Disney's. In case you hadn't noticed.
They don't know. None of them know. None of them have any idea of the things that go on inside him. They see his laughter and they see his games but they don't know that it's all just an act. They don't know what he's hiding inside, what he thinks about so late at night after they've all gone to sleep. He pretends that there's nothing wrong. He pretends that he can't feel the pain, that he doesn't ask the questions, that he doesn't care.
Sometimes he goes out onto the steps or the fire escape just so he can be alone and let down his façade and think. He screams his questions silently to the empty sky and he never gets an answer, no matter how many times the tears fall. Why couldn't some other boy with some other mind have had this place? Why couldn't he have been one of the ones who never made it this far? And why should it matter what happens? If he sells today or if he never gets out of bed, who's going to care? Out of all the multitudes of people in the world, and all the stars and planets out there, it doesn't make a damn difference what he does. His life doesn't mean a thing, whether it goes on forever or it ends tomorrow. And maybe it will. He tells himself over and over not to do it, that he never will do it, that he cannot. But then he asks himself if he cares, and he knows he doesn't. Sometimes he laughs out loud as the tears run down his cheeks and sometimes he just stares at the knife for hours, fighting a battle inside. But he never does it. Not now. Not yet.
He hides everything from them, and they never suspect. He leaves his long silences and his anger and his fears until he is alone, selling, on the street, lying in his bunk after dark, so close to humanity but so alone. And he watches them. He watches all of them, but most of all his cowboy. He watches and he can see the fear in those dark eyes. He watches and he sees what that life dream really is, and it frightens him. Because despite all his pain and his confusion and his dark thoughts, he still cares. He tells himself that it doesn't matter, but he can't stop the emotions.
He won't tell, though. He won't ever tell. He holds it inside and builds walls around himself. He is like the flame of the candle he held outside last night until the moon was low, before it was snatched out of existence when he forced it into the snow in frustration. On the outside, he is happy, content, uncaring, but close to his heart the darkness shows through. They will never know. He will never open the dark core of his feelings to the world. And maybe he is better for it, and maybe he is not.
They call him Racetrack.
He calls himself lost.