And a man with a tablet had undone it in thirty seconds, not out of cruelty exactly, but out of something worse — the simple, thoughtless calculation that of everyone on that plane, we would be the easiest to move, the least likely to make trouble, the ones whose dignity cost the least to spend.

He was right that I wouldn’t make trouble.

He was wrong about what it cost.

Chapter 2 — Who I Am

My name is Isaiah Langston.

I’m forty-one, a widower, a single father, and a veteran who came home from his last deployment without most of his left leg below the knee.