“Maybe. But even so, I regret it all. But back then…in some ways it felt like howling at the moon, screaming about the injustice I felt by pretending nothing mattered.” I shook my head. “But that was all such selfish shit. The world didn’t owe me anything. I just wish I’d learned that sooner.

“Anyway,” I went on, unexpectedly wanting to get the rest of this out, now that I’d started. In some ways, it felt like I was laying down a great weight, unloading it word by word. “I swear to you, I was growing out of it. All that, it hadn’t helped, and I felt guilty about it. I knew it wasn’t right and I just couldn’t justify it anymore. And any thrill it had originally provided was gone.”

“It wasn’t you.”

“No, it wasn’t. I still didn’t know who the hell I should be, but that wasn’t it. I’d picked up this course catalog from a local community college. First, I just tossed it on the coffee table, then I started leafing through it, then bringing it places. I think I was gathering the courage to turn down another road, but it felt so risky, you know?” I was silent for a few moments. This was the hard part, but it was also the heaviest to bear. “And then…this one night, this kid named Abel who was part of the crowd I hung with but was a few years younger than me showed up at my door and asked if I could borrow my uncle’s car to drive him to get some beer. I could see he’d already had a few and he probably didn’t need more. His girlfriend was pregnant, and he was nervous about the responsibility, and honestly, he should have been. He was only eighteen and he’d been raised in the system, didn’t know a thing about being a father and didn’t even have a GED. But he was a nice kid. Troubled, quiet, but still a good person. You know you meet some of these kids who’ve grown up in shitty situations, and with some of them, the light has just died. You can see it. You can feel it. It’s hard to explain. But not Abel…he still cared. He would have been okay. I think he would have gotten it together… I know he would have.” I pictured him standing there on my uncle’s front porch, hands in his pockets, asking me for a ride to a nearby convenience store where they didn’t give a shit about ID. It was that moment. That was the one where I could have changed everything. Prevented everything.

But I hadn’t.