Light in the Shadows

I said dumbly, wanting to get the hell out of there now that I had made a complete and total idiot of myself.
     
                  I gathered my bag of books.  “I’ll see you around,” I said dismissively, ready to leave.
     
                  “Maggie.  I’ll make sure he gets it.  I promise,” she called after me, though now I wasn’t so sure I wanted him to have it.  But I suppose it was too late now. 
     
                  I left Ruby’s shop and got into my car.  Why couldn’t I leave well enough alone? 

C HAPTER F IVE    
    - C LAY-
     
     
     
     
     
                    It was my birthday.  I wanted to be giddy.  Excited even.  But I just felt numb.  It had been a long time since birthdays really meant anything to me.  I seemed to recall a party when I was five, complete with scary clowns and pony rides.  Maybe it was the clowns that ruined me for all future birthdays.  Because those fuckers are scary.
     
                    Despite my self-imposed birthday gloominess, this year was different.  Because today I turned eighteen.
     
                    Yep, eighteen.
     
                    I was finally a socially mandated adult.  Able to vote, buy tobacco products and porn.  I could join the military and open a checking account. But these typically exciting rites of passage meant shit to me.  Sure, it was great and all but I wasn’t going to rush out and buy a pack of Camels and a Playboy (not like I could go anywhere anyway).  Nope, this birthday was about something even sweeter.
     
                    This particular day was all about freedom.  Because for the first time I was free.  Free to make my own choices.  My own mistakes.
     
                    Free to live on my own terms.
     
                    For the rest of my life freedom would taste like birthday cake.  And I was good with that.
     
                    Control was well and truly mine.  I had never really allowed myself to think about what I would do when that magical day arrived.  And here I was, minutes into my adulthood and I felt almost overwhelmed with the possibilities. 
     
                    This all felt like a dream.  And dreams had a way of crashing down around you.  So I always tried to stay away from dreams.  They were nasty business for a guy with no future.
     
                    But there was a time not so long ago when dreams and a future weren’t a ludicrous delusion.  And that had led to something one hundred times more beautiful.  And a thousand times more dangerous.
     
                    Hope.
     
                    Hope.  That thing that got you up in the morning and made living that much easier.  Hope.  The indescribable emotion that had the power to level you when it was taken away.  Because mine had died a tragic death at the hands of my own selfishness and fear.  And even as I tried to reconcile my guilt and shame about ruining the one good thing I had, I still felt it like a sharp pain in the gut.
     
                    But today that pain twisted into something else and I recognized it for the amazing thing it was.
     
                    Hope.
     
                    It was there, hanging out in my heart with a polka dotted party hat on, waiting for me to realize that perhaps it had never really left me.
     
                  I woke up to Tyler blasting The Beatles “Birthday” accompanied by some of the worst dance moves I had ever seen.  And coming from a guy with two left feet, that was saying something.
     
                    I sat up and wiped the sleep out of my eyes, trying to wrap my brain around the image of my normally shy and introverted roommate, gyrating around the room completely out of time to the music. 
     
                    “What the hell are you doing?” I asked, laughing.  Tyler pumped his fists over his head and jumped on the desk chair, singing at the top of his lungs.
     
                    Not thirty seconds later, there was an authoritative knock on our door and I shot Tyler a look as he scrambled to turn the music down.  Jonathan, the aide on duty poked his head in the door and gave us a stern look.  Jonathan was probably in his late twenties and already balding, poor guy.  But