“I always lived in fear that someone would discover that I couldn't keep up.”

The novel's main character, Joey, is introduced in this excerpt. Joey is full of spunk, but he also has trouble focusing and controlling all of his urges—which sometimes leads him to make bad choices.

Felipe Morales' telling account of an encounter with a blind woman on the streets of Washington, D.C. was recorded for This I Believe. The NPR project features brief personal essays in which people from diverse backgrounds discuss how their values affect their daily lives.