Everyone has a birthday, even me. The only difference between me and everyone else is that I don’t know mine. Seven years ago my newfound foster parents decided July ninth seemed as good a day as any to celebrate it. After all, the date wasn’t really all that important. I was just happy to be having a birthday party; I’d never had one before. For the first eight years of my life, I wondered why I never had a birthday. I wondered a lot of things in those years, and some of those things I still contemplate now, July ninth, on the day I am celebrating my sixteenth year of living. I wish I could tell you that I have grand plans to celebrate my ‘big’ sixteen. However, I had no real choice on how to spend this, my ‘special’ day. I should have brought my parents, but I wanted to feel some sense of normalcy. I wanted to drive somewhere and experience that small sense of satisfaction and independence all teenagers feel the first time they drive alone. Besides, I think they were a little relieved about not coming, not that they would ever admit it. I don’t blame them though. I wouldn’t know how to act if my adopted daughter wished to be present at the last parole hearing before her abuser of eight years was released from prison. They love me, and that is all that I care about. In fact, they love me so much they tried to talk me out of coming here on my ‘joyous’ day. Yet, here I am. Sitting in a hallway waiting for a man in a blue pinstripe suit to exit a large door and tell me that Kyle Wills is being given early parole on account of good behavior. My stomach churns at the sheer stupidity of that statement. Good behavior? So what if he didn’t get into fights or scandals in prison? The bastard tortured me for eight years of my life, my childhood. The fact that he was supposed to spend only fifteen years of his life in a hellhole was depressing enough, but to get out early on good behavior? Was the government surprised he was a “good” inmate? He is a child molester, a freaking pedophile for crying out loud, not a drug dealer. His game isn’t guns and knives. Well, knives on “special occasions”, as Willy liked to call them, but I seriously doubt most criminals use a knife the same was Willy does. Shuddering, I tried not to notice that my right hand had unconsciously begun to rub the side of my left ribcage. The anger inside me pulsed. It wasn’t enough. Seven years, three months, and twenty-one days was nowhere near enough “punishment” for everything that monster did to me. My psychiatrist tells me anger is good for me because for eight years I was too young, too scared, and too hurt to be angry. Then again, he also tells me I shouldn’t dwell on it for too long.
Before I could divert my thoughts the inevitable occurred. Mr. Pinstripe exited the doorway directly to the left of the bench on which I sat. As he slowly squatted down beside me, I continued to stare at the even number of bricks that lined the wall in front of me. In a gentle voice, one I think I will remember for as long as I live, he began to tell me what I already knew. When he was finished, I simply nodded, grabbed my bad and new car keys, and calmly left. Exiting, I couldn’t help but laugh. On the day that was chosen to celebrate my birth, a small part of me died. |
Submission Name: none - part of story
