Page 10 - SpontaneousSuccessMatos

I slid to the ground my back against the gym, my feet
against the woodwork shop. From high up on the corner
of the gym a light cut across my socks and shoes. They
were still shiny from the night before. My Dad loved
shiny shoes.
"Shoes tell secrets, Nicky," he said, "like a window to
the soul." He thought that was funny. "Soul - sole!" I
laughed with him.
My shoes. Scuffed, marred by the grit of the alley
floor. "I'll fix that before I put them away tonight.” And I
did.
An hour later I sneaked into the boot-room and
polished my shoes. Then, I polished the black school
Oxfords of everyone in my dormitory while they were
asleep. Then, I mixed them up and put them all back in
the wrong pigeon-holes—mine too. Give them
something else to talk about in the morning. Give them
something to gossip about instead of me.
Even in the face of death, life, it seemed, had a way of
finding its own peculiar rhythm. A rhythm that pulsed
with a strange, insistent beat, urging me forward, even as
grief threatened to pull me under. It was in the silence of
that night, in the echoing emptiness of the dormitory,
that a question began to take root, a question that would
shape the course of my life: what is this rhythm? What is
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