This piece is terrific. I'd sit in my car to hear the end of it. Teachers will play it for their students in school.

The narration is precise and in some places poetic without being pretentious or unreal. The use of five different narrators who speak as Rogelio helps to push the story forward. Later, when Rogelio has died, the the five voices seem to speak for Rogelio's friends and family, and we understand more clearly the shattering and scattering after a death occurs.

Some of the writing has the impact of a punch. When, for example, the now-dead Rogelio wonders how he could have become a painted outline on a street "for moms to roll over with their baby strollers," you feel the enormous pain and waste of this death, and the waste seems all the more tragic because the youth who tell this story are clearly aware of how quickly the meaning of their lives can disappear.

However, the final song of the piece, a Dire Straits "Brothers in Arms" with its "every man has to die" lyrics, seemed a little too pat for this much more complex and thoughtful analysis of a death. That's the simple answer that this otherwise rich, complex, and real piece avoids in every other part.