“Stop faking for attention,” he said, loud enough for everyone to hear, loud enough for the neighbors three houses down to hear. “The act is getting old, Marcus.”

I lay there on the sun-baked concrete of my aunt’s patio in Naperville, Illinois. My wheelchair was tipped on its side two feet away, one wheel still spinning slowly in the July heat. My right leg was twisted at an angle that sent lightning bolts of pain up my spine—the kind of pain I’d learned to breathe through over the past twenty-six months, the kind that made my vision white out at the edges.