Page 20 - SpontaneousSuccessFINAL6

NICHOLAS BOOTHMAN
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. For
my dad.” 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 had a way of finding its
own peculiar rhythm. A rhythm that pulsed with a
strange, insistent beat, urging me forward, even as the
vacuum of 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 force
that drives us forward, even in the darkest of times? Is it
some preordained plan, a destiny etched in stone? Or is it
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