Finding My Own Way (Refined Draft)

“Connection, picture, island.”

Those were the words spewed across the cafeteria walls that cold November morning—

the same morning me and Billy decided to stop messin’ around with our dull, decrepit lives.

That was the day we found it all.

We lived in a town tucked inside a small, shapeless city.

“Limited and undefined,” Miss Shivel always said whenever we questioned the world beyond her chalkboard.

When the third bell rang, I slid my fingers along the lockers until I reached the last one at the end of the hall—

the odd one out, painted that pale green only I would end up with.

Figures.

The oddball locker for the oddball kid.

People mistook me for abnormal, but I dismissed it every time.

“They don’t know me,” I’d mutter.

“They’ve lived on hills their whole lives—it’s not like they grew up where I did.”

Where I’m from, there were two rules you never forget:

One, no one’s the same—not even close.

Two, you survive on grit.

Be cunning.

Learn how to remove your whole self from a place without being noticed at all.

Picture this: a big world, blue sky, the kind where even the birds look like giants—

and every predator has one rule in common: eat or be eaten.

That was never gonna be my story.

My body buzzed, that electric kind of alive that comes when you know eyes are on you.

Like the world was watching through invisible windows,

and sound itself had a key to every door inside you.

Viable.

That was the only word I could picture in that vast, strange moment.

Don’t think for a second monsters aren’t real.

They live to please the innocent parts of our minds—

the ones too curious to stop looking.

They’re inspired by the moments that crack reality open,

and Billy… he hadn’t seen half of it yet.

Mr. Aber’s screen flickered still in class,

time twisting in on itself like it was trying to learn something from me.

Limitless.

That’s what I wanted Billy to understand—

how the tides change,

how the earth shivers to make room for difference.

Nothing ever stays the same.

“Expect doppelgängers,” Billy laughed as I slipped my headphones on.

School was out, but my body wasn’t done learning.

Something was teaching me,

I just hadn’t figured out what it was yet.