Here's how it starts: Vardaman is chased by two older boys and he jumps into the elevator shaft and reaches for the steel cable and catches it, seven stories high, but his hands are slipping. He can barely hang on. The elevator is broken because the building is in Chicago, the Cabrini-Green projects, and because the older boys run the building no one wants to venture inside to fix things. The steel fibers rip into Vardaman's fingers and he falls, bruised but alive, one more escape. Not everything fits a label. Vardaman is smart and he does well in second grade. His mother checks his...

Here's how it starts: Vardaman is chased by two older boys and he jumps into the elevator shaft and reaches for the steel cable and catches it, seven stories high, but his hands are slipping. He can barely hang on. The elevator is broken because the building is in Chicago, the Cabrini-Green projects, and because the older boys run the building no one wants to venture inside to fix things. The steel fibers rip into Vardaman's fingers and he falls, bruised but alive, one more escape. Not everything fits a label. Vardaman is smart and he does well in second grade. His mother checks his...