Summary

Chapter 11 shifts ahead several years. The narration states that a now adult Elwood is living in New York City. He arrived in 1968 and managed to make a meager but sustainable living while earning his GED. While taking his GED classes, he met a woman named Denise, who taught English as second language in the next room. They began dating. Elwood starts a small moving company. His social and political views are adamantly anti-establishment. He still has mental and physical scars from his time at Nickel. His back still sometimes aches due to the physical trauma inflicted by the beatings there.

Chapter 12, shifts back to Elwood and Turner’s time at Nickel. Elwood learns the various ways of leaving Nickel, the first of which is serving one’s judge-administered sentence (or aging out on one’s eighteenth birthday.) The second way is having one’s...