It was raining.

Not the soft, pattering drizzle of romantics, hopeless by definition. Instead the angry kind, when the skies grew bitter, the wind moaning against the sheer weight of the storm. It was the type that sent the bravest scampering to their shelters, while shamelessly beckoning the most daring from their caves. Heroes died on nights like these, yet legends were born as well, with no one wise enough to tell the difference.

The boy twisted and turned in his covers, eventually resting towards the bay window across the side of his room. His clock read 1:07 AM.

Outside, rain streaked the glass window in somber lines, sliding down the filthy facade of his apartment building. He knew that each individual drop would be caught by the pink blossoms of the crabapple tree four stories below—the great, ancient crabapple tree that rose from the center of the pathway, whose spindly limbs stretched out to form a canopy of pink. He knew it was a crabapple tree because when he was very young, his mother had once told him not to eat any of its fruit, which were sour; then again this past year, she’d started staring out of their kitchen window with a funny look on her face and saying, “That’s a crabapple tree, you know.” He knew.

The boy was not frightened however. He did not fear the storm, as children of his age did. In many ways, he seemed drawn to its danger—the total wantonness with which it raged, with nothing but the very boundaries of the heavens to protest. No, he was not afraid. Make no mistake, it wasn’t bravery that prompted his actions, but instead a sort of untamed restlessness that nagged at the silvery edges of his restraint.

Beckoning him to reach out, and embrace the worst of bad decisions.

Asking for leaps of unimaginable faith.

~

In second grade they called him poor. They shouted it at him on the playground, chanted it, whispered it as if he could not hear, until the undersized clothes on his back seemed to burn into his skin. They’d say it over and over, in so many twisted and ugly variations that the boy quickly lost count.

In third grade the teacher sent him out of science class because his mismatched jeans reeked of alcohol. The boy noticed nothing. But the kids turned up their noses when they came near him. “Mrs. Aaronnnnn,” they would whine constantly, even when he begged them to stop. “He smells like hand sanitizer!” One whiff was enough to send him to the principal’s office.

The boy liked to believe isolation was overrated, and that he certainly did not crave the company of the other children. He’d thought, no matter what, he’d prefer to be alone than with his antagonizers. In a nine-year old mentality however, it is hard to remember solitude is never completely reserved. And that loneliness, no matter how justified, eventually tears you apart from the inside.

~

The boy threw off his thin blanket.

The floor, like the sheets, was cold. The cheap finish of hardwood had long ago been eaten away by spilled vodka, so hopelessly splintered that it now threatened his bare feet.

When his mother went through one of her phases, bottles danced across the pitch dark sky. They would tear open the canvas of the night, glass splinters shining red as rubies and bleeding diamonds.

Tonight, however, with lightning crisscrossing the sky, the legend was rewritten. In this story, neglected piles of glass became vipers buried beneath golden Saharan sand. Shadows were inseparable from mystery; each creak of the hardwood floor gave way to thieves and saboteurs hiding behind great marble pillars. It was a world of dragons and knights in shining armor, of spiraling castles and beautiful princesses. It was a world perhaps not as concrete as his, but at the same time just as real.

The boy slowly approached the great bay window, the clock reading 1:07. Without hesitation, he pushed away the frigid glass pane, exposing his small frame to the bare intensity of the storm.

It was breathtaking. Like nothing he had ever seen before. Black serpents writhed within the clouds, ripping open the night haze. Chimeras and winged lions fought ferociously in the tumultuous cover of rain. Angels wept uncontrollably over the empty cityscape. Imagination blurred with reality, pain bled into joy, until the two opposites were no longer distinguishable. Never had the boy felt as alive as he did now, knowing that the storm was truly beyond his control. Ultimately, it could not be harnessed by the greatest of men. It was a force of nature, reckless and savage, tangled and feral. Without choosing to, without meaning to, the storm would run its course.

And slowly, the boy realized that he was beginning to figure it out. After all this time, after nine agonizing years of waiting, he was finally starting to understand what it was he had been looking for. Somewhere, buried beneath the deepest folds of storm, it beckoned to him. All he needed to do was reach out, and embrace the worst of bad decisions.

To take an unimaginable leap of faith.

~

The next day, when the police arrived at 42 Riverbrooke Heights, they couldn't find the reported missing boy who had failed to show up at school that day. They soon found the open bay window, the rain-soaked carpet, but no sign of the boy. The mother was taken into custody for suspicion of maltreatment, and missing posters soon appeared on signposts around town. Within a few days, the forensics team had finished their grisly business, and a solitaire police car loaded with evidence was given the clearance to leave. As the tires screeched out of the driveway, a few wrinkled petals of a crabapple tree flew up into the air during the momentum.

It had just started raining again.