He's a poor boy- empty as a bucket.

Empty as a bucket, with nothing to lose.

-from "Diamonds on the Soles of her Shoes," by Paul Simon.

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He was nine, going on ten, when he found the resolve he had been lacking for all of his years. There was no earth-shattering realization, no epiphany, just the realization that, barring some sort of divine intervention, the situation wasn't going to change, so it was he that was going to have to.

It was a shocking thought, the first time that he had it. Up until then, he had believed that following their rules was, ultimately, what would gain him acceptance, or at least some degree of leniency in the beatings that he incurred on a daily basis. If I am good, he had always convinced himself, things will change for the better. It all seemed reasonable; if he did what they said, they would be pleased and he would be spared their anger and, eventually, what he had come to recognize as their resentment.

It only took nine years and ten months to figure out that this was not the way things were going to go, in his universe, anyway. It was an altogether novel thought to him- not a genius, for sure, but in no way unintelligent, when he realized that there might be things out there for him, things that, staying cooped up in the house as his parents had, since forever, ordered him to do all afternoon after school, he might have been missing out on.

There was a whole world out there, he realized. And there might be other kids, just like him, in it.

It was April, one of the first days that it was turning toward being warm, rather than cool, when he heard voices outside of the house. Boys, kids his own age.

"You threw it, Pony," a boy whose voice he recognized from school called out.

"I ain't goin' in there," another voice said. "Go get Darry. He'll get it."

He sat up on the ragged old couch and pulled back the curtain, peeking his head out, and immediately closing his eyes against the bright sunlight. Eventually, he felt his pupils even out and opened his eyes slowly, feeling them shrink down to the size of pencil points. He had forgotten how bright it was outside; his house was always dark, which was fine with him- there wasn't much to look at, anyway.

One of the boys remained, standing in the middle of the road. He kicked rocks from the middle of the road off toward the side. He wasn't one of the kids that gave him a hard time at school, but he never took any interest in him, either. He watched him- the carefree way in which he kicked the rocks, willing them toward the curb, but accepting it just as easily when they had other plans. He wondered if there was anything else going on in the boy's mind, or just…kicking rocks? How must that be? he wondered. His mind had always been filled with so much more. Too much, for a boy his age.

A car approached slowly, behind the boy in the road, and he noticed how he didn't run toward the side of the road, he just waited until the driver leaned on his horn and sauntered over to the side of the road, never giving the driver so much as the courtesy of a glance. The car sped by, the male driver hurling curse words out the window at the kid as he drove by. But the kid never flinched, didn't run. He just stared.

Nothing about that kid reminded him of himself. He would never have kicked the rocks in the first place, because maybe that would get someone upset with him. He would have run the second he heard that car coming, lest the driver be inconvenienced, in any way, by him, being in the way.

But this kid, he had a place in the world. He displaced rocks; he changed things. He didn't step aside for a complete stranger, deferring to someone he didn't even know, for fear of disapproval.

He stared out that window, looking at that boy, studying him. That boy wasn't even as old as he was, he was a year or two younger.

That's it, he decided. That's who I'm gonna be. He knew that being himself, the sheltered, scared, subservient him, was not who he wanted to be anymore.

And, with that thought, he set the first brick in the wall which would, until he decided it was good enough, grow higher and stronger, separating him from the others, his mother and father, who held him back, held him down, held him captive.

He decided, that day, that he wanted more.