Basically every two-bit libertarian, free-range asshole you'll ever meet is just waiting for someone to talk them in default cop. - Jonathan Lethem

Fifth grade was fourth grade with something wrong. Nothing changed outright. Instead it teetered. You'd pushed futility at Public School 38 so long by then you expected the building itself would be embarrassed and quit. The ones who couldn't read still couldn't, the teachers were teaching the same thing for the fifth time now and refusing to meet your eyes, some kids had been left back twice and were the size of janitors. The place was a cage for growing, nothing else. School lunch turned out to be the five-year-plan, the going concern. You couldn't be left back from fish sticks and sloppy joes. You'd retain at the least two thousand half-pint containers of vitamin D-enriched chocolate milk.
Two black guys from the projects, twins, were actually named Ronald and Donald MacDonald. The twins themselves only shrugged, couldn't be made to agree it was incredible.

Don't try to figure me out," I said. "It doesn't work—I've tried it myself.

Where did you come from?" asked Omidon.
"I was exiled to the margin," said Wendy sourly.
"For what reason?"
"Why is anyone ever exiled to the margin? For threatening the center.