Prologue
Eighteen. The age of independence. The day that American teenagers wait for with baited breath to make the last of their adolescent accomplishments -- high school graduation, prom night, the last party of the summer before college, the last night spent doing illegal things before the law stated you were old enough to be considered an adult. It's the day that they wait for so that they can free themselves from the confines of childhood homes and wave goodbye as they fly towards unknowns with smiles on their faces. They wait for their last hurrahs and "look, I did it's". They wait for the "Oh my God, I'm gonna miss you's" and the "our parents can't tell us we can't come home after curfew anymore's". They have the whole world in the palms of their hands.
But I don't. I'm not like them. I'm empty handed, my high school diploma isn't on paper, it's more of a theory provided by a program within a "juvenile facility" -- that's what the state so kindly sugarcoats it as. I have no prom dress, no prom date, no night to remember. I have no aisle to walk down, no graduation cap, no gown. I have no home, no childhood, no parents. All I have to show for these last twelve years are a few ratty articles of clothing, a toothbrush, a hairbrush, my sketchbook, my pencils and 124.57 to my name. I shoved them all into my backpack. Beneath where all of that had lain a moment before was the only book I actually owned, a copy of The Catcher in the Rye. I only own it because one of the guards said I would like Holden Caulfield and gave it to me. I only got a few pages into it before I began to despise him. Some protagonist he was with all his defiance and anger and immaturity and complete foolishness. What did he really have to be angry about? He knew his true name. He had his siblings. He didn't have to see his mother's face in his memory at night and know that she didn't want him. I had to live with that. I was alone, unwanted and up until now, I was stuck. But no more. I pulled a sheet of paper out of my notebook and a pen before zipping my bag shut. I wrote.
"For the next person to stumble in here, you should know that you'll be kicked, punched, tossed around, ignored, ridiculed, laughed at and never taken seriously here. We're nameless faces, a bunch of brats wrangled together by the fact that nobody cared enough to give us somewhere to go or teach us anything that means something. We're 1,000 abandonments. But if you want to get through this in, at the very least, one piece, then remember one thing before you trash this: you are not stuck here forever. You remember that and you can do whatever you want, you'll be invincible in the end. The most satisfying and rewarding thing you'll ever do is walk out of here. It'll be the one thing that will make the difference because it'll be the one time in your life that you won't be left behind, because you'll finally get to abandon everything and everyone that never wanted you.
Never forget that."
I put the pen's cap back on before pocketing it and setting the note on the bed. I picked up the book from the top of the pillow and looked at the cover. It looked as if it had seen better days and was wearing thin. Weren't we all? Walking over to the small trash can, I tossed it in and after a few moments there, looking at it sitting in the bottom of the bin, I smiled.
"See ya, Holden."
I shouldered my backpack and walked out of the room, slamming the door shut behind me so that it echoed one last time. On my way out of the building, I breathed in the fresh air and made peace with the fact that I was going to get lost and I didn't want to be found.