Julian McNaughton set out on his bike early in the morning. By car, the trek to the prison was very short, but on two wheels, the trip was over an hour long. Today, Julian was running late, and he couldn't afford to miss visitation hours. He pedaled feverishly down a well-trafficked road until it came time to turn right onto the long drive that would take him to his destination.

He chained his bicycle to a lamppost at the distant edge of the parking lot and walked, with his hands in his worn-through pockets, to the gates.

Someone on the inside buzzed Julian in. He proceeded through to the security checkpoint, as was his routine, and he encountered a familiar face.

"Hey, little man," said George as he waited for Julian to remove the ring on his left hand and the cheap, tarnished watch on his right.

"You gotta stop calling me that," Julian replied, only half-jokingly. "I'm almost six feet tall. I haven't been 'little' in years."

"But you're still a skinny fella," George teased. "You ever eat, son?"

"With that gut, I know you do!" Julian bantered, smiling for the first time that day as he passed through the metal detector to meet George on the other side.

George had been present at Julian's birth, a very lightly-attended event, by all accounts. Since he was thirteen years old, Julian had been visiting the prison as frequently as he could – once almost every week – and most times, he ran into his old friend.

"You outta school yet, kiddo?" George asked.

"Graduation's tomorrow," Julian replied.

"Your mom said last week you were Valedictorian. Congrats."

"Salutatorian," Julian corrected, "but thanks."

You're goin' to college, right?"

Julian shook his head. "Not my thing. I'll probably stay in town a while."

"Oh." George seemed quite disappointed. "Doin' what? Workin'?"

Julian had no response. He had already aged out of foster care, and his foster mother was impatient for him to move out of her house. With the question of shelter on his mind, Julian hadn't filled out a single application, neither for college nor for employment.

"I should go get in line," Julian said. "Don't wanna be the last one in."

"Sure," said George." "Have a nice visit."

The "line" to enter the visitation area was less an orderly queue and more a holding pen for those anxiously waiting to be permitted to see their incarcerated loved ones. There were very few others like Julian there. Many of the visitors were older men – the husbands and fathers of inmates – while others were mothers with their daughters' children in tow. Despite the large number of visitors, however, the line was relatively quiet; some who had presumably traveled for several hours for their visits seemed to be sleeping on their feet. A loud buzz roused them, and a click indicated that the doors to the visitation area had been opened. In his impatience, Julian stepped on the heel of the stocky, short-haired woman in front of him. She whipped her head around to shoot him a deadly look.

"Sorry," Julian mumbled, his eyes on the floor.

The woman grunted, and Julian followed her, from a safe distance, inside.

He scanned the room for his mother's face, his eyes darting from table to table until they finally found her. Had anyone been standing in his way, Julian might have bowled them over as he ran, in full view of the visitation officer, into his mother's arms.

Eileen McNaughton held her son close, pressing her head into Julian's chest.

"I'm so glad you came," she said, her short arms encircling Julian's torso and constricting his breathing. "I miss you so much."

"I miss you too, Mom," Julian replied, planting a kiss on the top of her head.

They sat down at the circular table, and it was as though no time had passed since they last saw each other.

"Look at you," said Eileen, extending her arm to ruffle the mop of wavy black hair that sat atop her son's head. "You're really not gonna cut this off for graduation, are you?"

"Nope," said Julian. "I've had it like this for four years. Why change it now?"

His mother smiled adoringly, creases interrupting the skin at the corners of her lips and eyes. "Have you finished writing your speech yet? You don't have a lot of time left."

Julian shrugged. "Nah," he said. "Things have been kind of... busy."

"How?" Eileen asked. "It's summer."

"It's just home stuff," said Julian. "No big deal."

Eileen frowned. "It's the foster family again, isn't it? I can't wait until you're out of there."

"Yeah," Julian agreed unenthusiastically. "Me, too."

"Julie, I'm so sorry I couldn't be there for you," his mother said. "I wish you and I could just have a place of our own, that I could send you to college, or at least... I wish I could do 'mom' stuff for you, you know?"

"I know, mom. It's okay," said Julian. "Don't work yourself up about it. Besides, we can do all that when you get parole, right?"

Eileen hung her head and sighed. "I didn't tell you because I didn't want you to get your hopes up, but..."

"Another hearing?"

Eileen nodded solemnly.

"What happened?"

"Same as every time," she said.

Julian was disappointed, but not surprised. He had hoped at one time that his mother would be released by the time he finished school, but now, he was afraid that she would die in prison.

"I just wish I could be there to watch you walk across the stage," said Eileen. "I wish I could hear that speech. I feel terrible that no one's going to be there for you."

"I actually meant to talk to you about that..." Julian wrung his hands nervously beneath the tabletop. "I was kind of hoping... well, I mean, I thought it might be nice to invite Dad, you know?"

His mother rolled her eyes. "You know why you can't see him, Julie," she repeated for the hundredth time.

"No, Mom, I really don't know," replied Julian, trying his best not to sound too impatient. "You won't tell me anything about him. You won't even tell me his name."

"And I hope you understand that that's for your own good. It's not like your father – if you can even call him that – it's not like he's just a deadbeat. If he knew about you..." Eileen trailed off. She seemed to have been distracted by something in her own mind; the look in her eyes was familiar, but nonetheless troubling. "He wanted a son more than anything," she continued wistfully. "I think he'd be ecstatic if he knew."

"I still don't understand," Julian said. "What exactly is the problem with me meeting him?"

His mother fidgeted, the anxious movements in her legs shaking the flimsy table. "A lot happened between he and I. I don't want to discuss it."

"But Mom," Julian complained, "this is important to me. It's not even about graduation, really. Its just..." He realized as he spoke that he didn't know how to phrase his thought without hurting his mother's feelings.

"It's just what, Julie?" she pushed. She always hated it when he didn't finish his sentences and left her wondering. "Why do you think it's so important that you know him? He isn't a good person, and besides that, last I heard, he's still in a mental hospital."

"I don't know," Julian admitted. He felt inclined to keep arguing, but he knew that it was a lost cause. "I guess it would just be nice to have family... you know, outside of here."

Eileen leaned closer to him, and her tone darkened. "There is nothing nice about knowing your father. Maybe other kids meet their biological parents, and maybe that works out alright for them, but believe me when I say that it won't work out that way for you. At best, he's very, very sick. He's out of touch with reality. At worst, though..." She seemed to lose her train of thought again. "I really shouldn't talk to you about it. You don't need to hear about what went on before you were born. Just promise me you won't go looking for trouble, okay?"

Julian paused, then said, "Okay."

"Can we talk about something else now?" his mother asked. "I get tired just thinking about that whole ugly thing."

"Sure," said Julian, though questions about his father still lingered in his mind. "Have you been keeping busy? Is everything going okay with you?"

"More or less," his mother said. "I've been in the law library a lot, as usual. I'm helping a couple of the girls get ready for parole hearings, that kind of thing."

"That's good," said Julian. He often forgot that his mother had been a lawyer. "I'm glad you've got stuff to do in here. I get worried about you."

"Don't worry about me," said Eileen with a smile. "I'm a tough ol' broad. That's where you get it from."

"About that," Julian laughed. "I got in another fight the other day."

"Julian," Eileen whined, "what happened?"

"A couple of guys tried to take my bike outside the corner store. Then that thing that keeps happening – remember when I told you about that? - well, that happened, and long story short, I won."

A fearful expression appeared on his mother's face. "It happens when you get upset?"

"Yeah."

"Does your skin change?"

"Yeah, Mom. I told you that last time, remember?"

Her eyes darted back and forth, but they didn't land on Julian. "Maybe you should see a doctor," she mumbled.

"I looked on WebMD," Julian offered. "There wasn't a diagnosis that had all my symptoms, though."

"Maybe you need a specialist, or something." His mother seemed suddenly uncomfortable, shifting in her seat and refusing to look her son in the eye.

"Why do you worry about it so much, Mom?" Julian asked. "It only hurts if it goes on too long, and if it means I don't get beat up like I did in middle school, what's the big deal?"

"Well," Eileen sighed, "there is one thing you should know about your father..." She seemed to be searching for the right words to say, but she was taking too long.

"What?" Julian urged, hungry for any tidbit of information she was willing to give him about his father. "What were you gonna say?"

She took a deep breath. "Aside from his... mental issues, whatever those may have been, your father was... let's say he had a condition."

"Like mine?" Julian questioned, his eyes widening.

"Sort of," said Eileen, "but he always seemed to be in control of it. He could turn it on and off. I guess it just wasn't something I thought about when you were born."

"If I can find Dad," Julian suggested, "maybe he can tell me-"

"That's out of the question," his mom snapped. "I may not legally have any say in it, but I'm still your mother, and my decision is final."

Julian was frustrated at his mother's insistence. Whether his father really was dangerous or not, he thought it was unfair that she wouldn't let him make the decision on his own. In his mind, she was withholding his only other family from him for reasons that he had adjudicated as selfish.

"Don't give me that look," Eileen said as she reached across the table to brush her son's hair out of his eyes. "You know I'm not doing this to hurt you, right?"

"Yeah," Julian groaned, "but it kind of seems like you're doing it to hurt Dad."

Eileen tensed, pursing her lips as she stared at her son with hurt, disappointment, and perhaps fear in her eyes. She opened her mouth to say something, but before she could, the visitation officer was at their table to cut the visit short.

"You gotta go," he told Julian.

"What?" Julian exclaimed. "It hasn't even been an hour!"

"There's a lot of people waiting to get in," the officer said with a shrug. "Sorry."

Julian sighed, then stood to meet his mother at the side of the table and hug her tightly.

"I love you, Mom," he mumbled into her curly, graying hair. "I love you so much."

"Make me proud tomorrow," she said, tears pooling at the bottoms of her eyes. "And be good."

"Alright," the visitation officer said semi-sympathetically. "Let's go."

The officer escorted Julian back out to the security checkpoint, where George was still on-duty.

"Break a leg tomorrow," George said. "And stay out of trouble."

Julian hurried across the parking lot to retrieve his bike, and he was relieved to find that, once again, it hadn't been stolen. He began pedaling home, not turning back as he left the prison behind, and as he often did on long bike rides, he zoned out, retreating into his thoughts. He brainstormed a list of genetic maladies that he could have inherited from his father. Maybe it was an autoimmune disease, or some sort of degenerative illness that would eventually kill him. Maybe his mother was wrong. Maybe it was all in his head. Maybe...

Julian didn't realize that he had drifted into the road until a passing motorist honked and swerved to avoid him.

Condition or none, Julian wondered how bad things could possibly have been in his parents' relationship. He had only heard one side of the story, after all, and though Julian adored his mother, he was bright enough to recognize that she, being somewhat bitter, may not have presented the situation to him with complete accuracy.

Still, he resolved not to search for his father without his mother's blessing. She was the only person who had ever shown Julian affection, though others had had far more opportunity to do so. Lying to her, in Julian's mind, was the worst abuse of trust he could commit. This did little to quell his curiosity, but it kept him from doing what he had just been instructed not to do; he wouldn't go looking for trouble.

As Julian neared the foster home, his thoughts turned to more practical things. He needed a job and an apartment, and he hadn't a clue where to begin the search for either of those two things. He had been employed previously as a dishwasher at a local restaurant, but he had been fired from that job for losing his temper with a customer, and he knew that he would not be welcome back there. There were few other opportunities in his small, upstate town. Many graduates from Julian's high school went on to find jobs at the prison, but this was not an option for family members of offenders.

It was a bad start to adult life, without promise or security, but it was all that he had come to expect.

By the time Julian arrived home, it was well past lunch time, and he knew that he had missed his daily meal of a ham sandwich and potato chips. He also knew that once he stashed his bike in the garage and walked through the door, his foster mom would be there, waiting to berate him for one thing or another.

Sure enough, there she sat in the living room, watching television with a sour expression on her face.

"Where have you been?" she demanded as soon as she spotted Julian.

"Went to see my mom," Julian replied quickly as he started toward the room he shared with two other boys.

"Not so fast," his foster mom snapped as she leapt from her seat to pursue him. "You were out wastin' all that time, and you didn't do nothin' to get yourself out of my house faster?"

"No," Julian answered flatly.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means I didn't find a job while I was out."

His foster mom raised her voice, as she often did. "Then get back out there and get to lookin'!"

"Do you see me right now?" Julian said, gesturing to the sweat around the collar of his t-shirt. "I've been riding around since I woke up. I have to take a shower first."

"You ain't usin' any of the facilities in this house 'til you got a plan to move out!" his foster mom shrieked. "I been doin' you a favor, lettin' you stay when I don't gotta."

"So you're gonna put me out if I don't go around looking for jobs right now, even though I have shit I have to do for tomorrow?"

"Damn right I am!" With her scrawny hand between Julian's shoulderblades, she pushed him toward the door. "If you're such a goddamn genius, why the hell can't you get a job at the goddamn prison?"

"Because my mom lives there! They don't..." As Julian got closer to completely losing his temper, he started to feel a familiar stinging in his eyes, and he closed them tightly. His skin prickled and tightened, and his body and head ached as though his blood had turned to ice water. He tried to hold it in, but he was in such pain that he could no longer contain a distorted groan.

"Stop fakin' sick," his foster mom barked. Her voice sounded different to Julian, as though it were being heard through different ears.

Before he lost control, Julian rushed out the door, grabbing his backpack from the space beside the door on his way. He retrieved his bicycle from the garage once again, and he got as far as he could from the house as quickly as he could.

He pedaled until the strange physical sensations subsided. They had been more intense this time than they ever had been before; Julian assumed that it had something to do with the strain he was under. He dismounted his bike and walked with it into the field where he had stopped. Once he was far enough to no longer be visible from the road, he let go of the bike and let it fall to the ground on its side. He sat down, cross-legged, in the grass and dirt beside it, and he pulled his notebook and pen from his backpack. He took a deep breath to cleanse himself of his worries so that he could focus on writing his speech.

He scratched a draft onto the first clean page, but the words he wrote, when he read them, seemed to hold too little meaning. He tried to begin his speech anew on the next page, but his second effort was even worse; references to friends and fond memories were bald-faced lies.

His mind drifted off before he could try again. He daydreamed about an alternate reality, one in which he spent his childhood in the custody of both of his biological parents, both of whom were of sound mind and good moral character. He would have had driving lessons and band practice rather than federal free lunch and no ride home from after-school activities. As a kid, he would have gone to Rochester with his parents, maybe even with brothers and sisters to whom he was related by blood, and he would have gorged himself to the point of nausea on fried dough at the Lilac Festival. He would have had shoes to wear to his high school graduation. His mom would have posted his college acceptance letter on the fridge, and he would have been allowed to hug her every day. His dad would have been proud of him even had he not succeeded in school to the degree that he actually, shockingly had, and best of all, he wouldn't be the faceless, nameless character who, for all practical purposes, existed only in his son's imagination.

But none of the that was Julian's reality, so on his fourth attempt at speech-writing, he described the only high school experience he knew.