My blood ran in them; my face looked out of them; and I had precisely as much claim on them as a passing spectator, which is to say none, which is to say exactly the amount I had chosen thirteen years earlier at a kitchen table in Queens.

Every feature that marked them as mine was also a receipt for what I had thrown away.

I could not even take comfort in their strangeness, because they were not strange — they were mine, unmistakably mine, and that was the whole unbearable point.

The head of the jury took the podium.

“The community project designed by Hugo and Atticus, together with the flawless logic of their execution, shows an understanding of people and of reality far beyond their years.

They humbled us today.” The heavy gold medals went over their necks.