Nicholas's Story Ch. 01-03

Chapter 1

Nicholas Carter was a child of the projects. Cheap apartments where the elevators and stairwells smelled of urine and weed and the litter of discarded needles that made going barefoot foolish. Neighborhoods where gunshots and police sirens sounded more regularly than alarm clocks.

His life hadn't always been that way. His mom, Janet, had once been a skilled accountant. Their life had turned hellish by happenstance when he was nine years old. Her Volkswagen was rear-ended by a pickup at a stoplight.

No harm ordinarily. The car was totaled, but she had insurance. The bigger problem was the chronic back and neck pain afterwards. Again, no problem ordinarily. She had health insurance through her employer. And the pickup driver had insurance, so she was able to get treatment. A nice doctor at her HMO proscribed pain medication; a new type that he assured her would work wonders. And the good news was that it wasn't at all addictive. So Janet went to the pharmacy with her prescription for OxyContin and got it filled.

It worked great until months down the road when the nice doctor became concerned that she might be getting addicted. He stopped her refills.

That was when the downward slide began.

Their nice house in the suburbs was downgraded to an apartment when she couldn't afford the payment and the cost of black-market Oxy. Their nice apartment became not so nice when she lost her job because she had switched to heroin and got caught shooting up in the ladies' room at work.

The slide accelerated.

The little family slid down into the projects. By then sweet middle-class Janet Carter was a full-blown junkie doing things that she never dreamed of to get that little packet of H. What Janet didn't know or probably didn't care was that street heroin doesn't pass any quality control standards--along with the usual powdered milk this latest batch was cut with a tiny bit of fentanyl to give a bit of an added kick.

Thirteen-year-old Nicholas woke up one morning to find his mother on their dilapidated green couch well into rigor mortis.

***

The social worker had tired eyes and a coffee stain on her blouse. She barely looked at Nicholas as she filled out paperwork, her pen scratching against forms that would determine his fate. There were no relatives willing to take him. No family friends stepping forward. Just another case number in an overwhelmed system.

"Riverdale Group Home has an opening," she mumbled, more to herself than to Nicholas. "It's not ideal, but there's nowhere else right now."

Riverdale turned out to be a converted boarding house on the south side of the city. A three-story Victorian with of peeling paint and a chain-link fence. The van dropped Nicholas off with his plastic garbage bag of belongings--all that was left of his old life.

The house mother glanced at his paperwork. She led him upstairs to a room with four bunk beds. She pointed to the bunk by the door.

"Take that one. Don't make trouble. Supper is at five. The school bus is out front at seven thirty."

He found out at dinner that the home held sixteen kids, nine boys and seven girls. His room was occupied by three other boys. The oldest, a lanky sixteen-year-old named Darius, looked him up and down.

"Fresh meat," Darius announced to the others.

The beds were metal frames with thin mattresses. Nicholas's was by the window--a mixed blessing. The window let in light but also the chill of winter through the ill-fitting windows.

That night he sat on his bunk wondering why he didn't feel anything. He guessed it was because his mom had been a long time dying. Towards the end she hadn't really been a mom, just a person he needed to take care of. He guessed he wasn't a normal kid. A normal kid would be crying.

In the coming days, Nicholas learned the unwritten rules of Riverdale. Don't leave anything valuable unattended. Don't use the showers after 9 PM or when the older boys claimed them. Don't show weakness. Don't expect the staff to intervene in anything.

The staff consisted of Mrs. Harmon, who spent most of her time sipping what she called hot toddy's and watching TV in her office. Mr. Wexler, the janitor who was so creepy everybody avoided him. And a fat woman who spoke broken English, who was the cook.

Meals were served cafeteria style on four chipped Formica tables. Breakfast was cold cereal and milk that sometimes smelled off. Lunch was sandwiches with a single slice of bologna or cheese. Dinner varied between overcooked spaghetti, mystery meat in gravy, or casseroles.

Nicholas's first week at Riverdale, someone stole his shoes while he slept. His second week, he got a black eye for sitting at the wrong table in the cafeteria. By the third week, he turned feral. He put a couple of handfuls of sand in a sock and put it to good use. He got his shoes back, the thief suffered a black eye, missing teeth and a bloody nose. Nobody bothered him after that. He sat where he wanted to sit.

School was a bus ride away, but Nicholas stopped going after a month. Despite his size, Nicholas was a big kid. The other kids still made fun of the group home kids. He was soon in trouble for fighting. After that, he quit going. No one cared. Instead, he spent his days hanging around with others like him in Flanders Park, a half acre patch of dirt with a basketball court the hoop missing its net.

At night, lying on his thin mattress listening to the snores and occasional sobs of his roommates, Nicholas would close his eyes and try to remember his mother's face--not the gray, lifeless mask he'd found that morning, but her face before the bad times came. The smile lines around her eyes. The way she'd tuck him into bed with a kiss. He had no memory of his father, who had died when he was four. He was sad because the memories of those good days were fading faster than he could hold on to them.

Darius caught him crying in once, silent tears that Nicholas thought were safe in the darkness.

"You crying for your mama?" Darius said, not unkindly. "Don't. Ain't nobody here got a mama worth crying over."

Darius had been in the system since he was seven. Riverdale was his fifth placement. "This place ain't even the worst," he told Nicholas. "At least the staff here mostly leave you alone."

There was a hierarchy at Riverdale. The boys who had been there longest and who were biggest or meanest ruled. Nobody messed with the girls. At the bottom were the newcomers, the ones who still believed someone might adopt them.

At night, after lights out, the boys would sometimes talk about their plans. Darius was going to join the marines the day he turned eighteen. Miguel was going back to his cousin's place in Arizona. Tyler was sure his mom would get clean and come get him any day now.

Nicholas had no plans. For him, the future was a blank wall.

****

Fear gripped fifteen-year-old Nicholas Carter when he spotted the flashing lights of the cop car in the rear-view mirror. He had just stolen a sweet, fire-engine red GT-500 Cobra.

For the past eight months, he'd had a nice little gig stealing cars for a guy named Half-Ear, who owned a junkyard and a garage on the edge of town. One of Half-Ear's guys, a fat man by the name of Junior, had taught him and Darius how to drive and had showed them all the tricks of boosting cars. It had been a good gig; the money gave them considerable status on the street.

Nicholas was a quick study. He became an excellent thief.

He briefly entertained the thought of trying to outrun the cops. He knew those streets better than any cop, but in the end, he pulled over, got out and dropped to his knees and laced his hands behind his head. This wasn't his first time being arrested.

The public defender the court assigned him was a middle-aged woman with gray hair and cynical, bored eyes. She introduced herself, shuffled through some files.

"Ordinarily, we could plead for leniency, given your age. Probably get probation extended instead of detention time. But you already went that route six months ago. So now, you're fucked, kid. Theft of a motor vehicle is a class B felony. It's your second offense. You broke your probation. You're looking at ten years. I talked to the DA, and he's willing to recommend three years in juvenile detention. With good behavior, you could be out sooner."

Nicholas just nodded with resigned acceptance.

In the courtroom, Judge Harrison--a man with steel-gray hair and eyes like stone--looked at Nicholas like he was something he'd scraped off his shoe. A man who'd never missed a meal or wondered where he'd sleep at night, passing judgment on a kid who'd never known anything else.

"Mr. Carter," the judge intoned, peering at Nicholas over the top of his reading glasses. "I've reviewed your record. This isn't your first offense. You've been given opportunities to correct your behavior, and yet here you stand before me again."

Nicholas stared at a spot on the wall behind the judge's head, his face a mask of indifference.

"You are, I'm afraid to say, going to become another statistic. Another example of a young man who chooses crime over education, rebellion over cooperation." The judge sighed theatrically, as if the weight of Nicholas's poor choices was somehow a burden on him personally. "I believe firmly in rehabilitation through incarceration. I sentence you to three years in the Illinois State Juvenile Detention Facility."

Juvie was about what he had expected--an institutional version of life on the streets. Same unwritten rules. Same consequences for showing weakness. The difference was that here, everything was compressed, intensified by concrete walls and steel doors.

At six feet three inches tall, Nicholas' size made him stand out among the sea of orange jumpsuit-clad bodies. Made him a threat to those who considered themselves in charge.

On his third day, during yard time, a stocky kid with a crude tattoo on his neck and three other boys trailing behind him like shadows sauntered over to where Nicholas was doing pull-ups on the exercise bar. The kid's name was Butch, in for armed robbery. Two years into a five-year sentence.

"New guy," Butch said, his voice carrying just enough for the gathering audience to hear. "This ain't your equipment. Everything in here belongs to someone, and this," he gestured to the exercise area. "This is mine."

Nicholas lowered himself slowly from the bar, wiping his palms on his pants. "Didn't see your name on it," he replied, his voice level, but with an edge that made it clear he wasn't backing down. Nicholas had been dealing with guys like Butch for years--different names, same asshole.

"I'm telling you now," Butch said, stepping closer, his chest puffed out. The yard had gone quiet, other conversations dying as everyone sensed the coming storm. "You want to use anything in my yard; you pay the tax."

Nicholas laughed. "Tax? What, you want my pudding cup or something?"

Butch's eyes narrowed. "I think you got something else I want." His gaze flicked meaningfully toward Nicholas's state-issued sneakers--newer and less worn than most.

It was such a stupid thing, such a small thing. A pair of cheap sneakers that actually fit. Nicholas felt something cold and familiar settle in his chest--the calm before violence that had gotten him through so many fights before.

"Not happening," Nicholas said simply.

Butch smiled, revealing a chipped front tooth. "Wrong answer, new meat."

He came at Nicholas with surprising speed, his two friends flanking him in a practiced maneuver meant to trap him against the exercise equipment. But Nicholas had been surrounded before. This wasn't his first fight. He had learned long ago that the rule was--land the first punch.

He didn't even remember much of the fight afterward. Just disjointed flashes, like a strobe light illuminating moments of chaos. The guy on the right's choked scream when Nicholas' foot smashed his balls. Butch's face, contorted with shock as Nicholas caught his arm mid-swing and twisted. The dull sound when Butch's head hit the concrete after Nicholas's counter punch connected with his jaw. The feel of fists against his own ribs as Butch's friends got in their shots. The guards' batons striking his back as they pulled him off while Butch's other friends backed away and vanished into the crowd of onlookers.

They dragged him to the Warden's office directly from the yard, blood still seeping from his bruised and torn knuckles.

Warden Phillips--a barrel-chested man with thinning white hair and cynical cop eyes--sat behind his desk reviewing the incident report with theatrical gravity. Nicholas stood before him, hands cuffed behind his back, a guard stationed on either side of him.

"Three days," the Warden finally said, looking up from the papers. "Three days and you've already put another inmate in the infirmary, Mr. Carter. Broke Butch Donovan's jaw in two places. Gave him a concussion that's going to keep him in the hospital ward for a week." He leaned forward, elbows on his desk. "What do you have to say for yourself?"

Nicholas met his gaze steadily. "He started it."

The Warden's expression didn't change. "This ain't grade school, son. 'He started it' doesn't fly here. Donovan may be recovering in the infirmary, but he's not the one looking at serious consequences."

"Whatever," Nicholas muttered, the adrenaline from the fight fading now, leaving him hollowed out and tired. He recognized he was in front of another bully. He wasn't going to play this asshole's games. "Do what you're gonna do."

"You're already on a three-year sentence," the Warden continued. "But that doesn't mean your time here can't get a whole lot worse."

Nicholas's jaw tightened.

"Nothing to say?" the Warden pressed. "No explanations? No apologies? No promises to do better?"

Nicholas looked at him with dead eyes. Said, with all the cold defiance he could muster, "Fuck you."

The room went silent. The guard to Nicholas's right tensed, his hand moved to his baton. The Warden just shook his head, a small, clearly fake disappointed smile playing at the corners of his mouth.

"Okay, Mr. Hardass," he said. "Let's see how tough you are after eighteen months in solitary. Get him out of here."

The guards gripped Nicholas's arms and turned him toward the door.

Eighteen months. The words didn't fully register at first. Eighteen months in a box. Eighteen months alone. The longest solitary he'd heard of.

"You can't do that," Nicholas protested, his composure cracking for the first time. "That's--that's too long." Fear flickered before he could mask it.

The Warden's smile widened fractionally. "I can and I will. Maybe when you come out, you'll have learned some manners. Or maybe you'll have forgotten how to speak entirely. Either way, I suspect you'll be less trouble for me and the State of Illinois."

He shuffled down the long corridor toward the solitary wing. The shackles around his ankle rattling. His mind racing in panic stricken circles. He'd heard stories about solitary, how it changed guys, broke them. How some guys came out talking to themselves or worse, not talking at all. Eighteen months was nearly half his sentence.

He was well and truly fucked.

Chapter 2

Nicholas soon discovered that no matter how bad his life had been before, things could get worse.

Much worse.

The cell was the size of a parking space. Concrete walls painted an institutional beige, scarred with scratchings from previous occupants--desperate tallies marking time, crude drawings, and obscenities etched by fingernails. Dark brown spatters stained one corner, unmistakably blood. Someone had meticulously drawn hash marks to count the days until they either gave up or left. A metal toilet-sink combination was bolted to one wall, a narrow bed with a paper-thin mattress bolted to another. A small metal desk and stool, also bolted down, completed the furnishings. A slot in the bottom of the door allowed food trays to be passed through; another at eye level allowed the guards to monitor him. The fluorescent light in the ceiling, protected behind shatterproof glass, flickered and buzzed like an insect was trapped inside.

The cell door closed with a heavy thud that reverberated not just in the room but deep in Nicholas's belly. The lock engaged with a mechanical click. Just like that, Nicholas was alone in a way he had never been before--not the aloneness of an empty apartment or a friendless childhood, but isolation absolute.

I can do this, he told himself. Eighteen months is nothing.

Then they turned out the lights.

A viewing slot opened in the door, letting in a bar of light. A guard's mocking voice came through.

"Compliments of the Warden, Hardass. Let's see how you like it dark."

The blackness of the dark pressed down on him like a heavy blanket. He couldn't breathe. The panic came and he raged. Rage was familiar, comfortable even. He raged against the crushing unfairness of his life, pounded his fists against the unyielding door until his knuckles split and bled, screamed obscenities at the guards who walked past without acknowledging his existence. He kicked at the door until his foot swelled purple with bruising. The concrete and steel of the cell absorbed his fury without comment, without resistance, until eventually, his body gave out, too exhausted to continue.

The only way he could tell time was by the little slot in the door where a bar of light would show and a tray of food would slide in. Then the light would go away and the dark would come back with its smothering weight. The panic would crash over him again.

By the second week, his rage had worn out. He was reduced to begging. Begging for the light to stay.

But no one was listening.

There was no one but him.

In the dark.

It was unmoved by his suffering.

Nicholas tried sleeping instead--fourteen, fifteen hours a day, drifting in and out of consciousness, using sleep as an escape from the crushing dark.

But a healthy teenage body can only sleep so much, and soon he found himself denied even that refuge. He would lie awake on his thin mattress, staring at the blackness, watching imagined things dance beyond his reach. His mind would be off again and racing with terrors that bounced in his head like ping-pong balls.

By the third week, the dark had a physical presence. They had started to let him out for an hour to exercise. Afterwards, it took two of them to shove him screaming back into the black.

The block was never truly silent--distant shouts, muffled sobs, and occasional laughter filtered through the walls, reminders that somewhere, life continued. But inside the cell, there was a deeper silence that pressed in on him from all sides. A thousand feather pillows muffled his spirit. Smothered him. He imagined the walls were moving, closing in on him--inch by inch, day by day. Sometimes he would press his palms flat against them, convinced they were moving ever so slowly but inexorably moving.

Closer and closer.

Nicholas tried to cope by constructing elaborate fantasies in his head about what he would do when he got out--the places he would go, the people he would see, the food he would eat. At first, these daydreams were vivid, detailed, offering temporary escapes from his reality. But as days stretched into weeks, the fantasies grew harder to maintain. The outside world began to feel less real than the cell.

At the end of the fourth week, the guards quit their games of dark and the lights came on and stayed.

Nicholas wept with gratitude. Thanking them over and over. With a voice that now only croaked.

A pair of cockroaches sometimes crept into the cell through a tiny space at the bottom of the door. In his desperation for a connection, Nicholas tried to make friends with them. He started saving crumbs from his meals, watching with rapt attention as the insects scurried over and carried them away. He named them Molly and Polly. They had full, hours-long conversations, Nicholas's voice growing hoarse from disuse when he spoke aloud, then falling to whispers as he shared secrets with the bugs.

"What do you think, Polly? Coke or Pepsi?"

He'd wait, watching the cockroach's antennae twitch.

"Coke? Yeah, I think so too. Has more bite, you know? My mom always bought the off-brand stuff, though. Store brands or some shit."

Then he'd take Molly's side, arguing with himself about these trivial things, creating conflict just to feel something other than the crushing emptiness. The arguments grew more heated as time passed, Nicholas sometimes shouting both sides of the conversation until his throat was raw, then collapsing in tears.

Other times he would have conversations with people from his past--his third-grade teacher who had once pulled him aside and told him he was smart, really smart, if only he would apply himself. The old man who ran the corner store and sometimes slipped him free candy bars when he was little.

And he talked with his mom. Not the mom of his last memories--the vacant-eyed and hollow-cheeked junkie chasing her next fix--but the mom from before the accident, who would sing off-key while washing dishes and call him her "little man."

He told her stories of the days of his life since her overdose, like he was a kid just home from school, telling his mommy about what he did at recess. Sometimes in these conversations, he could almost feel her fingers running through his hair, could almost smell the floral scent of her shampoo.

One day, he accidentally stepped on Molly or Polly while raging. The other one left and never came back. Or maybe he killed that one too and didn't remember. Things were foggy for him now. He wept for his little friends, saying he was so very sorry. He hadn't meant to hurt. The sobs, deep and gut-wrenching, left him gasping for air as he curled on the floor of his cell. He wept like he had never wept for his mother.

Without his two little friends, the silent solitude grew more oppressive. Nicholas found himself straining to hear anything--the distant flush of a toilet, footsteps in the corridor, the squeak of the food cart's wheels--any confirmation that the world still existed beyond his cell door.

His daily conversations with his mother took a darker turn as he inquired about the mechanics of the afterlife and asked her for hints about how he could join her. In rare moments of clarity, he knew these thoughts should concern him, that they were dangerous, but it didn't seem to matter anymore. He was going to die here; he was sure of it. Hopefully sooner rather than later.

Then it occurred to him that maybe he was already dead. Half-remembered lessons from the church he and his mother had attended ran through his mind--heaven, hell and purgatory. Maybe he'd died and this cell was his eternal punishment, an endless limbo where he would remain forever, forgotten by God and everyone else.

He tried exercise to make himself tired enough to sleep. He did push-ups until his arms trembled and gave out beneath him. Sit-ups until his abdominal muscles seized in protest. He paced the seven steps across his cell and back, counting to a thousand and starting over, then counting to five thousand. The movement helped, but the thoughts never stopped--a constant barrage of memories, regrets, and fears that chased him around the tiny space.

The awake time was a curse. Sixteen hours of consciousness became unbearable when there was nothing to fill it but the inside of his own head. The boredom was not the passive boredom of a rainy Sunday afternoon, but something active and malevolent that clawed at his sanity.

As the days bled into the second month, there were times when Nicholas wasn't entirely sure he still existed. He would pinch himself hard enough to bruise or bite the inside of his cheek until he tasted blood, just to feel something, to confirm he was still there. He wondered what they would say when they finally opened that door after eighteen months, only to find a ghost, a hollow-eyed shell where a boy had once been.

The hallucinations were now constant. His mother sitting on the edge of his bed, looking healthier than she had in years, telling him everything would be okay. A dog he'd had briefly when he was eight, before the landlord found out and made them get rid of it. Once, terrifyingly, a dark figure that stood in the corner of the cell for what felt like hours, watching him silently.

One day--later he tried to figure out when, but the days had long since run together in an indistinguishable blur--something unexpected broke the crushing monotony. A miracle. The meal slot in his door opened at an unusual time, and through it came two objects, pushed through and left there on the floor of his cell.

A book and a notebook with a pen inside. A note attached read: "You did me a solid. Butch was going to kill me. He's hurting too bad to bother. I owe you. I stole these from the library. I know from experience books pass the time."

The book was titled 'Stoicism for Teenagers'.

Nicholas tossed the book aside with a bitter laugh that echoed in the small space. What the fuck good would that do? He wasn't good at reading. School had never been kind to him--when you're poor and your clothes are either too small or too big and mostly, you're dirty and smell, kids heap scorn on you--or they did until he got big enough to beat their faces in. But you're always on the outside looking in, your nose pressed against the window of a life that isn't for people like you.

But there's only so many cracks you can count on a ceiling, only so many times you can trace the same water stain with your eyes while the madness creeps in around the edges of your mind. Eventually, he picked up the book. "Stoicism for Teenagers"--the title made him angry. He didn't feel like a teenager. The book was stupid.

It took him forever to get through the first chapter. His lips moved as he sounded out the words, his finger tracing beneath each line. The opening sentence stopped him cold:

"You can't control the things life throws at you, but you can control how you respond to it."

Nicholas thought he must have read that line fifty times that first day, trying to wrap his mind around what the author was saying. Life was unfair. His whole fucking life had been one disaster after another happening to him--his mom dying, the grinding poverty, the fights, everything. What good did it do to control how he reacted to it? The damage was already done.

He threw the book against the wall and screamed until his voice gave out, the sound bouncing back at him from the indifferent concrete.

The notebook, though, that was a much bigger deal. It was his witness. It occurred to him that he could talk to his future self. If there was writing in the notebook, he must be real, not a ghost. That first night, he wrote a single line: "My name is Nicholas Carter. I am in hell." He stared at the words for a long time before falling into the first deep, dreamless sleep he'd had in weeks.

The next day he picked the book up again, smoothing its crumpled pages. This time, something in the words caught hold of his mind.

Control. He loved the idea of control. He needed control.

So maybe he couldn't control the cards he was dealt. But thinking back on his reactions to things that had happened, he'd been responding to those cards the same way every time--with his fists, with anger, with self-destruction. Always reacting with stupid shit. Like stealing cars. Like saying "fuck you" to the warden on his first day, earning him this place in hell.

It was your own fault. You deserve this place for being such a stupid fucker.

The sayings in the book sounded like bullshit, but Nicholas tried them one at a time, treating it like a game. He started with little things. When his food came cold--it always was--instead of raging about it like he would have before, he thanked the guard and ate it, focusing on the taste, bland as it was. When one of the asshole guards rapped on the door, calling him names and waking him in the middle of the night from his precious sleep, he practiced keeping his face blank and his mouth shut, instead of screaming curses.

The game consumed him--seeing how much he could take without reacting the same old way. If he reacted--and he did often--he'd take the next morning to examine how the anger felt in his body. The tightness in his chest, the heat in his face, the way his hands would shake afterward. He'd roll it around in his mind, remind himself that when he lost control, he wasn't hurting the guard or the system--just himself.

In his notebook, he began keeping track of these small victories and defeats. "Today I didn't 'fuck you' Jenkins when he called me a waste of space." Or, "Lost my shit when lunch was just a slice of bread and some mystery meat. Threw the tray. Need to do better tomorrow." The pages filled with his large, uneven handwriting, a record of his struggle to find something--everything--he could control in this place that had stripped everything else away.

Control

Some days were better than others. On the bad days, the walls still closed in, and he would find himself back in the black mood, convinced he would never leave this cell, that the world outside had forgotten he existed. On those days, the notebook became his lifeline. He would read back through his entries, remind himself of the small victories, the incremental progress.

"I am here," he would write, pressing the pen so hard into the paper that the words embossed the next several pages. "I am Nicholas. I am in control of me."

And somehow, impossibly, he was.

Chapter 3

Gradually, Nicholas came to realize that he could be in the driver's seat where the rest of his life was concerned. Sure, he had no control of most things, at least until he got out of juvie. But, while he was in here, he could make a plan and begin to shape his future.

He had time. Lots of time to think about things and create a plan. The first thing had to do was quit being so fucking dumb and learn stuff. He had to figure out how you learned stuff so he could learn good. The book held the key. The writing held the control.

He read every day. Over and over. Parsing out meaning. Wrote in the notebook every day. The writing was his salvation--his lifeline. He now worried about what would happen to him if he ran out of space to write. Terrified that his precarious control would disappear. He didn't think he would survive if he slipped back into madness.

They began sending him to the doctor once a month for a wellness check. The second visit provided the next bit of salvation for him.

The prison doctor, Dr. Jennings, was an older guy, with salt-and-pepper hair and reading glasses he kept on a chain. The guard took him to the clinic for a checkup after his weekly shower and issue of fresh clothing.

Doctor Jennings wasn't kind exactly, but he wasn't an asshole either. He looked him in the eye when he talked to him. Just like he was a regular person.

While Nicholas sat on the metal table with a blood pressure cuff on his arm, he impulsively asked, "Sir, how do people learn shit? Like, really learn it?"

The doctor looked at him with surprise, thought for a bit, and said,

"That's a big question." He paused for a moment, then added, "Everyone's different, but most people learn through repetition, application, and teaching others. When you learn things, no one can take them away from you. Knowledge is the only true possession a man can have."

He must have looked confused because the Doctor stopped pumping the blood pressure cuff and explained:

"Repetition means doing it over and over and maybe writing things down. Application means using what you learned in real life. And teaching means explaining it to someone else--if you can do that well. That's when you know you really understand something."

Hmmm

On the way out, he managed to steal a couple of spiral bound notebooks and a Bic pen out of the clinic's supply closet. He shoved them into his pants and shuffled out to the waiting guard, his heart pounding. Getting caught would mean more time in solitary, maybe even more time in the black, but he needed those notebooks more than he needed safety.

After he tucked them away under his mattress, he wrote down that he was going to learn stuff and stop being so fucking dumb.

Nicholas's next big break came six months later, when the guards let him visit the library and check out books. After his weekly shower and clean clothes issue, they took him to the library, where he was told he could get two books. He wept unashamed tears as he selected a Webster's dictionary and a book called "Stoicism and the Art of Happiness"

Back in his cell, Nicholas wrote himself a daily schedule. Wake up, exercise for an hour--push-ups, sit-ups, five-minute planks, squats, lunges, anything he could do in the small space.

Then breakfast would come--usually watery scrambled eggs, cereal, toast, and weak coffee that tasted like dishwater. He carefully savored every bite.

After breakfast, He read till lunch. At first it was very slow going. He didn't know a lot of the words. Every time he hit a word he didn't know, he'd look it up, use it in a sentence, then write it down in his word-notebook. After a while, Nicholas had a notebook full of words he'd learned.

He'd read a paragraph or two, then close the book and try to explain it as if Polly was still there. If he couldn't, he'd read it again. And again. And again, until the words made sense.

Then lunch. Bland soup and a sandwich.

Then exercise again

Then the books again.

When he really felt like he knew the day's lesson. He'd write it down, carefully. Tiny letters. He didn't have paper to waste.

He wrote about Marcus Aurelius and how even an emperor had to struggle with his own mind. He wrote about the Stoic philosophers and their ideas about controlling what you could control and accepting what you couldn't. He wrote about how words had power, how understanding the meaning of things could change how you saw the world.

He wrote about himself, reminding himself his life was here for a purpose--his purpose--not somebody else's. Then sometimes he wrote a memory, sometimes a new thought about what he was reading. Sometimes a list of what he was going to do in the future.

Because now he had a future. Not guaranteed, Nicholas reminded himself, the madness of the dark still lurked in the corner of his mind, but his to have if he kept:

Control.

A couple more months passed, and he stole more notebooks. He started trying to write essays about the stuff he was learning, to see if he could explain it to someone else--to convince them. There was no one to read them, but he pretended he was teaching another dumb kid like himself.

A year in and he had a routine. He had habits. He had discipline. He had time to examine his life so far and patterns and consequences emerged from his old way of thinking and resultant behavior. He was slowly learning to know himself.

Control.