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Opening vignette |  |
This is the way your world begins to unravel.
You're not poor, but you're not rich, either. Your parents can support you, but they have to work pretty hard to do it; this, of course, is something you take for granted right up until the day the both die when your house burns to the ground.
Two emotions dominate your landscape: the deep and abiding grief of loss, and the dull red anger of abandonment. You wander around for a while, trying to parse this new world in which you're utterly alone, until a third emotion—desperation—comes to roost in the hole that was your life. It's not all bad, though. Desperation gives you strength, pushes you to survive, goads you into doing things you wouldn't have even considered three days ago.
You steal things, first to survive, then because the distinction between right and wrong has started to erode. You fall in with that crowd, the ones your mother always wanted you to avoid, and you learn new ways of stealing. You fight, you lie, you cheat, you swindle, you rob; you tell yourself that you're surviving, but you're starting to enjoy it and, deep down, you hate yourself for it.
You're sixteen, and you're getting ready to roll some young dandy in the wrong alley on the wrong night. You don't realize that he has a pistol until he's recovered from your blow, sucker-punched you, and pinned you to the wall with its muzzle in your face. He sees the fear, the stark hopelessness of someone who had always believed that he had died a long time ago but is now facing his own mortality for real. He takes pity.
At first you hate him for his weakness, but over time you start to respect him, to like him, and eventually you become friends. He teaches you things that your other friends can't: how to read, how to fence. He shows you that people are people, not just marks waiting to be rooked.
But you've still got your other friends to worry about: petty, violent, selfish. You're with them, lying in wait in an alley again. A figure comes into view, wobbling unevenly through the shadows. A drunk? No, an old man, barely able to stand he's so arthritic. The predators, your friends, pounce, and you don't even think. You move, knife drawn, and you plunge it home, blade into flesh. The old man trembles, then backs up, looking down at the fourteen-year-old boy you just stabbed in the back, the one who had, just a moment ago, been advancing on him with a gnarled wooden cudgel. You look at the others, and they scatter, shaken, unsure of what to do when faced with such sudden betrayal. You usher the old man away from the alley because they'll be back. You know they'll be back.
You've got blood on your hands and on your clothes, and you're pushing an old man through the streets—an old man who is also blood-stained (though it's not his own), because of your earlier handiwork. People point and gasp. What he doing to that old man? Stop him! Guards, guards! The guards come, and they haul you away.
At the hearing, the old man speaks on your behalf, as does your friend, the nobleman's son. Even so, it's not enough. Unlike you, the boy you killed has parents, and they want vengeance. They demand it.
You're eighteen years old, and you're going to spend the next ten years in prison.
