An eponymous tale of personal ethical crisis stemming from an anonymous tale of personal ethical crisis

The first three places I searched for her stolen bicycle were the poorest neighborhoods I could think of within a mile of our house. Two of them I had lived in as a child. My mind was flooded with the faces of people who were not criminals, and the faces of those who were. Some I had known had never stolen; some had stolen in the absence of hope; some, in the absence of hope, had forgotten it and stolen out of habit.

As wrong as it felt to go there first, I also knew that it made sense.

But in the grand scheme of justice, even those who have forgotten hope can never steal enough to tip the scales against a world, a society, that steals the fabric of their humanity from them; a society who asks for the tired and the poor, saying all are created equal, without ever treating them so.

And so I scoured the neighborhoods of the disadvantaged in a selfish attempt to keep hope alive.

Somewhere.