Summary

Joaquin struggles with entering the "white-hot space that he had spent years trying to avoid" (252). Overpowering Adam makes him feel powerful, but he recognizes that too much power could make him "the bad guy" (252). When his sisters catch up to him, Joaquin tells them the story of "The Buchanans," and why he frightened himself by acting aggressively. He says that he was adopted once by a family when he was twelve years old, but that he could not bring himself to call them mom and dad. After the adoption was announced, he was starting fights with his parents and foster siblings, except for his new baby sister, Natalie. One day, during a tantrum or "meltdown," he picked up a stapler and flung it across the room, hitting a two-year-old Natalie on the head and knocking her over. His adoptive father threw Joaquin across...