I remember waking up when everything went white. At first, I hid under the covers, hoping that whatever it was, it would go away. But it didn't. Nothing happened. It took me a few minutes, but I crawled out of bed and tiptoed across my room to the window. I looked out, knowing that everything should still be dark. This was still early in the morning, by the way, so I should have seen little more than the streetlight by our driveway and the little patch of ground it illuminated. Instead, there was just the blinding light that spilled into my room. It was the sort of light you could see even when your eyes are closed.
I thought I could see something else. I thought I could see a shape in the light, moving. Maybe not, though. I was just a kid then. I could have imagined that part, but the light was real. I know it was.
I thought about waking my parents then, to show them what I was seeing, but I was too scared. I guess I somehow thought I'd be in trouble. I know that doesn't make sense now, but it did ten years ago. Like I said, I was just a kid. Besides, if I did see something in the light, it would have been my moment, something revealed just to me. It was a secret I could keep, and something that no one could ever take from me.
I tried to go back to sleep after that, but it was no use. The light was still shining, and I lay restless in my bed the entire night, just staring at my window. Then I remember the sunrise. I remember running back to my window and looking out and seeing the world as it was supposed to be. The sun was up now, and there was no other light. The world had gone back to normal. I wondered if anyone else had seen it. If anyone else had seen the thing in it. I think I finally went back to sleep after that, after everything was normal.
In the morning, I asked my parents if they'd seen anything. They hadn't. They didn't even seem to care about why I was asking. I guess, as with most of the other strange questions I asked and statements I made, they just chalked it up to my overactive imagination. I was a smart kid. I still am, I guess. But it seems like every time a smart kid says something meaningful or odd, the parents always go on about how profound and creative their child is, and leave it at that, never caring to delve deeper into why the kid's saying those things or asking those questions.
I had to go looking for answers on my own. That's not an easy thing to do when you can barely read, though. Of course, the first thing I thought was that aliens had landed. At the very least, I was old enough then to know what aliens are, and that was the best explanation I could find. I waited up the next night, hoping to see the light again, but it never came. I told myself that once I was old enough, I would find out what had happened. I would spend days in the library reading old books that had the exact answers I was seeking, but that never happened. Eventually, I forgot about the light and the thing inside it. It became a story that I'd swap with friends whenever we would talk about strange things. I began to question what I'd seen, like whether there had been a light at all.
My parents split up the summer after I turned 10, so I had bigger things to worry about, like where I was going to live and what Christmas would be like. I ended up staying with my father, who told me that my mother had moved to California, the other side of the country and what seemed like a lifetime away from North Carolina. Maybe she didn't go there at all. Maybe my father just told me that because it seemed like a place I could never reach by myself. Whatever the reason, I never saw my mother again. I got birthday cards with no return address from time to time, but for the most part, she was out of my life.
My father was a good man. I say was because he died two years ago, in November, just before my 12th birthday. He kept me because he had a steady job and a stable life, even if he did turn to drinking more after Mom left. After the wreck, after everything was settled, I tried to get ahold of her, but I suppose she still didn't want me. It's funny, though, because I don't have any bad memories of her. Maybe she has some of me.
Anyway, after Dad died, I went to live with my aunt and uncle. They were both nice and caring, but I never really fit in with them or at school, either. Their house wasn't home to me, just a place I was staying until something better came along. They worried about me, naturally, because that's what good people do, so they sent me to a doctor, a therapist. I didn't mind him at first. He's the one that suggested I start writing. He told me I should keep a journal as a way to harness my creativity, so that's what I've started. I think maybe I could be a writer someday.
For the most part, I was honest in my sessions with Dr. Reynolds. I told him how I felt about my dad dying and my parents' divorce and how I didn't feel at home anymore. I even told him about the light I saw, though I made sure to point out that I was a kid with a wild imagination at the time. After all, there was no point in convincing him right off that I was crazy. That's why I left certain things out, like the thing in the light and the fact that I had begun seeing things.
I don't mean that I saw full-blown hallucinations. It was like seeing something in the corner of my eye, something that just didn't belong. It wasn't appearing from thin air, either. It was like normal, everyday people and objects were somehow different, but only when I wasn't looking straight at them. See, if I'd told Dr. Reynolds that, I thought he'd have me locked up in an institution in no time or, at the very least, on so many medications that I wouldn't be able to write anymore.
So I had writing to keep me busy, and when I wasn't doing that, I was reading. I felt that those were the safest things for me to do, especially if I was slowly going crazy from the corners of my eyes. I read every book on the reading list for school, way before they were even required. Then I started reading books no kid my age would touch, even if their entire grade depended on it. Some of them flew way over my head, but I trudged through them. I suppose you don't see too many 14-year-olds reading James Joyce and Umberto Eco, yet there I was, in the library everyday with something equally complex.
I'm a slow reader, mainly because I like to take my time and make sure I grasp things as well as I can, but it's also because I like reading three or four things at a time and switching back and forth between them. I guess you could say it keeps the mind sharp. Not too long ago, I started getting into contemporary Asian lit, and I picked up a book called Kafka on the Shore by a Japanese writer named Haruki Murakami. I'm not very far into it, but it's about a 15-year-old kid, a boy just one year older than me, who runs away from home, knowing that he still has a mother out there somewhere. He buys a bus ticket out of town and spends his days reading in a nice, fancy library. It's good so far, and it's given me a lot to think about.
I figure that if a 15-year-old kid can make it on his own in Japan, even for a little while, why couldn't a 14-year-old kid do the same thing in America? So that's when I decided to run away myself. I'm a smart kid, or that's what everybody's always told me, anyway. I knew I could survive by myself, and that increasingly felt like something I had to do. I have more family out there, whether they want to see me or not. I still believe I can do something more with my life than linger here, where it's safe, but an uncomfortable sort of safety. I still believe I can find answers. And I still believe that I saw something moving in the light.
I thought I could see something else. I thought I could see a shape in the light, moving. Maybe not, though. I was just a kid then. I could have imagined that part, but the light was real. I know it was.
I thought about waking my parents then, to show them what I was seeing, but I was too scared. I guess I somehow thought I'd be in trouble. I know that doesn't make sense now, but it did ten years ago. Like I said, I was just a kid. Besides, if I did see something in the light, it would have been my moment, something revealed just to me. It was a secret I could keep, and something that no one could ever take from me.
I tried to go back to sleep after that, but it was no use. The light was still shining, and I lay restless in my bed the entire night, just staring at my window. Then I remember the sunrise. I remember running back to my window and looking out and seeing the world as it was supposed to be. The sun was up now, and there was no other light. The world had gone back to normal. I wondered if anyone else had seen it. If anyone else had seen the thing in it. I think I finally went back to sleep after that, after everything was normal.
In the morning, I asked my parents if they'd seen anything. They hadn't. They didn't even seem to care about why I was asking. I guess, as with most of the other strange questions I asked and statements I made, they just chalked it up to my overactive imagination. I was a smart kid. I still am, I guess. But it seems like every time a smart kid says something meaningful or odd, the parents always go on about how profound and creative their child is, and leave it at that, never caring to delve deeper into why the kid's saying those things or asking those questions.
I had to go looking for answers on my own. That's not an easy thing to do when you can barely read, though. Of course, the first thing I thought was that aliens had landed. At the very least, I was old enough then to know what aliens are, and that was the best explanation I could find. I waited up the next night, hoping to see the light again, but it never came. I told myself that once I was old enough, I would find out what had happened. I would spend days in the library reading old books that had the exact answers I was seeking, but that never happened. Eventually, I forgot about the light and the thing inside it. It became a story that I'd swap with friends whenever we would talk about strange things. I began to question what I'd seen, like whether there had been a light at all.
My parents split up the summer after I turned 10, so I had bigger things to worry about, like where I was going to live and what Christmas would be like. I ended up staying with my father, who told me that my mother had moved to California, the other side of the country and what seemed like a lifetime away from North Carolina. Maybe she didn't go there at all. Maybe my father just told me that because it seemed like a place I could never reach by myself. Whatever the reason, I never saw my mother again. I got birthday cards with no return address from time to time, but for the most part, she was out of my life.
My father was a good man. I say was because he died two years ago, in November, just before my 12th birthday. He kept me because he had a steady job and a stable life, even if he did turn to drinking more after Mom left. After the wreck, after everything was settled, I tried to get ahold of her, but I suppose she still didn't want me. It's funny, though, because I don't have any bad memories of her. Maybe she has some of me.
Anyway, after Dad died, I went to live with my aunt and uncle. They were both nice and caring, but I never really fit in with them or at school, either. Their house wasn't home to me, just a place I was staying until something better came along. They worried about me, naturally, because that's what good people do, so they sent me to a doctor, a therapist. I didn't mind him at first. He's the one that suggested I start writing. He told me I should keep a journal as a way to harness my creativity, so that's what I've started. I think maybe I could be a writer someday.
For the most part, I was honest in my sessions with Dr. Reynolds. I told him how I felt about my dad dying and my parents' divorce and how I didn't feel at home anymore. I even told him about the light I saw, though I made sure to point out that I was a kid with a wild imagination at the time. After all, there was no point in convincing him right off that I was crazy. That's why I left certain things out, like the thing in the light and the fact that I had begun seeing things.
I don't mean that I saw full-blown hallucinations. It was like seeing something in the corner of my eye, something that just didn't belong. It wasn't appearing from thin air, either. It was like normal, everyday people and objects were somehow different, but only when I wasn't looking straight at them. See, if I'd told Dr. Reynolds that, I thought he'd have me locked up in an institution in no time or, at the very least, on so many medications that I wouldn't be able to write anymore.
So I had writing to keep me busy, and when I wasn't doing that, I was reading. I felt that those were the safest things for me to do, especially if I was slowly going crazy from the corners of my eyes. I read every book on the reading list for school, way before they were even required. Then I started reading books no kid my age would touch, even if their entire grade depended on it. Some of them flew way over my head, but I trudged through them. I suppose you don't see too many 14-year-olds reading James Joyce and Umberto Eco, yet there I was, in the library everyday with something equally complex.
I'm a slow reader, mainly because I like to take my time and make sure I grasp things as well as I can, but it's also because I like reading three or four things at a time and switching back and forth between them. I guess you could say it keeps the mind sharp. Not too long ago, I started getting into contemporary Asian lit, and I picked up a book called Kafka on the Shore by a Japanese writer named Haruki Murakami. I'm not very far into it, but it's about a 15-year-old kid, a boy just one year older than me, who runs away from home, knowing that he still has a mother out there somewhere. He buys a bus ticket out of town and spends his days reading in a nice, fancy library. It's good so far, and it's given me a lot to think about.
I figure that if a 15-year-old kid can make it on his own in Japan, even for a little while, why couldn't a 14-year-old kid do the same thing in America? So that's when I decided to run away myself. I'm a smart kid, or that's what everybody's always told me, anyway. I knew I could survive by myself, and that increasingly felt like something I had to do. I have more family out there, whether they want to see me or not. I still believe I can do something more with my life than linger here, where it's safe, but an uncomfortable sort of safety. I still believe I can find answers. And I still believe that I saw something moving in the light.
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