Flight: A Novel

When Zits opens his eyes, he’s back in the bank in downtown Seattle. He has the two pistols in his coat—the real one and the paint gun. He remembers how he’s “supposed to kill for Justice” (141). He has returned to his body and feels all of his loneliness, anger, and ugliness again. He wonders if he’s ever really left his body.

Zits begins to wonder who he should shoot. He looks at a little blue-eyed, blond-haired boy standing beside his mother. She, too, has blond hair and blue eyes, and is beautiful. She smiles at her son, then she smiles at Zits, showing him with her smile how proud she is of her little boy. Zits waves at the child and the boy waves back. Zits quietly hates the boy for being so loved. He closes his eyes and tries to “step inside [the boy’s] body,” but he cannot be that little boy (141).

Zits turns and walks out of the bank. The sun is shining, but he wishes that it were raining, so the rainwater could cleanse him. He thinks about his first day of kindergarten. His mother walked him to the school, six blocks away from their apartment.