevor. He said it was some other kid.” “Huh...okay.” My mom called me in. “Do you kn ...

occasion, I suppose.” For a moment my mom thought she’d caught me red- handed, but Teddy’d given me a solid alibi. I went back t ...

walked to the office and waited anxiously on an uncomfortable wooden bench outside the door. Finally the principal, Mr. Friedman ...

“What?” I played the whole thing again. “Teddy? Oh, no. What for?” “For shoplifting. He’s been expelled, and he won’t be coming ...

“No.” “Okay.” He stood up and walked over to a television in the corner of the room. “Trevor, the police have video footage of t ...

They even had it from multiple angles: Me and Teddy reaching through the gate. Me and Teddy racing for the door. They had the wh ...

realized: Teddy was dark. I am light; I have olive skin. But the camera can’t expose for light and dark at the same time. So whe ...

at least suspect that it was me. They didn’t. They grilled me for a good ten minutes, but only because they were so sure that I ...

just started running through a list of all the white kids she thought it could be. “Is it David?” “No.” “Rian?” “No.” “Frederik? ...

me! Can you not see that that’s me?!” But of course I didn’t. And they couldn’t. These people had been so fucked by their own co ...

South Africa has eleven official languages. After democracy came, people said, “Okay, how do we create order without having diff ...

Of the African languages, Zulu has the largest number of native speakers, but we couldn’t keep that without also having Xhosa an ...

common your tongue, the less likely you are to learn others. The more fringe, the more likely you are to pick up two or three. I ...

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A YOUNG MAN’S LONG, AWKWARD, OCCASIONALLY TRAGIC, AND FREQUENTLY HUMILIATING EDUCATION IN AFFAIRS OF THE HEART, PART III: THE DA ...

By the end of high school I’d become a mogul. My tuck-shop business had evolved into a mini- empire that included selling pirate ...