Chapter Ten – The Wheel of Fortune

Rainbow was a consummate host.

He made sure that I was comfortable, and we became close. There was nothing romantic between us. Truthfully, it was just good to have a friend. I knew a lot of people on the street, but there weren’t many that I could call friend, at least not yet. It felt good to have a friend in a world that was so new to me.

I gave too much of myself away to other people. I had always been told that this was one of my failings. I couldn’t help it; I was hardwired that way, the eternal peacekeeper. It was the role I had been used to playing because it had been safer.  

I also knew when to keep myself safe and balance that with the role of a peacekeeper. I had put up a wall with Shades and I had been building it for a while. It was a way of keeping everyone happy and ensure my safety. I had been taught to do this since I was young. Growing up, there needed to be a someone to keep the peace with my father. It was easier than the alternative which happened all too often.

It was wonderful to have someone in my life who I could be myself with and not worry about romantic entanglements, protecting myself and trying to look for what was underneath so that I could see what the other person was hiding. Sunshine was completely himself and I had never known anyone like him before. I felt safe to be with him and didn’t have to hide anything about myself. I didn’t want to tell him my life story, but his behaviour towards me let me know that I could if I wanted to.

One evening, we were both scribbling away in our journals. He had given me a spare one of his as I had filled up my notebook, even with the extra paper. “I still think that my journals are going to be published some day,” he said softly over the music of pen scratching. “I wonder what kind of people will read them? Who they will be? Did you ever wonder who will read your words?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know what story I want to tell.”

He shrugged. “You have to let yourself live, Jamie. You think too much. I can see it in your eyes. You’re always trying to think past the next few steps, what comes next. It must be so tiring. You have to just live day by day. Don’t worry about tomorrow before you live today.” He handed lit a cigarette and passed one to me, lit one for himself. They were slim 100’s in a gold and black carton. I felt fancy and so literary when I smoked these cigarettes. They reminded me of black and white film stars.

I sat there looking at the blank page in front of me. I knew that I wanted to start a new cycle for myself. I also knew that I had been lucky to find Sunshine when I arrived on the streets. He had been a friend from the word go. I looked at him writing out of the corner of my eyes as I tried writing some words. He was completely himself and I knew that if I was going to make it out here on my own that I would have to look at myself in a different way.

I was not a victim in any of this. Though the place I had known as my home had been taken from me and nothing was like it had been, that didn’t mean that this was horrible. I had found safety with Sunshine and I had found my freedom again. I had left home on my own when I was sixteen and I been okay. I could do this again. I didn’t have to be afraid anymore. I couldn’t be afraid if I was going to make it and the thing of it was that I knew I could make it and that I had already made it by not going back to my stepfather grovelling at his feet for him to take me back into a house that had never really been a home anyways.

Looking down at the paper in front of me, I drew a door. I flipped to the other side of the page and drew an open doorway. The smoke from my cigarette made it seem like there was fog coming from within my words and all I had to do was see past the mist to find where my words had been hiding.

Taking a drag from my cigarette, I put my pen to a clean sheet of paper and let my words free.